What if Senator John Kerry had won the 2004 Presidential Election? Would he have been able to change much of the course what President Bush did in reality even if elected? In many cases, the election of John Kerry could be a nightmare for liberals as 1) the Senate and the House would still remain Republican-controlled preventing much of the legislation a President Kerry would propose, 2) Kerry would be stuck Iraq getting more violent and either have to implement the Surge strategy as President Bush did and upset liberals or withdraw and be saddled with “another Vietnam”, 3) the housing market bubble still bursts at around the same time and President Kerry would as a result find himself stuck with a recession, and 4) Kerry’s election could very well trigger an earlier Tea Party movement but stronger without Obama’s image as a conciliatory politician.
These factors would mean that Kerry would lose to a Republican in 2008 and there’d be no healthcare reform, no repeal of DADT, and no banking reform. Some sort of a bank bailout is probably inevitable along with a stimulus plan though.
The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for the 110th Congress beginning in 2007. (The Senate had two independents who caucused with them.) Now if Kerry had won in 2004, there would have been a lot less anti-Bush backlash in the 2006 elections, so the Democrats might not have controlled Congress.
Not being black, I don’t see how Kerry could gather the same degree of apoplexy on the right that Obama did. Kerry would be called a Liberal ivory tower elitist and out of touch, but not a terrorist sympathizer, traitor, secret-Muslim, anti-christ. So I think that the Tea-party would be much weaker if it existed at all.
It’s an interesting theory Marley, but that assumes that Kerry would make the same choices Bush did and it would lead to the same result.
In 2004, the Tea Party didn’t exist and the current slate of Republicans who disagree just to disagree and filibuster just to filibuster weren’t around. So it’s possible things like the Bush tax cuts in the middle of two wars would have been rescinded. The 2003 one had barely taken effect yet. It’s possible new regulations on Wall Street and lending institutions would have eliminated the major problems of short selling, ARMs to unqualified buyers, and bundled bad loans that took place from 2005-2008. Personally I believe the first was more likely than the second because there were shouts of warning about the bubble collapsing and no one anywhere listened.
I’m just saying that a Kerry presidency didn’t need to go into the 2008 election with an economy collapsing and a deficit brought on by simultaneous war and tax cuts. And that changes the whole ball game moving forward.