It Looks like it's going to be FOUR MORE YEARS OF Bush: What's in store?

Expect the worst.

I keep wondering what the passage of the California proposition, though, will mean. (I've heard some interesting arguments for it from people I wouldn't have expected to back it -- a lot of it has to do with scoring early patents.)

The best news about the next four years is that Bush won't feel so politically compelled to acknowlege the far right. Let's just hope and pray that he won't.

next four years: fuck it, the glory days of this country are behind us. more of the same. I'm more concerned with the growing consolidation of the evangelical movement in the US; they're voting Bush because they see Iraq as an attack on Muslims. Look for a goddamned Holy War in the next 50 years.

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/election.main/top.bush.tuesday.ap.jpg

Happy now?

I currently cannot imagine anything worse than a lame duck Dick Cheney.

Then again, Nixon got re-elected too.
We'll see.

massve defecit

china reposeses the cars and tvs of america

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

invasion of Cuba. Heavy sanctions on Venezuela. Ignoring China.

book burnings. relocation camps.

-doubtfull, unless the democrats dump Terry McAufille (party chair)
I wanna be optimistic that Daschel is voted out so maybe someone with a brain will be the new rankin democrate in the senate

do we know how well gordon brown gets on with george bush?
cause that's going to be interesting.

http://altura.speedera.net/ccimg.catalogcity.com/210000/214300/214324/Products/7707642.jpg

"Pulling only makes it tighter!"

In the past 4 years, GW hasn't vetoed a single bill, spending or otherwise, and we have the largest increase in government accompanied with the largest deficit in history. The last four years of blame of 'things not going well' ranged from Clinton, terrorists and Iraq whether these be accurate targets or not. Next sacrificial lambs seem to be the trial lawyers.

"Pulling only makes it tighter!"

http://www.misslucifercrib.blogger.com.br/bob.jpg

"Look, I'm not going to put this next sentence on the record. Let's just say that 'a friend of mine' was buying cocaine. I have friends in Houston from all walks of life. Lawyers. Professional men. Bush was hanging around with this crowd of what you might call gilded coke dilettantes.

"I remember Bush as a kind of a butt-boy for the smart people. This was in the late 1970s, when he was in his drunken-fool period. He couldn't handle liquor. He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humour. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away.

"If George W Bush wins again, the United States faces utter disaster. If this president is re-elected, we are facing the total death of the American Dream as I know it, and I have spent a lot of time knowing it. I would tell them that if this gang of criminals get in once more, we will be in the position of a family who have sent the Hell's Angels written invitations to their Thanksgiving party.

"Such a decision represents a serious error of judgment. Because certain people never leave."

—Hunter S. Thompson, The Independent on Sunday, Oct 31, 2004

We can only hope! Er, wait, no! Does that mean Cheney would take over and then we could REELECT him TWO MORE TIMES?!

I am generally pro-choice Kyle. But I think that turning the Court into a referendum on Roe v. Wade has been a cynical election strategy played brilliantly by both sides. I think it's been bad for the country on that level, and arguably it's a bad decision made by the Court originally. Let the states decide this issue or legislate it properly on a federal level. The people of this country want abortion legal, and it will always be legal. Four more years of Bushco is not going to change that.

Ed's mostly OTM.

(massive x-post)

"Republicans, having expanded their control of Congress, were positioned on Wednesday to provide greater help to President Bush to push a stepped-up conservative agenda in his second term.

The Republican president has sought to extend tax cuts, promote pro-business policies and appoint anti-abortion judges and he may make another attempt to secure a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages.

"With a bigger majority, we can do even more exciting things," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, told a local television station in his state."

yuhyu7u

oh my god thinking about tom delay getting excited just makes me want to punch people in the face (starting with rudy 'davinci veneers' ghouliani) and/or hide under my bed.

Maybe Christopher Hitchens will blow it for Bush by giving Wolfowitz a blow job in the White House.

Totally impossible in states like California and New York. The likelihood that a Federal law banning abortion will pass is currently still very slim so even Roe v Wade is overturned (and this is not at all unlikely) control of this issues would revert to the state level and there is currently not a chance in hell the California state legislature for example (which is overwhelmingly Democrat) would pass a law banning abortion. But you wouldn't be able to get an abortion in a slew of red states almost immediately (not that you really can anyway mind you--huge parts of this country make getting an abortion so difficult that it might as well be against the law.)

But it can't last as a consistent option, it's a hedge, as you note -- the lines hold but aren't THAT strong, and you've essentially outlined a key breaking point right there at the end of your post. I remember saying as much to Brian way the hell back in 2000 on that point, actually, so if they want to push it all the way -- well, I would hate to say 'bring it on,' I leave that to Bush. But I would raise my eyebrows if they really wanted to let a specific ideological subset *completely* dominate all other concerns.

What's been talked about for years but has yet to be specifically made incarnate is when, where and how a perceived final break between various wings of the GOP occurs (but perhaps more accurately the first word should be 'if' -- there are never any guarantees). I think we're agreed that there's some set of 'moderates,' deluded or not, that is still cleaving to the GOP because 'it's not the Democrats' at least. The hope is some sort of quid pro quo or attempt to rein in, and the question is, can that be maintained for longer? The explosion of fear and angst over the last few days has assumed it can't be and/or that the radical wing is ALL of the GOP -- there is, however, a calculation at work as well Rove-wards that could yet assume that said radical wing will eventually, slowly, replace all of the GOP as it stands. Could it? Good question...

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/11/05/viguerie/index.html

1) He's right. He's right *and* there's enough continual popular acceptance beyond the election itself to justify this, which is not derailed by any potential reversals on various fronts for the current adminstration. Right now we're hoping he's not right, but what if he is?

2) He's wrong. Having sowed the wind, he reaps the whirlwind, and then we see the fallout. Overreaching could result in reaction, and triumphalist assumptions do not bear out in terms of reality.

It is beyond obnoxious (to put it mildly) that the political calculus has reached a point where what was theoretical now becomes potentially practical. But as I was saying to some friends the other day, America is an experiment in continual practice. This, rightly or wrongly depending on who you are, is the next step.

Sure, things are bad and getting worse.

Sure, we might decide to go public with our attempts to take down Iran, starting in July.

Etc.

But look at Bush's approval ratings. Look at his failure to win support for any policies besides cutting taxes.

LBJ had better approval ratings. Nixon had better approval ratings after Watergate.

I haven't read all the posts on this thread, but I wonder if anyone pointed out that this was a President in the middle of a war who only garnered about 50.5% of the popular vote.

From a perspective of just seven months later, our handwringing about the ultimate triumph of conservative Republicanism was wayyyy overblown (suspiciously overblown, even. It makes me wonder if American progressives really are, as George Somerby puts it, "born to lose" in national electoral politics.)

What's weird is that no one in the news media seems to have caught on to this, yet. The cable guys are still interviewing people from the Heritage Foundation about the new victory of God in politics. Bumiller still writes her Washington memo as if Bush is emperor for life. He's not, and he has no successor.

Thanks, Jon.

and yes, a lot can happen in a year.. especially three.

Anyway, Dems have to put up someone more fun than Gore or Kerry. Someone with a bit of an attitude .. Estelle Getty or Poochy ...

I don't think that really sums it up. Sorry.

Let the "most Evil right-wing" battle begin.

*insert Pink Flamingos footage*

Not totally, but I think it had a lot more to do with it than a shift in public sentiment toward religious fundamentalism.

And also a completely waffling too-much-too-late campaign by Kerry... if not perhaps just a not-so-great choice for a Dem candidate. And about a gazillion other factors too.

so what? he's not up for reelection. it doesn't matter for him or for the next three years how unpopular he is, he can do as much damage as he likes.

BUT...the Democrats still seem mostly clueless about how to go anywhere useful from here. They've shown they can get united to stave off the worst of the worst, but they still let the bankruptcy and tort reform bills through, and at least some of Bush's assaults on environmental protections are probably going to stick. Harry Reid makes Tom Daschle look charismatic. And the absence of any obvious broad support isn't keeping the Christian right from pushing its full-throttle holy war.

And the bigger problems -- an increasingly undereducated, underinformed and undermotivated population waking up much to slowly to the unfamiliar realities of a competitive world -- are almost totally absent from the political landscape. (OK, that makes me sound like Tom Friedman, but he's not wrong about everything.)

So, right, no apocalypse. But we're heading into the second decade of our decline from prominence, and we give no sign so far of doing it gracefully.

But look at Bush's approval ratings. Look at his failure to win support for any policies besides cutting taxes.

Sorry, I meant these as two separate things. i.e. NOT ONLY is he unpopular, but he ALSO isn't even getting his agenda across.

Gypsy's right about the bankruptcy and tort reform stuff, and although I don't know much about it it, that never stopped me from spouting off about anything before, so why stop now? I'm not sure how much those were "Bush's" issues, and how much they were the issues of congressional Republican leadership. Anyone know?

In any case, it's over now for Bush. Well, it will be over around June or July, when congressional campaigning really begins in earnest. That's why he's been so hell-for-leather on this Social Security barnstorming tour - he knows that in order to get any signature domestic legislation across it's going to have to happen NOW or it's not going to happen at all. Haha and just to show you how completely, egregiously boneheaded he and whoever the fuck is advising him - Rove? - are, the filibuster thing threatens EVERYTHING. So so greedy.

-- Tracer Hand (tracerhan...) (webmail), May 23rd, 2005 6:13 PM. (tracerhand) (later) (link)

Hey, eat a dick. Not my fault someone can't be bothered to pay for a .mac account and the image breaks MONTHS later. Also, I don't get any annoying dialog because my ILX preferences are set to only show X new messages.

They were really issues of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- the quieter but more legislatively effective partner in the "fiscal"/"social" conservative alliance. They'd like to see Social Security done too, but I think they're really more interested in issues like those (and probably a lot of lower-profile stuff that's happening that most of us aren't even tuned into), changes in overtime requirements, etc.