GOOD COP

Every Mushroom Cloud has a Silver Lining
by Good Cop Brendan

It's not so bad.

Remember the aftermath of Florida in 2000? People were talking about how it might not have been worth it for Al Gore to win, since he would have been dealing with an opposition congress were he the President. Well, if Ohio had turned for Kerry, then he would have had to deal with even larger majorities in both houses of Congress than there were in 2001. It would have been a very frustrating presidency.

If you think I'm reaching for bright spots here, you're probably right. But they are there to be found.

--Bush and Iraq: Together. Forever. The mess George W Bush has made in Iraq is probably beyond our being able to clean up, and the goal of a Jeffersonian (or at least, Putinian) democracy there is probably unreachable. If President Kerry had come to this conclusion (he undoubtedly would have) and laid the groundwork for some kind of pullout, he would have been tarred and feathered by the right, and they would have gone all out to add Kerry's thoughtful decision into their running narrative about Democrats being weak on security. (even though invading Iraq had nothing to do with our security, of course)

It's probably fitting that Bush gets to embody both elements of the Pottery Barn rule. He broke Iraq, so he owns it, and now he's the one stuck fixing it. Having 3/5ths of an election there wont work. Bringing a Shi'ite theocratic government to power -- even if it's brought there democratically -- would (will) be a disaster for us and for the original goals Bush set out when the invasion took place. We wont get the "fresh start" that Kerry might have given us on Iraq, so there will be no new substantial help from Europe and elsewhere.

If Bush wants to fix Iraq, he has his chance. But nothing he has done there so far suggests he'll be able to do it. Serious people--even Colin the UN liar--know our efforts are failing there.

--Obama-rama! Well, Barack is officially the Senate-elect now. And in every single left-leaning blog with comments that I've read today, I've seen him mentioned as a future presidential candidate. Trouble is, a lot of people are talking about him in 2008. Slow down. Can we let the guy get re-elected first? People are also talking about Barack, who hasn't served a day in Washington, becoming the new Minority Leader. Oh, I almost forgot,

--Daschle's gone. I've generally been more prone to defending Tom Daschle than to trashing him; I think a lot of the good work he does goes unnoticed. However, I don't want my party's leader in the Senate to have to fight for his political life every six years. So with that in mind, and if we were gonna lose the Senate anyway, I don't mind at all that he lost. But who's gonna replace him? Names floating around are Harry Reid from Nevada, Durbin from Illinois, and Chris Dodd of Connecticut. The big names also being mentioned are Hillary and--this would be interesting--John Kerry. If Kerry did that, perhaps he would help us in the charisma war: He'd be the boring counterpoint to a more energetic Presidential candidate in 2008. Reporting for duty!

--Change in the DNC? McAuliffe needs to go. He's overseen some good things and some bad things with the Democratic Party, but 2004 is the end of the line for him. The obvious replacement? Howard Dean. Yeargh!

--Edwards in 2008? I don't know. Part of me feels like John Edwards is a star recruit on a college football team who just had his redshirt blown. On the other hand, given the way the campaign used him, maybe they're setting him up for that. He didn't get all that much media exposure for a member of a national ticket; he mostly did the town hall thing, and not as much the big televised rally thing.

The only two times during the campaign when voters saw a lot of him on TV were when he was behind a podium (Democratic Convention speech) and when he was sitting at a desk (vice-presidential debates). As observers of his know, he is most in his element when he's walking around, closing-statement-like, talking to individual voters in townhall meetings. Attendees of those meetings saw this, but America really didn't. Perhaps the Dems were holding him back, saving him a bit for his big chance four years from now? Since the public exposure of the VP candidate doesn't usually tip the scales, there wouldn't have been much to lose by doing that. Time will tell.

One thing's for certain: The two Americas (the economic ones and the red/blue ones) will be even more divided in 08 than they are now.

--Red/blue states and security. The 2000 election was fought in the wake of the Culture War's apex, the Clinton impeachment. The 2004 election was decided by Rove's ace-in-the-hole antigay vote. In those two elections, the electoral maps were startlingly similar. 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, all that happened and yet we're right back where we started, essentially a 50-50 nation.

You know, that would suggest to me that the Democrats have found a way to neutralize the Republicans on national security. Without Karl's last-minute push for evangelicals, who were voting primarily against gay marriage and choice, Kerry would have won the election. Kerry did enough of what he needed to do on Iraq and terrorism: appeal to just enough people as a viable alternative to Bush. But between the young voters underperforming and the bigot voters overperforming, it wasn't enough.

Who knows? Four years down the line, the dynamic may shift even further: We democrats might not have to fret about the military experience of our nominee in his young life someday. Especially since there's a chance we may nominate...

Hillary-rama! I'm sure those election returns in Florida and Ohio were enough to generate spontaneous orgasms from both Bill Safire and Dick Morris. Wait, actually Dick has another solution for that. Anyway... will she run? I think she will. She was New York's sitting Senator on 9/11, and she's likely to be coming off an impressive re-election. She has the charisma, the drive and certainly the intelligence to do a great many things for America.

If you think her health care plan from 1994 is a liability for her, don't. When the issue would be brought up in the campaign, all she has to do is look at the nearest camera and say, in effect, here are the things we did wrong in putting that plan together, we have learned many lessons from them, and now we are more prepared to do it right.

Many Republicans drool at the idea of a Hillary candidacy, but they probably shouldn't. They've been stuck in the Limbaugh-cocoon, believing her to be some sort of "feminazi" charicature of everything that scared their virgin asses in the 1960's. What America would see in 2008 would be very different.

--Nava-rama! If you live in the Santa Barbara area, you can rejoice in knowing that all that cardboard that was used to print signs for Arnold-sockpuppet Bob Pohl was for naught, as Democrat Pedro Nava won the local seat for State Assembly.

--Stem-o-rama! California is about to become the world's leading locale for stem-cell research, now that voters have approved proposition 71, a $3billion bond for it.

--Cheney probably wont run.

--Word has it Ashcroft's about to resign.

--Arlen Specter won. Huh? He's a Republican! He's the magic bullet theory guy! Why are you happy about this? Here's why: He's likely to become the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And he's pro-choice. And according to the Associated Press,

The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush on Wednesday against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.

...

"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

"The president is well aware of what happened, when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats' success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush's conservative judicial picks. "... And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."

Now that's not enough to quell all of my concerns about 3-4 possible vacancies in the Supreme Court during the next four years. But at least it's something. And the Senate doesn't have a filibuster-proof margin. And Zell Miller will be long gone.

--Scandal-rama! The WMD report will come out. The CIA's hidden 9/11 report will come out. More Iraq-related fuckups are bound to come out. We will find out who leaked Valerie Plame's name to Bob Novak.* Here, read more.

Lastly,

--Overreach-o-rama! With strong majorities everywhere, and a bigoted party base to whom Bush owes his re-election, the Republicans will try for too much. It will be HillaryCare squared. And because I have the misfortune of renting a bedroom in a house owned by Limbaugh-Republicans, I get to hear the rough drafts of these ideas. Large-scale privatization of social security? Abolition of the IRS? A national sales tax? Getting out of the UN? An anti-Roe Supreme Court nominee? One way or another, they will go too far, and it will cost them in 2006, and if not then, in 2008.

That's enough optimism for one night. Back to my regularly scheduled drinking and sulking.

* - By the way, it was absolutely disgusting to see Novak on CNN last night calmly, smugly explaining why voters were turning to Bush. Bob has, within his brain, information that one two members of Bush's senior administration committed a serious felony in July of 2003. What an insulting bit of punditry.