But still here, although more occasionally than in the past. Weirddave mentioned this thread, and I will cross-post here what I posted in my LJ on Wednesday. You may (read: probably) will want to skip down to point no. 3, the most relevant to this thread:
My surprising vote
I voted for the little bastard.
And I’m not particularly happy that he won.
And I know that my choice will cause much shock and horror among my friends. ETA: And, indeed, it has, albeit not quite as badly as I might’ve thought.
I actually wasn’t sure who I’d vote for until I was in line in front of the booth. My heart of hearts is a Democrat, but I forced myself into an exceedingly unpleasant decision and voted with my head. And my head said:
- Kerry doesn’t get the war we’re fighting. Bush isn’t doing a very good job of leading it - yes, I know, that’s a bit of an understatement - but I believe we must fight this war aggressively, and that means we must fight it largely alone. I would prefer a leader who better prepared the country for the inevitable, catastrophic mistakes that have typified every war ever fought. But the fact that those errors are inevitable doesn’t mean that you don’t fight the war in the first place.
A corollary of this point: by virtue of our position as the richest, most powerful nation that has ever existed, we will be hated and opposed regardless of the justice or injustice of what we do - because the only power that many in the world can exercise against us reflexive opposition. Thus, the fact of opposition means very little, but Kerry and so many of his supporters seem to think that we should only conduct war in the easy cases - the equivalents of Pearl Harbor or Kuwait.
Technological change means we no longer have that luxury. To protect our people, we will have to invade countries that harbor jihadists and other terrorists, and we will have to act as a neocolonial power. That is our doom. It is not pretty, and it may destroy us eventually. But failure to accept this doom will simply bring about our destruction even sooner.
- Kerry’s economic views are even more disastrous than Bush’s. Both candidates are highly dishonest about the economic predicament in which we find ourselves. But Kerry seems to lack any understanding at all that there are profound limits on the extent to which any nation can tax the productive to benefit the unproductive. Whatever we tax we will have less of – and to increase taxes on labor and investment will result in less of both. The core unfairness is that those who are highly productive can always decide to be less productive, without much damaging their own lifestyles. Deficit reduction thus can’t rely on raising taxes - because raising taxes pretty quickly reduces economic growth, and the overall size of the economic pie. Now, those who look to the Bush I tax increase as the savior of the 90s I think are missing a key point: in the absence of the rapid technological change of that period, which appears likely to have happened and fed on itself regardless of federal fiscal policy, it’s unlikely to have worked. In many respects, Rubinomics/Clintonomics was simply the beneficiary of an exceedingly well-timed, utterly exogenous bubble - and we can’t count on having those conditions again.
The only real prayer of dealing with the deficit is a sharp reduction in domestic spending. Kerry’s main supporters won’t allow this at all. Bush’s won’t like it either, but at least part of his coalition actually is willing to consider it. I’m not holding my breath - it’s a choice between the irresponsible and the pernicious.
Now as for the middle- and longer-term, we must confront entitlement spending. Kerry offered no solution at all: keep everything the way that it is, and punt the issue to a “blue ribbon panel” once the looming crisis gets to be too bad. That is almost a parody of ducking the issue. Bush at least is talking about making social security self-funding. This, obviously, is not a complete solution either because of the exhorbitant transition costs - but it’s at least admitting that there’s a problem.
- For the previous four elections, I voted Democratic mainly for this reason: the fear that the Court, in conservative hands, would eviscerate individual rights. It’s still hugely important to me, but I’m also reminding myself that it matters somewhat less than meets the eye.
First of all, our Founders have helped ensure that the President will not simply be able to elevate Scalia or a Scalia clone to the Chief Justice position without a huge fight–and one that quite frankly he may lose. It only takes 41 votes to maintain a filibuster, and I expect that the Democrats will be in no mood to compromise on this point (especially since they can probably rely on at least 3-4 Republicans to make up for the few Democrats, such as Nelson, Landrieu and Lincoln, who might peel off).
Second of all, even if the President can manage to point four Scalias, I don’t think there are any serious prospects for reversing the most important recent privacy decision: Lawrence. There won’t be a way to bring it up procedurally without great reaching, and that alone would provoke a grave crisis that the Court usually seeks to avoid. Roe may be in greater danger - but even then, what probably will happen is a federal approach to abortion that preserves abortion rights in many states. Not ideal, but the genius of our federal system is that it does let most views get half a loaf.
And that brings us to the third point. Liberals’ reliance on the judiciary as savior has probably always been in error. I wrote on this at the time Shrub announced his backing for the FMA (ETA:this was a link to a prior post, meditating on the disastrous ignorance behind our pursuit of marriage litigation), and I’m sad to say that it looks like I’ve been vindicated - 10 or 11 losses yesterday show that we must do the hard work first, before running to the judiciary. In many respects, we’re actually making huge progress in changing social attitudes, even though it doesn’t feel like it - but we have to have some patience before we’ll see concrete, helpful results. I’m thinking that we win within a generation, maybe half a generation. And that is itself stupendous. In the meantime, we’ll have to grit our teeth and be happy with half-measures such as California’s.
