The Fearful Voter

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The Fearful Voter

There's this post over at Buzzmachine that has me shaking my head this morning. I'll cut and paste parts of it here:

Your fears about Bush are (for the most part) about what he would DO that would be wrong. He would appoint right-wing judges; he would work to reverse Roe; he will, and has, worked to pass a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Stupid, divisive, wrongheaded moves all to pander to his Evangelical base.
By contrast, you are afraid of what Kerry would NOT do. You fear he would NOT act against our enemies without the imprimatur of the French. That he would dither....

For the most part, what you fear from Bush cannot be implemented by the President alone. But what you fear from Kerry CAN be.

Everything you fear from a Bush II administration, I do too. But he won't be able to do it -- for the most part -- without significant help from Congress.

By contrast, there is no power on Earth that can force a Kerry administration to bypass the UN when it's necessary. There is no provision for Congress to sidestep the President and send troops.

Then Jeff adds this to the mix:

It's ever-more fascinating to me how everything in this campaign is analyzed in the negative. We vote to keep the other guy out of office. We vote to stop something from happening. We don't vote because we're enthusiastic. We don't vote because we want to accomplish something but just prevent something.

If this is the way the American electorate is viewing this election then the negative campaigning has taken over and people are losing their good judgement. We need to vote for what a President will do and not against what he might do. We need to realize that Congress will provide its required system of checks and balances over whomever gets elected. We need to pick a direction we want to go in and vote for it, not against it.

We know what direction Bush wants to take the country in because he's been doing it for four years. We've got much lower taxes, a huge budget deficit, we are at war in Iraq, we've got most of the world really irritated with us, we've got efforts underway to make gay marriage and abortion illegal. If that's the direction you want, then vote FOR Bush.

We also know what direction Kerry will take the country because he's been in congress for a long time and he's been campaigning for well over a year with a platform that's available for anyone to see. He'll roll back the Bush tax cut, he'll cut the budget deficit, he'll stick it out in Iraq because he has to, he'll work to repair the issues we've got with the rest of the world, and he'll protect a woman's right to choose. If that's the direction you want, the vote FOR Kerry.

But please don't vote against the negative "worst case" image that both campaigns are creating of these two guys. As Franklin Roosevelt said, "The only thing to fear is fear itself."

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Posted October 11, 2004 in Politics

Comments

What I fear about Bush is what he already has done--led the nation into a war that was not only unnecessary but counterproductive and intractible, continually pursued powers that are unconstitutional (which the courts have just begun to unwind) and further weaken the constitutional protections of the establishment clause (he's not pandering to a christian conservative base, he's a flat out true believer and he has already done). I also worry about what he will do--privitize social security (a sop to money managers who will make a fortune from the flood of dough to the market but a program that will someday require the a federal bailout for a generation of retirees), appoint activist conservative justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.

I also worry about what he has failed to do---failed to engage at all in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, failed to slow the growth of nuclear weapons in North Korea (he keeps talking about how bilateral negotiations won't work, but multi-lateral "negotiations" have merely increased the North Korean threat), failed to address the issues surrounding the costs of health care and retirement benefits that have slowed American hiring.

I have absolutely no fears about Kerry and internationalization. Defense against a non-nation threat requires the co-operation of other nations because the threat will be hidden in each of those nations, yes, including the US. The only hope for protecting the US long term from threats like Al Qaeda is full international engagement in the effort to put Al Qaeda in a box. Bush has done nothing but taken us farther and farther away from achieving safety.

Posted by: Jason Chervokas | Oct 11, 2004 8:57:29 AM

Again and again Jason puts it in perspective. Jason, why don't you write for Kerry? He needs you.

Posted by: jackson | Oct 11, 2004 10:30:03 AM

Nobody cares about deficits (when was the last time a deficit drove a plane into a building?), there is not enough support even amongst the Rep base to appoint a RVW recinder to the bench, and the Christian conservative right has far less power and support in the "neocon" world than you think whether the president buys into their crap or not. We've run down our thoughts on the Patriot Act, no need to rehash. If Kerry wasn't Kerry on the war thing, he'd probably have my vote. It's a one issue election folks, and it's going to be a squeaker.

Either way it turns out, I won't be happy. JJ's blog entry couldn't be more truthful.

Posted by: Tony Alva | Oct 11, 2004 1:52:13 PM

P.S. William Safire has an excellent piece in today's op/ed that explains my fears on Kerry's FP and the war. He just doesn't understand all the complexities enough to hang in a debate about it. If he had the answers he should have trounced W Friday night since W had nothing new to bring to the table. P.S. William Safire has an excellent piece in today's op/ed that explains my fears on Kerry's FP and the war. He just doesn't understand all the complexities enough to hang in a debate about it. If he had the answers he should have trounced W Friday night since W had nothing new to bring to the table other than a better nights rest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/opinion/11safire.html?oref=login&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists

Posted by: Tony Alva | Oct 11, 2004 1:58:50 PM

Tony-

It's really funny, but I think here it is, the foreign policy component of the election in nutshell. I think Bush's foreign policy has been disasterous. His doctrine of military invasion, foreign installation of client states, and reverse domino theory is simplistic, relies on the discredited policies of the Cold War that got us into wars exactly the way we crept into Vietnam and are now creeping into a wider war vs. not just Iraq but Iran. I think he and his team have shown no understanding of the complexities of a 21st century war against a non-state enemy, instead they're stuck in this discredited cold war approach, one that I believed is doomed to worse than failure, but failure that will make the US less secure at home.

It seems we see the same facts and have 180 degree different opinions about what they mean and what's the best thing to do about it. I feel much safer and have much greater confidence with Kerry's approch; I feel much less safe and have only confidence that things will go to shit w/ Bush's approach.

On Roe V. Wade it will be nip and tuck, the religious right's goal has been to chip away at the legal underpinnings (hence that attempt last year to get a second murder charge in the case of a pregnant woman, attempts by the Supreme Court to kick it down to the states). With a more pliant court we'll see more and more challenges putting more and more conditions on Roe v. Wade, but perhaps not a full frontal assault on the decision. Still, if the court sends signals in those decisions that is is pliant enough, a case will be brought that will give the court the opportunity to overturn. We're talking about true believers and true believers, convinced of their absolute moral correctness, never stop. You may be correct about the line between the neocons and the religious right. But the president himself is a member of the latter not the former.

Posted by: Jason Chervokas | Oct 11, 2004 2:33:04 PM

It may be a one issue election for Tony, but not me, and I assume that there are others who feel as I do. The war is the war, we are there, we're not going to leave any time soon. I'm voting for Kerry simply because Bush's connection to the christian right scares the bejesus out of me. I won't sit by and watch my civil liberties be chipped away by these people who think they know the mind of God. For me it's about a womans right to choose, gay rights, the economy, the enviroment, in other words, domestic policy, "the boring stuff".

Posted by: jackson | Oct 12, 2004 10:40:55 AM

Yeah, but in the end, it's a referendum on the war in Iraq

Posted by: Jason Chervokas | Oct 12, 2004 6:23:42 PM

Just curious if anyone here is planning to move out of the country when Bush wins. You know, given how he has hijacked the constitution and turned us into a police state and all. How could someone like Jason possibly tolerate living in a country like that when, say, Canada is so accessible.

Hector

P.S. All the futures markets continue to point toward a Bush win.

Posted by: Hector | Oct 13, 2004 1:08:08 PM

Believe it or not Hector, the thought has crossed my mind, more than once. You know James Madison, the architect of the first amendment's establishment clause thought having congressional chaplains was a violation of church and state. Now we funnel tax dollars to "faith-based" contractors (incidently something Madisons ruled was a violation when he was on the Supreme Court). That's unconstitutional. The supreme court has already ruled on the constitutionality of a few of the more blunt aspects of Bush's dumb, ineffective anti terrorist strategy (namely preventitive detention without charge or hearing or process for appeal). He backs a constitutional amendment that would not only ban gay marriage but also ban civil unions in order to deprive gay couples of normal civil rights of survivorship etc. And the lower federal courts are now beginning to unwind parts of the Patriot Act on constitutional grounds.

I say yeah, the constitution is under assault and needs to be protected from huge over reaching. Frankly it's a dramatic transformation of the Republican party (which since Regan has been the party of a smaller government and a less intrusive government) into a free spending behemoth desperate to create new federal law of a cultural nature so profound that they need to bend or amend the consitution to do it!

Posted by: Jason Chervokas | Oct 13, 2004 5:36:51 PM

Blogger wrote : "We've got much lower taxes, a huge budget deficit, we are at war in Iraq, we've got most of the world really irritated with us, we've got efforts underway to make gay marriage and abortion illegal."

Lower taxes : EXCELLENT. No explanation needed. The best part, if you PAY taxes, you had a tax cut. Same for everyone. If you pay MORE, your tax cut was MORE. Nothing is more fair than that. Even a NY VC should know that.

Budget deficit : Bad (but not really), but lets see where this came from. Did it come from lower taxes? Nope. Hmmm, what else.... There was that little incident in New York that Kerry and the Democrats want us to think didn't happen....hmmmm....

But, lets get back to the deficit. Why is the deficit lower than projected? Anyone? (silence...) ANYONE?? It's because the taxes paid into the government have been higher than projected. But WAIT! I though Bush lowered taxes?? That's right folks, when we lower taxes, that money hammers into the economy like a freight train and in the end, the government takes in more monies since that money is being used as fuel for our economy and generates more money as a result.

War in Iraq : Really folks, stop kidding yourself. What we did in Iraq was a good thing, no matter why we did it. Sanctions were not working, and Saddam just thumbed his nose at everyone for the past 10 years. He was told, play straight of suffer the consequenses ... HE REFUSED. HE hade the choice to not cooperate, he made the choice to give $25,000 cash rewards to families who's children were used as human bombs to kill Christians and Israelis. He made the choice to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Kurds. He made lots of choices, lots of BAD choices. And now he's gone and between Iraq and Afghanistan, we've liberated 50 million people. For what cost? Some money (no big deal) and just over 1,000 American soldiers. Lets remember those proud soldiers who joined the armed forces of their own free will to defend our country and protect our rights and freedoms, here and abroad. 1,000 soldiers - imagine that. imagine what we did, all that we accomplished, and we did it with ONLY 1,000 soldiers killed. Amazing, just plain amazing. We should be so proud, but you leftists spit on their graves and belittle their losses. Several of you have made comments that you are thinking about moving somewhere else if Bush is reelected - no loss as far as I'm concerned. You'all don't sound too American to me anyway.

Most of the world irritated with us : GREAT! Usually, when we're pissing someone off, we're doing something really great. France doesn't like us? boohoo. They're just pissed that after they sold all sorts of arms, fighter planes, bombers, missles, etc. to Iraq, they took some cash, but Saddam promised them plush oil contracts that they never got because those pesky Americans jumped in and took Saddam from power. Germany? As gulty as France. Russia at least had the balls to admit that they dealth with Saddam and got on board our train as we headed to Iraq to oust Saddam.

Gay Marrige : honestly, I don't care

Abortion : Killing is wrong. Period. No way around it, even with the lame ass "what if she's raped" or "if she's physically threated by the pregnancy" which is SOOOOOOO not an issue, well, it's not an issue. If a girl doesn't want to have an abortion, then she needs to make a decision about intercourse first. Grow up people and live with your life choices. I'm not trying to put my ideology doen your throat, as my basis for this is simple.... Killing is wrong. Period. Get it? Got it? Good.

Posted by: David | Oct 14, 2004 8:21:08 PM

well, David, the bottom line is that half the country doesn't believe abortion is killing and doesn't believe the war in Iraq was the right decision. The deficit is a problem. Bush likes to argue that health care costs are inflated because people are sheilded from the real costs of their care. Well, this foreign policy has gone forward because the nation has been sheilded from the spending on the war because the government has run up the debt rather than slash programs or raise taxes.

Posted by: Jason Chervokas | Oct 15, 2004 9:25:12 AM

"David, the bottom line is that half the country doesn't believe abortion is killing..."

Wow - think about what you said. THINK about it. That's a sad statement for the morality of this country. So sad. You would think that citizens of this country would value human life.

Posted by: David | Oct 15, 2004 8:53:14 PM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC