Did you vote for Kerry? If so, why?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OP from griffen2 in his IMHO thread (Did you vote for Bush? If so, why?)

[quote]

As a non-US liberal who simply cannot understand why so many people voted for George Bush, I’m very keen to find out why those who voted for him did so. We don’t tend to hear many good things about Mr Bush or his policies (I’ll refrain from calling him President just yet ) and so I’d be very interested in hearing your reasons for voting for him. You don’t have to justify your reasons and you don’t have to defend them (that’s why I put this thread in IMHO, so there would be less chance of people trying to debate you). I’m just very keen on hearing your perspective.

Thanks in advance. [end of quote]

I have read this thread in IMHO and hope it continues because we still need to talk but maybe we can take it down a notch or two this way. I’m asking Kerry voters to post their reasons in the same fashion. No rhetoric, no debate. Just *your * reasons, pure and simple. Maybe this worked for griffen2 because he/she is non-US but let’s give it a shot. I apologize for not linking to the thread (note to self: figure that out :slight_smile: ) Since I am US and voted for Kerry, I’ll go first. I am going to try to keep it very simple.

I voted for Kerry because:

I saw him as someone who is willing to re-evaluate his decisions based on new information, even if it means admitting that you were wrong. I don’t call this flip-flopping, I call this honest. I think that ability is an imperitive.

He has a decent ability to negotiate. We live in a very small world and while I appreciate our position of power I think we need to use it wisely.

He believes in the separation of church and state. I believed him when he said he held strong religious beliefs but would not legislate them.

He chose as his running mate someone who did not come from money. Most of our core does not come from money. I think that is important to acknowledge.

I am pro-choice and do not feel that my heterosexual marriage is threatened in any way by allowing SSM and partnerships. I felt Kerry was closer in line with my views here.

I felt he would keep me and mine as safe as anyone can in today’s world.

There. I reread this and it sounds simplistic, naive…and I am tempted to go back and add some empty rhetoric and verbiage. But these are my thoughts and reasons laid out pure and simple.

Any other Kerry voters want to step up?

2

The American people elect not only a President, but the leader of the free world. While Bush can say that the free world is getting larger, he has shrunk the number of countries that are willing to follow American leadership. Bush has reduced this long-standing position of authority in world affairs, as he is more than content to be the leader of merely a “coalition of the willing.”

Kerry, on the other hand, represented a change from Bush’s trade of American greatness in the world for a short-lived and costly exercise of raw power. For whatever his shortcomings, I believe Kerry had the right attitude and right ideas to restore the United States’ claim to be the leader of the free world.

That was the primary reason I voted for Kerry.

3

His international policies are more than “yee-haw”.

He hasn’t been planning any wars that I’m aware of for revenge, or looking for excuses to hide said wars behind.

He hasn’t committed any impeachable high crimes by lying to the legislature, the electorate (us) and the world about reasons to start a completely unjustifed war.

He doesn’t have a plan to cut taxes in one place while re applying them to us in another, all while letting the deficit bloom and providing no way to bring it down, while claiming he will bring it down.

He doesn’t claim faith or start fake moral wars within the citizenry.

He’s got political capital - he can speak honestly and admit mistakes. He hasn’t given anyone concrete reasons to not trust him.

He doesn’t play to the idiots of the world, affecting a ‘down home folks’ quality.

He can sit and speak with people freely and honestly, without having to be managed by handlers.

4

I’ll admit, I was a yellow-dog Democrat this year. That is, I probably would have voted for *anybody * other than Bush. Some of the reasons:

1a. The war in Iraq. Both in the fact that we attacked a country that presented no credible near-term threat to us, *and * the fact that it took resources away from finishing the job in Afghanistan and Pakistan (or wherever OBL may be hiding now).

1b. The War in Iraq: piss-poor planning. We clearly did not plan-out the post combat phase, and it seems clear that we were not interested in hearing those folks who cautioned us on the complexities of post-war Iraq.

So, when Kerry said it was the “wrong war in the wrong place”, although it may have been cheesy political rhetoric, it was essentially correct. Add “wrongly executed” to the list and that’s where I am on it. I think Iraq was a shameful misuse of our military, and we have not kept faith with our troops since.

  1. The economy. Bush’s fiscal policies looked disasterous pre-war, and he gave no indication throughout the campaign that he had relented of his spendthrift ways. We may get a short-term bump from his tax cuts (though I’ve yet to see them here in the rust belt), but I’m scared of the long-term effects in freezing capital. I don’t know that the economy can grow enough in response to the cuts to pay down the deficit at the rate we’ll need.

  2. Personal style. When Karla Faye Tucker (I think that’s it) was scheduled for execution in Texas, and much talk was going around about her religious conversion, a lot of folks were advocating for commuting her sentence. Bush did not agree, which is his right - but the tone and tenor of his comments angered me more than his stance did. He openly mocked her, in schoolboy fashion. His position demands a more measured tone; he was the Governor, and is now the President, of **all ** citizens, even those in prison and, yes, those condemned to death. I realized at that point that this is a man I could never respect, and thus one for whom I could not vote.

  3. Capital punishment. I’m against it on moral grounds. He’s an enthusiast.

  4. Base appeals to the religious right. I’m fearful of their ambitions for imposition of their social agenda on the rest of us. I’m a Christian, but their anti-science, exclusive stance makes me ashamed to share the designation with them. And Bush is either firmly in their camp, or he has cynically pandered to them, both of which are unacceptable to me.

That’s enough Not-Bush stuff. I was prepared to vote for any viable candidate the Democrats put forward, and believe me I was praying for a Not-Dukakis. What we got was Kerry, and I was initially unenthused. I started to warm up to him after listening to him and referring to his website.

  1. He’s a cross-the-aisle kind of guy (something Bush promised, but reneged on). He identified worthwhile and difficult issues, put together a team, and actually did some diplomacy.

  2. He’s a fiscal moderate. Maybe not as conservative as I would ordinarily like to see, but well within the bounds of acceptable fiscal behavior. He’s certainly not the tax-and-spend liberal presented to us during the campaign.

  3. He showed up. He did his bit in Vietnam, and then came back and took an unpopular stand on principle.

The rest of my ardor for him centers around the ways he is a direct contrast to Bush, and I can’t get into that without going more negative than I’d like. Suffice it to say, he convinced me he would be more statesmanlike, more moderate, and more stable than his opponent, and that sealed the deal for me. I went from resigned to vote Democrat to an enthusiastic booster.

5

I am usually a fiercely independent voter, but not this year. This was the first time I ever voted a straight ticket. Democrat, so it didn’t really count for anything in Alabama but still.

Why? Because Cheney is the Antichrist.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

6

DeVena , I allow you to have your thoughts but let’s try our best to keep this as much about Kerry and why we voted for him as possible. I really want people to get to hear those ideas.

Thanks,
~smartini

Take a deep breath and carry on. Next?

7

I agreed with Kerry that we needed to reestablish ties with our allies and not push them aside when it’s inconvenient. They’re also our major trading partners, and have ties to countries we do not consider friendly. He never really explained how he was going to go around to doing that, and that’s why I had some reluctance in voting for him. Regardless, I thought that Bush remaining in the Oval Office would further erode necessary bonds with the countries we need the most.

8

Pro Kerry:

I supported Kerry’s health plans

I think democrats are more responsible with spending. I prefer tax and spend over borrow and spend.

I am a social libertarian

Anti Bush reasons:

Even though I supported the Iraq war, it did alot of damage to our reputation and gave terrorists alot of motivation

Bush’s tax cuts seem irresponsible

I am a social libertarian. Pro gay rights, pro stem cell research, pro abortion

Bush’s judge apointees are very conservative, and a few supreme court judges are going to retire in the next 4 years.

9

Another social libertarian here. Also, I believe that the war in Iraq is unjust and I didn’t want to cast my vote for the man who sent our troops there.

10

I really liked smartini’s response about Kerry willing to re-evaluate his decisions with new information, admit he was wrong, and then go the other way. It’s not flip-flopping, it’s admitting you made a mistake, something GWB and several other politicians (Dems and GOPs alike) are reluctant to do.

I was origianally a Dean supporter, I even donated money to his fund (only $20, but I was a poor poor college student at the time.) That right there shows you I’m quite the liberal, even by a typical Democrat’s perspective. But, specifically, the reasons I voted for Kerry were:

Kerry is pro-choice (well, technically he, himself, is pro-life, but he does not let his own personal beliefs and morals dictate what he knows is best for the country as a whole.)

Kerry acknowledges that homosexuals deserve the same rights as heterosexuals. He is against calling it marriage, but still, it’s more the GWB.

His economic policy. I don’t see how collecting LESS money from people will lower the government’s deficeit. :confused: I know, there’s the theory that by letting the people keep more of their money, they will spend more of the money, and it will get back to the government as sales tax, etc… and boost local economies. Well, four years of that doesn’t seem to have worked. You know what does work? Directly taking more money. I don’t like paying taxes, but I know that they are needed, so I glady accept a little more of them if it means my country will be better of economically, cause that means I personally will be better off, since there will be more job security, and better job openings.

His health plan policy. I’m of the firm belief that EVERY America deserves 100% free from the government health care, no ifs, ands, or buts. (Well…some ifs ands and buts…cosmetic surgey, for example.) But any life-threatening or serious medical condition, or even minor ones like the flu or what have you, should not cost any American one thin dime. Someone dies because they have no health insurance for kidney dialysis, or a coronary bypass, meanwhile Bush is giving tax cuts to his billionaire buddies and wasting money on a senseless war? Yeah, THAT makes sense. :mad:

11

A vote against Bush (for a lot of different reasons) that had a chance of success.

A vote for a candidate with at least some firsthand experience with a quagmaire war. Or ANY combat experience–so I could at least believe he has some sympathy for the troops that are committed to Iraq, and will take action based on that understanding.

A vote to install a Democratic President to balance a Republican congress.

12

I am opposed to almost every (I don’t have a list beside me and as such can’t say every) major decision Bush has made. I didn’t like a lot of the minor ones, either. Some stuff was big (iraq, tax cuts, “conservative values”), some stuff wasn’t.

13

I’m with iampunha - I fundamentally disagree with nearly every policy or idea put forward by the Bush administration.

However, I voted for Kerry because he has a plan. Yeah, I know that that’s the national joke, but at least he had a plan. Bush doesn’t - Bush doesn’t plan ahead, doesn’t think about other avenues or consequences, just charges ahead, no matter how unpopular the decision. Some call that leadership, I call it foolhardy.

I voted for Kerry because he would have protected my right to choose. As a female, this is important to me, even while I am as responsible as I can be.

I voted for Kerry because he understands that war is hell, and would do what he can to prevent it.

I voted for Kerry because he has a world view, and he wants the United States to take a place in that world. Isolationist ideas will get us nowhere in today’s community.

I voted for Kerry because, while a man of strong religious identity, he would not push that identity on others or allow it to influence policy.

I voted for Kerry because he understands that today’s decision affect the future, and he would work to make that future as bright as possible.

How I wish he would’ve won.

14

I voted for Kerry mostly because he was the best chance to get Bush out of the Presidency. I fully expect that he would have been a caretaker President, but I feel that many of his policies and political appointments seem almost designed to reduce basic civil rights and isolate the US from the rest of the world.

15

I voted for Kerry. I also for the first time in my life sent money ($1500) to help him defeat George Bush, and I spent the 12 days preceding the election making phone calls from my home telephone line to voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Colorado, averaging about 80 calls per evening.

Why? Because first and foremost I felt that it was imperative that the United States fire George Bush because of his illegitimate and aggressive invasion of Iraq, something I felt the US absolutely had to repudiate as contrary to our nation’s policy. Because of the way our system works, we have no procedure for firing a President aside from electing someone else instead. The Democratic nominee was Kerry. The competing nominee could have been David Duke and I would’ve voted for him, though, for the above reason.

Having said that, I will go on to say that I found the following to be sufficient reasons for voting for Kerry if Iraq had never taken place:

• He’s pro-choice. Not only that but didn’t hedge about it when asked in the second debate, and refused to promise that tax money would not go towards making abortions available to poor women. And he would have removed the gag rule by which family planning orgs receiving Federal funding can’t even mention abortion. Go Kerry.

• I felt his approach to the terrorism problem was a better one: conceptualize the terrorists as similar to violent criminals and work towards making the world sufficiently inhospitable to them that the occurrence rate drops, just like cleaning up the city and making the crime rate drop. I thought that made more sense than focusing on identifying, tracking down, and killing specific terrorists, since recruitment continues apace as long as the conditions that breed them persist.

• Kerry would have appointed an attorney general who was not a threat to our civil liberties, and who would not spend his or her time in office on a social-conservative vendetta.

• Kerry’s administration would not have had the IRS audit every social services organization that dared to criticize him, or threaten nonprofit orgs that had done so with loss of their tax-free status.

• Kerry would put at least one, probably more, new Supreme Court justices on the bench, and would pick from the left-middle part of the continuum. He would not be nominating justices of the Scalia-Thomas ilk.

• Kerry would have fixed the godawful mess that the new Medicare prescription drug coverage is comprised of — rewrite the implementation so that seniors are no longer expected to pick, in advance, a specific plan to cover the specific drugs that they will be needing, presumably after consulting their psychic to figure out what they’ll be getting sick from, and having to hope that if they need more than one prescription drug that one of the available plans will actually cover both of the medications. And that the plans won’t change out from under them (as they are allowed to) once they pick. And that the plan they pick will continue to be supported by pharmacies in their area rather than changing out from under them (as they are allowed to) once they pick. Oh, and of course Kerry would have allowed competitive bidding for lowest-cost drugs, and would allow the importing of cheaper drugs from Canada.

• Kerry would have run up less Federal debt in office than George Bush, in part because anyone except possibly Lyndon Johnson would find it hard to do otherwise but also because the Republican Congress would put the brakes on some of the spending. Kerry would have raised taxes to cover expenditures, which is necessary in order to balance the budget, which is something Bush doesn’t seem inclined to do.

• Kerry would have rolled back the Bush tax cuts from his first administration. (I would like to pretend that he would have done it retroactively, dunno if that was his intent though). This would help address the unbalanced budget too.

• Kerry would have occasionally given speeches or made statements, and when he did he would have done so without embarrassing the living fuck out of as an American every time he opened his mouth.

16

Highly intelligent.

Articulate.

Has a long history of political compromise and coalition-building.

Analyzes all aspects of an issue.

Very inquisitive and always informed.

Does not believe in shoving his belief down other people’s throats.

Opens his rallies to everyone, not just sycophants.

And did I mention he’s highly intelligent?

In short, Kerry is everything that George W. Bush is not.

17

I voted for Kerry because I trusted him to bring more to important decisions than Bush did. I envisioned his presidency as kind of wonkish and boring, with most of his time being spent going toe to toe with congress and thus getting legislation passed only when it was really important. Kind of like Clinton after he had been broken in but without the wandering pee-pee.

His wife would run interference by casually infuriating the right wing gasbags the second Tuesday of every month. She would have been an artist at it. In addition I think she would have been a positive presence on the international stage.

I think Kerry would have been at least somewhat successful in enlisting the help of other nations to bring more resources to bear on securing Iraq and ferreting out terrorist plots and networks around the world.

The only things Bush does well, after being able to convince people to vote for him, are tax cuts and retribution. Everything else he and his administration has done has been self-serving and/or half-assed and I greatly fear that his restructuring of social security will follow suit.

18

I voted for Kerry not so much on ideological grounds (although I consider myself a Massachusetts liberal) but on the fact that:

  1. He presents himself way a President should act. Amiable yet forceful.
    Let’s face it - we want our own citizens - as well as the people of the world to know that we have a serious leader who commands respect.
    What I do NOT want in a President is someone who failed the audition for “Hee-Haw”.

  2. He is intelligent. Is there any question about this matter? He can even say NOO-KLEE-AR.

19

He wasn’t Bush.

My dad fought through Europe in WW2.

He was an engineer, clearing mines and disarming booby traps, often under fire. In his unit, 32 went over, 8 came home alive. He saw buddies ripped to shreds before his eyes, civilians murdered because of mistakes, German prisoners of war murdered just because.

War is the absolute LAST resort. It is not a POLICY decision.

My American flag covered my father’s casket. It has been furled since my country attacked a 3rd world country for no apparent reason, killing thousands on both sides. I anxiously await the day I can fly it with pride again.

20

I voted for Kerry for the following reasons:

I’m a social libertarian–pro choice, for stem cell research, pro gay rights, etc.

I’m against the Iraqi war.

I firmly believe that Mr. Bush is a spectacularly bad President. He is easily the worst Chief Executive in my lifetime. My vote for Kerry was a vote of no confidence in Mr. Bush.

I do not hate the man–I just believe that he was not the best choice for me to make.