a liberal case for bush. sorta.
February 27, 2004 10:30 AM

Maybe I should vote for Bush.

It would be a dangerous bet, of course, but I'm thinking that in four additional years, assuming we're all so focused on him that we forget to vote reasonable folk into the legislative branch, he might really succeed in turning the country into something resembling a military theocracy. At which point everyone will feel dangerously and radically liberal, both in comparison and response to the government.

In other words, things will have gone so dramatically to hell that middle of the road Americans will find themselves wondering why gay people and women and people of any non-white color are still such second-class citizens. Why they themselves still feel like second-class citizens. And then, maybe, we'll have a brilliant groundswell of liberalism.

Alternately, nothing dramatic at all will happen, because liberals will be so pissed they actually start turning out to run for and vote for state-level positions and legislators, who then block every idiot idea W releases.

Meanwhile one of the left-leaning candidates from this year's Democrat pool will have had additional time to build a grassroots liberal organization with even a tenth of the lobbying power of the Christian Coalition in the early 1990's. And either that candidate or Hillary Clinton (who, let's face it, is totally running for president as soon as she reasonably can) will win in 2008. So the country will swing to the left-of-center position (or lefter) that reflects the true feeling of most people who can vote, and we might have the added bonus of a chick president and a return of the eight year party that was the Clinton I regime.

Look. It's pretty clear that the country swings left to right and back every four to eight years. So, if the choice is either Kerry, followed by a Bush-like clone, or Bush again, followed by someone truly liberal - or at least interesting - the risk of the latter option might just be outweighed by its rewards.

That said, I'd still have an easier time staying home in November than casting a vote for Bush.

[this entry was originally posted in my livejournal]