The ONLY virtue of a 2nd term is that Iraq remains Bush's war.

[Minstrel Boy]

I'd held out no hope that Kerry would extricate the US from its new Middle East garrison. He'd said himself the troops would remain another four years.

It's already disheartening as hell to hear Democrats argue the case for a Republican's criminal war. If it had become a Democrat's war, there would be slim hope of raising up an effective opposition to it within the party's leadership. Now, there's at least a sliver of hope.

Because maybe, in four years' time - after ten or twenty thousand more American soldiers are dead, and a half million Iraqis - maybe then the Democratic leadership will see the worth of an anti-war nominee. And maybe, by then, the American people will want to study war no more.

Maybe.

It's not much, but it's all I got.

[lovedems]

1. I wish I shared your optimism but * is in his 60's and he has never had

to clean up any of his messes before. I highly doubt he will start now. He will find a way to blame it on Clenis.

I hope you are right. This is his war, his mess and now he gets to deal with it but I sense a vacation coming on right before and during the time we make a parking lot out of Fallujah. It is the * way.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. It's not really optimism. I expect a bigger mess - much bigger -

in four years.

I guess what I'm saying is, if I have hope at all, it's because things are first going to get really, really bad.

That the situation will worsen under absolute Republican control is the one faint hope I have for a progressive Democratic alternative.

[el_gato]

2. You are right

sadly it takes a very long time for people to wake up

[Florida_Geek]

3. Plus WHEN bin Laden hits again and kills lots of Americans

it can not be blamed on Clinton's penis this time.

[Vincardog]

4. Not only the war. aWol's blunders in tax cut and spend will be shown as

failure it is. When the IMF comes to collect the bill will be huge. The 'good' thing is that all of the responsibility for all the failures will be on the shrub's watch. I want to see how they blame Clinton When the education system is bankrupted by the rabid right how will they blame Gay/Lesbian? When SSI is broken by their privatization how will they blame us Liberals?

[seemslikeadream]

6. bushs war bushs casualties #1128

http://ericblumrich.com/year.html


Legion

Enveloped in a sentiment,
a sound that rushes over me.
Engage an impulse to pretend
I have a faith as pure.
Not forgetting what it means to dream.
Indulging everything.
Entertaining thoughts that I've the strength
of those I yearn to be.
Cheers and tribute greet the saviours.
Reckless thoughts survive.
Anachronistic and impulsive.

And what will happen?
Will I dream?
I am too scared to close my eyes.
For a second please hold me.
None can change in me these things that I believe.
But I don't know what happens now.
I am too scared to close my eyes.

© VNV Nation

[kennetha]

7. This is no small thing

I am in deep grieving for our country that Kerry lost. Don't get me wrong at all.

But Iraq is going to be a disaster of historic proportions. I wasn't sure that Kerry could do better than Bush, given the mess that Bush had made. But Kerry had two options that Bush did not.

1st. After some decent interval simply get out and call it a day. Brand it as an honorable retreat from an unwinnable war bequeath to him by a crazed. mendacious predecessor. (and that's putting it mildly).

2nd. Cede ultimate responsibility to the UN or Nato or the Arab League or to somebody else for Iraq's future, though keeping a deep American involvement on the ground.

Neither option is a good one. But both are better than the only option Bush seems to me to have. either more of the same or a massive increase in the amount of violence we employ to bring the insurgents to heel

This war has already made Bush's first term a catastrophe for America. It's going to turn his second term into a four year nightmare.

Add that to the fiscal trainwreck he is causing with his tax cuts, plans to partially privatize SS and we've got a second term that adds up to a catalog of horrors for us all.

I suspect that the Republicans, rather than being the "majority party for a generation" as the result of Bush's two terms, will be banished to the wilderness for the next fifty years, after he's out of office.

And this isn't to mention certain brewing scandals on the horizon.

What I think the party of light -- that would be our party -- ought to do is to do nothing to prevent this darkness from coming. Sometimes you have to tear the edifice down before you can build anew. That's been part of our problem and part of what separates us from the Repugnants. They were willing to trash the instutions of government and the instruments of democratic polity in order to gain power. We care too much about government and about its power to do good and also about the integrity of the instruments of democracy within civil society to do that. That makes us decent and honorable people. It makes the Republicans much more "strategic" than us.

But in dark times like these, I think we have to stand back and watch as the darkness spreads. I think we have to let the edifice collapse. It's sorry state is not our doing and we probably couldn't do much to prevent its collapse even if we tried with our limited hold on the levers of power.

Bush has his war. He has the leeway to fight it "his way." So let him do it, all the while speaking out constantly against his way of doing it. We should anot ccomodate and facilitate in hopes of being seen as -- as wha, exactlyt? A better executor of Bush's "facts on the ground" agenda? A better expositor of fiscal insanity and moral intolerance? No thanks.

[Minstrel Boy]

9. "But in dark times like these, I think we have to let the darkness spread"

Well said, and a grim truth.

And so long as the Bush team is in place, the darkness is bound to spread regardless of what we do. Much worse than acknowledging the scary fact we live in dark times is stumbling about blind, pretending everything's normal.

Dean caught fire because he was the first and only leading candidate to admit to the radicality of the Bush White House. After four more years, that'll be simple common sense, and will find even more appeal. The party had better not run from that message, or it's another loss for sure.

[intheflow]

8. Another virtue of a 2nd term:

We'll have time to impeach him and his whole evil regeme.

Though this might have to wait until after 2006 when we can get back house and senate under Dem control. Assuming, of course, Bush doesn't change the constitution to ban voting by anyone unwilling to take a loyalty oath to the republican agenda.