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I can't lay out any evidence to support this view, it's just a feeling; nor do I feel hopeless about the odds that a Democrat can win in 2004. But it seems to me that too many icebergs that should have utterly sunk this administration -- that would have sunk it if Bush were a Democrat, or if the news media were the media of the 1960s, 70s, or 80s -- have been skated over, and though some of them haven't yet vanished over the horizon, they're no longer a very serious threat. Things don't seem to stick to Bush quite as thoroughly as they should, and he continues to benefit from the fact that most media voices and a significant -- though steadily shrinking -- percentage of the public are far too willing always to let him slide on the benefit of the doubt.
I do agree that the Democratic victory, if we have one, will need to be won by a substantial margin to be won. How odd that so many of us, native born Americans, are talking about this and accepting it as a given that our elections are no longer honest nor fair.
I vehemently disagree with the opinion expressed by some on DU that America is a nation of sheep and morons. I think history shows that we as a people are slow to believe that we've been played by our elected officials, slow to accept the presence of a threat when it comes from an unexpected direction. I can't predict what will happen over the course of the next year, but if the elections were held today I'm afraid there are still enough "benefit of the doubt" voters to allow Bush to scrape through. Furthermore, even though he's made a wreck of everything he's ever touched, he'll still benefit from that meme in the back of many voters' minds that Republicans are supposed to be good on national security and the economy and Democrats aren't.
(Alternate scenario: Democrats and people who despise Bush are energized and turn out in huge numbers; many people who voted for Bush last time are too discouraged or disgusted to do it again and stay home.)
So he's elected.
If the Republicans increase, maintain, or slightly lose their strength in Congress, I see no reason to believe that the next four years are going to be better than the first four: corporate looting on a massive, probably even increased, scale; more tax cuts; deeper debt; federal bankruptcy looms even closer; ongoing war in Iraq with probably another nation thrown in for good measure. This will happen because this is what Bush and the people who back him demand as their right. They will pursue their personal profit and political agenda without regard for genuine conservatives, certainly without regard for liberals, and without regard for the implications it has on the future of the nation. This destructive mindset of the superwealthy is nothing new. It afflicted the Ancien Regime in France, it afflicted Russian aristocrats and businessmen before the revolution, and it afflicted our good old American millionaires during the Great Depression. I am convinced a psychiatrist could prove that a certain kind of pathology is rampant among the superwealthy. But I don't believe the nation will sustain four more years of this.
First scenario: Impeachment. We've already seen a surprising new willingness in a number of congressional Republicans to defy Bush. I think those numbers will only grow as he leads America farther down the path to ruin. If Bush wins in 2004 and continues his present agenda I think it's highly likely he will be impeached by the genuinely conservative members of his own party; and, unlike Clinton and Andrew Johnson, he will be removed.
Doubtless Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt and the like will argue very eloquently in his defense. But I digress.
Second scenario: Resignation. Historian Ian Kershaw believes that Hitler, although he never admitted it, came to realize long before he committed suicide that he was, in fact, going to lose. Similarly, even now, I imagine, George W. Bush is not in a very happy place. The fact that he's gotten even more reluctant to appear in any environment that is not a Potemkin Village (e.g., refusing to hold the customary press conference after havin a chaw with his good deppity in Australia) indicates to me that he has got to know, deep down, that he is not a very well-loved man. His recent table-slapping episode with congressional Republicans (which persuaded 8 out of 9 of them to vote against him on the Iraq loan issue) indicates the petulant tantrum of a spoiled prince who is sick and tired of not getting things his way. Bush has made a mess of everything he's touched, and I think he knows it. Even more galling to him, he is no longer in control and he knows that too. I'd defer to a psychologist on how Bush is most likely to react, but it seems to me that as the situation unravels he is either going to become more violent and bizarre in his responses (perhaps falling off the wagon if he hasn't done so already), eventually leading to a public meltdown that will ruin him, or he'll follow his usual pattern hitherto and run away when it all gets too much for him to handle.
Third scenario: he and his handlers, treading the path of hubris, try to teach the CIA another lesson about f***ing with the Neocon Cabal. I don't think the CIA will play this game a second time. I'm not talking about the "A" word necessarily; I'm sure they have many ways to make a person feel it's in his own best interest to voluntarily pack up and get the hell out of Dodge.
I think Bush's best bet is to have the Democrats win a substantial majority in Congress. They might actually find the spine to put a stop to the most ludicrous of his schemes, thereby saving him from a further accumulation of woe and wrath, while enabling the conservative media machine to pin the blame on them for everything being in such bad shape.
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