Indulge me.

[kellinator]

For those of you who are planning to vote for Bush in November, would you please tell me why? Preferably a reason a little more nuanced than "Kerry's an asshole"?

Note: You're not going to change my mind on this. If the past four years haven't changed my mind, a fifty-word comment sure as hell isn't going to do it.

I'm just trying to understand. Right now nothing scares me more than the thought of four more years of Bush, but I know there are people I like and respect who disagree for whatever reason, and I want to know why, so I can at least try to understand.

No flaming. If I'm too slammed to post my DragonCon pictures (coming soon!), I'm sure as hell too busy to play referee. Play nice, folks.

Comments

[sujata.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this, Kelly. I've been sincerely trying to understand why thoughtful, honorable people would choose to vote for Bush, too. But while my family are Bush supporters, they are not thoughtful; it's no good asking them. The vast majority of my friends are either Democrats or (like me) democratic socialists, and can't really answer the question.

So I'm looking forward to this discussion. :-)

[kelliecoo.livejournal.com]

I have petty reasons for the way I vote. This one, I can't stand his wife. And I vote across the board. I voted for Clinton because I liked him, I may vote for Hillary. But I sure as hell won't vote for Kerry because his wife is a psycho!

[streamweaver.livejournal.com]

Why is usually pretty basic. It's ideology. The extreme Right Wing Bush represents, and make no mistake about it he does, is all about ideology. People may try to spout one reason or another but their arguments will always boil down to idealogical reasons instead of intellectual ones. They will pull out the 'he kicks much ass' reason without any real appreciation of how conficits develop, dictators rise and fall, and how terrorism is really supported. They'll also use reasons like "because I keep my money with taxes" with absolutly no clue what deficits mean and the potential harm of a collapsing infrastructure due to it. The third most common theme you'll hear will always revolve around pure ideology and include BS claims about moral leadership, or honestly, or even on the extreme end about returning God to the country.

I think people see this election as a pivitol point in our history because it probably it. The crossroad we're standing at as a nation is to take the road of reason or take the road of ideology, and really isn't that always the beginning of any great turn in history. I choose the road of reason myself.

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

not flaming, but... what's a guy's wife got to do with it if it's him running for office?

while we're at it, why do you think teresa's a psycho?

curious is...

[kelliecoo.livejournal.com]

I understand you're not flaming. But, like I said, my reasons are petty. I wouldn't expect other people to understand. Basically the whole incident where she kept slapping Edwards little kid's thumb out of his mouth when he was just trying to soothe himself really got to me. What kind of cruel person does that to a little kid when they are up on stage and scared! So, yeah. I never said it was a good reason, but it's the only one I got :)

[stevietee.livejournal.com]

A lot of people think that we shouldn't "change horses mid-stream" in the middle of the War on Terror. Now, even if we hypothetically grant that that's a good reason, then what the hell are we supposed to do if the "War" is continuous for decades? Change the Constitution so we can keep Bush around? Just keep voting Republican over and over again until we defeat terrorism throughout the world?

[jphthebachelor.livejournal.com]

I co-host a not very good Internet radio show, called Aggressively Adequate Radio (7:00 to 9:00 cst (gmt-6), Tuesdays on RedhawkRadio.net). We have fake ads since we have no sponsors. We did one for Bush 04 that made fun of the "change horses mid-stream" philosophy. We called it "Don't change horsemen mid-apocalypse".
P.S.
If you do choose to listen to the show. . . Don't judge me by it.
P.P.S. Actually, just don't listen, it's for your own good.

[lonesomenumber1]

[fanagle.livejournal.com]

Interesting question. I have many friends that are voting for Bush, and I can't understand why. I'm going to copy you and post this myself.

[jphthebachelor.livejournal.com]

One of my very best friends and co-workers, "The Biggs Show" we call him, is a Bush supporter.
I've spent many a lunch hour debating the candidates with him. In this time, I've found that Biggs disagrees with Bush on almost every possible issue.
He opposes the Bush tax cut, the anti-gay marriage amendment, the war in Iraq, stricter mandatory minimums for Crack cocaine vs. powder, and the death penalty. He favors gun control, stricter environmental policy, and the land mine ban treaty.
SO why is he a Bush supporter?
One issue, abortion.
Biggs has a deeply held opposition to abortion. He sees Bush as the only chance for getting a more conservative Supreme Court, one who will over turn Roe V. Wade. While I may disagree with him, I respect Biggs for his opinion on this issue.
What I can't respect is the fact that he will chose, because of this one issue, to re-elect a man he himself has described as "the worst president of my lifetime, including Ford".
I've given up on trying to talk him into supporting Kerry. I'm trying to talk him into just not voting, or voting third party.
I think there are a lot of these types of single issue voters.

[jphthebachelor.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Did you just make this? I wondered if my co-host, writer of the ad, had seen that slogan somewhere before.

[rocketmelee.livejournal.com]

Heh. I made a t-shirt with a little horned Bush stencil that read Bush 2004: Why Change Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse?

[skellington.livejournal.com]

I'm not voting for Bush, but I can give you four random sane reasons to do so:

1) A friend of a friend in NYC says "Under Bush, there's at least a 10% lower chance of NY getting nuked. Therefore, even though I completely disagree with him on almost everything else, I'm voting Bush." (Personally, I have doubts that Bush's approach decreases the odds of NYC getting nuked within the next 100 years, but that's just me.)

2) Kerry is way scarier than Bush on fiscal policy. His disclaimer that everything is "just fine" with Social Security, for example. (Me, I figure a republican congress and a democratic whitehouse will help rein in most of the excesses. But he still gives me the heeby-geebies on this, and it is almost enough to vote AGAINST him.)

3) You really agree with him on "pressing moral issues". Stem Cell Research. Abortion. No Sex Before Marriage (especially in African countries stricken with AIDS). No Sex At All. etc. And you really want him appointing more judges, inflicting his foreign policy on the world, etc. (These people see some of the actions in the world as the prelude to the events in Revelations. No Seriously.)

4) You're rich as **** and are making out like a bandit on his fiscal policies. It stinks to have to buy new politicians every 4 years.

Anyway, I'm voting Libertarian, since my vote in Georgia "Just Doesn't Matter" thanks to the Electoral College. My votes for other national offices will be decided based on the individual candidates, and the odds of Kerry winning the whitehouse.

And for what it's worth, Kerry (being hyper-liberal) was probably selected because of Nadar in 2000. If it hadn't been for Nadar, the Democratic party might have went for a more moderate candidate this time around. As it was, they wanted a more liberal candidate to eliminate some of Nadar's draw. So I'm happy to "throw my vote away" and hope that either the Republicans (or god forbid the Democrates) pay attention to us fiscal conservatives.

[azurelunatic]

Though there is always the visceral argument that if Kerry chooses his primary staffer (his wife) and she is someone who does things you consider to be cruelly inhuman, that he may choose other cabinet members who are likewise psycho and callous, and may carry out this psycho/callous behavior professionally.

So I think your gut has a good argument that your brain hasn't caught up with yet.


(I think that the Bush administration is oceans more psycho and callous than that, but you have to make your own decisions.)

[winterbadger]

I agree with the reasons you see for people voting for Bush, I just disagree that those are representative of ideology, or that ideology is opposed to reason. I follow an ideology (a liberal one), but not because I don't think. In fact, the ideology is the *product* of my thinking.

I'd say the answers that you suggest are true, but that they are based on ignorance or laziness ont he part of those who porpose them. Thing is, there *are* also people who propose the same answers out of a genuine ideology, and they're a different sort of fowl altogether.

There *are* people who seriously believe that massive tax cuts will prompt economic recovery and thus increase GDP and thus the tax base. Admittedly, most of them are also for big budget cuts as well, which Bush seems lukewarm about (but I gather big cuts are planned for a wide range of domestic program in thye next budget...)

There *are* people who really think that by overthrowing the Iraqi government and setting up a new one we create a democratic state that would start a trend toward democracy throughout the region. Of course, I'd've been more in favour of putting pressure on our allies (like Egypt and Saudi Arabia) over whom we have some influence to move faster toward democracy, instead of spending lives and moeny on an experiment in Iraq.

So, yeah, there are ignorant reasons to vote for Bush and ideological ones, but I'd maintain they're not entirely the same thing.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

(Note that if Bush were even vaguely fiscally conservative, I'd be severely torn between the two. Runaway federal spending and delays of reforms for the major social programs have the potential to destroy this country faster and more completely than the terrorists. But Bush is just as bad, if not worse, than Kerry. And Bush completely fails on almost every other important criteria, so Kerry wins by default.)

[kelliecoo.livejournal.com]

No. I don't even really think about it. I guess I am not enraged by either side. Although it seems that when Clinton was in office the Republicans were so loud and annoying and now that Bush is in office the Democrats are the loud and annoying ones. My thing is when people start getting like that I just tune them out. It doesn't matter what their affiliation is. And I think the democrats are missing that point. They are driving away the people who have no idea how they will vote. But it is not really fair to say it is just democrats. Both sides are just way to wild about this election to really be able to listen to them. So, I go on the little bit I do see and if it affects me, it affects me. I may change my mind, who knows. I have before ;)

[winterbadger]

2) Kerry is way scarier than Bush on fiscal policy. His disclaimer that everything is "just fine" with Social Security, for example. (Me, I figure a republican congress and a democratic whitehouse will help rein in most of the excesses. But he still gives me the heeby-geebies on this, and it is almost enough to vote AGAINST him.)

Kerry doesn't say that "everything is just fine"; he acknowledges that the retirement of the Baby Boom generation is going to strees the *current* system, and his economic plans include reform and changes that will stabilize social security. What he *opposes* is Bush's plan to cut benefits by 45%, tax them, and expose them to the vagaries of the financial markets.

And for what it's worth, Kerry (being hyper-liberal) ...
Hy0per-liberal? Kerry? Uh, the hyper-liberal candidates in the primaries didn't most of them get past 10%. Dean was much more liberal than Kerry (I'm still trying to decide whether it was a good or a bad thing that he didn't get the nomination). But Kerry, hyper-liberal? Only in the Karl Rove playbook.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I kinda respect your friend's choice too, but (1) dang I hate "litmus tests" and (2) you might be able to reason with him that a Democratic administration might actually succeed in reducing the net number of abortions performed. As such: Democrats will fund social programs that support people who might otherwise say "no way I can afford a baby." And they'd support social programs that help pregnant girls get through to adoption rather than having to panic and have an abortion. Whereas the Bush administration (NOT specifically any other Republican mind you) refuses to fund any program that might possibly be interpreted as helping anyone with anything.

Well, that's perhaps a little harsh - but not much. I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm saying.

And Bush's battle to outlaw abortion (oh God, the carnage) would be a MUCH harder battle to fight than getting a few relatively inexpensive social programs in place. No?

[lonesomenumber1]

No, I made it back in February. The idea wasn't original to me, though; I got it from atrios.

I find it funny in a scary sort of way that this was actually the theme of the RNC.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

OK.. Here's the link to Kerry's site:

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/health_care/medicare.html

"As president, John Kerry will not raise Social Security taxes, raise the retirement age, cut benefits for people that rely on Social Security, or privatize Social Security. He will consider making sure that high-income beneficiaries don't get more out than they pay in."

The only weasel option I see in there is to either delay the changes until after he is president, or to reduce benefits for "people who don't rely on Social Security" and are "high-income beneficiaries" (i.e. the very wealthy).

On that very page, he claims that growing the economy will help stabilize the system, but if it increases the wages of lower income people, it will also increase the obligations under the current system. If it increases the wages of the wealthy, it won't do anything to support the current system.

Alternately, he will have to propose putting general revenues into Social Security (from higher taxes on the wealthy) to fund it.

There is no proposal here to fix the problem. You have to either increase revenue (by privitization or increased taxes) or reduce benefits (by reducing payments or increasing the retirement age.) The sooner specific changes are announced, the sooner people can plan for them, and, in the case of tax increases, the sooner the system moves towards solvency.

So what's his reform of the system? I don't see Kerry as having the balls to actually touch the third rail of politics. We'll be trading one gutless wonder for another.

(And Bush isn't doing much better on Social Security, as I don't see how we're going to finance a privitazation effort. And otherwise, as I pointed out in my followup to myself, Bush has been a fiscal disaster.)

[meganinhiding.livejournal.com]

I have an ardently Republican brother-in-law who actually voted against Bush in 2000. I got the general impression that he was greatly underwhelmed by Bush's mental capacity. Also he's a doctor and most of the doctors I know of don't particularly like candidates who may conceivably interfere with medicine. I haven't heard him say much lately regarding the election.(I don't see much of him lately) I think much of his political allegiance comes from the fact that both his parents are loyal Republicans.

[jack-mccoy-fan1.livejournal.com]

One thing that I have noticed is that those few people that I know that are voting for Bush are single issue voters. Be it the abortion issue or the Cuba issue (older Cubans still hold a grudge since the Bay of Pigs) or they envision the US turning into a Theocratic state which of course scares the crap out of me.

I tend to look at the big picture and try to see how things are going to develop down the road. The fact that the current administration is not curious in the field of science and technology, not accepting and inclusive of all people regardless of race, religion or lifestyle that they are destroying the environment and that we are no safer today than we were on September 11, not to mention that I am not considered patriotic if I don't support the current administration, that is why I am going to vote for Kerry.

[parilous.livejournal.com]

My husband, who used to be Republican, then went Libertarian, and now, for the 1st time in his very active political life, will actually be voting for a Democrat had this to say:

"Republicans believe they are fighting a war of morality against the Left. They believe the Left is the undoing of society, will cause chaos, bring the second coming, etc, etc, etc. Even for those Republicans that aren't religious, fighting the Left is a moral war. That's why you hear them go on and on about the Left/Liberal media. That's why they can, in good conscience, slag off Kerry's war record when both of their candidates got easy assignments or deferrals from serving entirely. It's justified because this is a WAR."

Basically. That's not verbatim, but it's close.

What a great topic, though. I'm following it intently.

[parilous.livejournal.com]

Bush's stance on abortion is why my mother-in-law is voting for him. My father-in-law will vote for Bush because he always picks the Republican candidate.

My mother, who has never voted in her life, finally registered to vote. I played dirty with her emotions, and scared her into voting for Kerry because of Bush's war politics and my brother being 18 - prime age for draft/ enlistment.

My grandmother is voting for a Democrat for the first time in her life. She's very anti-abortion, but she's more anti-war, having lived through WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. She says she thought Bush should've declared war on a country, not on an idea ("terrorism") and sees him as being the worst president in her lifetime.

Uh... don't know where I was going with this.

[orfeo517.livejournal.com]

I'm voting for Bush because I want to see the world fold into a flaming heap of sulfuric dung, and I'm sure Bush is the man who can make it happen. Kerry is too weak-kneed and compassionate. Where's the drama? With Bush, I know where I stand. I refuse to vote for a candidate who I may agree with from time to time!

this is not an answer to the question you asked

[zanzara.livejournal.com]

Well I could go deeply into the psychodynamics of the illness permeating this culture as evidenced by all things Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld...

But why waste the words?

Anyone dumb enough to vote for these people is not capable of understanding what I write and I won't waste my time.

It's all been said before by others far more eloquent...

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

eh, i don't think she was trying to be cruel. some adults just have this thing about kids sucking their thumbs in public past a certain age. it wasn't nice of her, but i've seen other grownups do it who seem pretty much sane otherwise.

me? i wouldn't care. but that's me.

some of it, too, is she probably comes off as weird because she's not from this country to begin with. i think she's portuguese and i know she lived in mozambique for several years as a child. and gods only know where else.

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

besides which, you can't impose democracy from the outside. the people have got to already want it themselves. and they can't be made to feel like they're establishing it at gunpoint.

and i don't know why nobody ever thinks to do budget cuts FIRST and then TRY tax cuts later. and they always cut in the wrong damn places. cutting domestic programs is a terrible idea right now. hell, it's usually a terrible idea.

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

i'm sorry, but that's just dumb. do these people even think? you can't end abortion by making it illegal. what you can do is make it more dangerous and kill lots and lots of women who will get abortions anyway, but who won't get them in safe, sterile environments at the hands of real mds rather than dirty-handed quacks.

the "pre-born children" are still gonna die. there's no way around it.

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

i have heard that social security is not as "in danger" as we think it is--that if the trust fund hadn't been raided so many times to fudge the budget in other areas, it'd be totally solvent now. seems to me somebody could, in theory, put that money back into the fund and the crisis would be averted. but i'm just guessing, because i don't know if that's even legal.

also, i have serious issues with the way certain social programs have been "reformed" already. there are an awful lot of female-heads-of-household out there who are now in poverty and doomed to stay 'less they get real lucky because a bunch o' wiseacres thought that if you got off the welfare rolls, regardless of how you got off, you'd automatically be self-sufficient and wouldn't need the government's help anymore. kinda makes rush limbaugh's accusation that liberals judge how much welfare helps by how many people are on the rolls look a little quaint.

[winterbadger]

Ah, but then one is, in this context, dealing with people who believe that government shouldn't be taking "their" money away from them to help "needy" people. They think that government should just be standing back and letting the economy roar, so as to create jobs for all those people so they don't *have* to take government handouts. (I think a large portion of the people who follow this logic also beleive that most welfare recipients squander their money on drugs and booze or scam the system, but let's ignore them and just deal with the people who are acting out of conviction rather than hate.)

I can understand that they think that; I just can't understand *why*; we instituted the "War on Poverty" in the 1960s, when our economy was very strong. It didn't seem to be providing for all the poor then, and it sure isn't now.

[winterbadger]

Well, fewer people will get abortions if they're illegal. I honestly believe that. If someone is faced with the choice between something they don't think they can handle and a painful, unpleasant, stigmatizing process, they will often choose the latter. If alternative B also includes a serious chance they may die, that will tip the scales for some of them.

But you don't convince people to stop doing things by banning them. You convince them by *showing* them its wrong. Some people are deterred from doing murder because they fear the consequences, sure, but IMO most people reject murder as an option because *they* *believe* it's wrong. We haven't made huge inroads in American's smoking habits by banning tobacco (the only people who aren't supposed to get it--kids and some convicts--still get it anyhow); we've done it by stigmatizing smoking and convincing people it will *harm* them to do it.

I hate the idea of people having abortions: what a horrible position to put someone in, deciding to end what at some point could be a human life! But it has to be an option, because for some people it really is the *only* choice. You'll do a lot more good teaching kids how to avoid having babies in the first place. Even the plans from Africa the president cites as showing abstinence works said "abstain, abstain, abstain: and if you can't abstain..."

[winterbadger]

The only weasel option I see in there is to either delay the changes until after he is president, or to reduce benefits for "people who don't rely on Social Security" and are "high-income beneficiaries" (i.e. the very wealthy).

Well, there's also the option of finding other funds in general revenue that can support SSI. After all, SSI has been funding the rest of the budget for decades; it's time for ag subsidies to multinational ag companies to give a bit back, maybe. Fiscal discipline is one of the ways Kerry suggests that SSI can be continued at more than the 73% that the system can afford to pay starting in 2042 when the crunch hits.

And I don't really see anything wrong with means-testing either SSI or Medicare. Those programs are there to make sure that the poorest in our society don't lack basic healthcare or other needs and can be independent in their old age. I really don't see why Donald Trump should be getting checks from the SSA when he retires if he's still got millions (or billions) in the bank.

[winterbadger]

i have heard that social security is not as "in danger" as we think it is--that if the trust fund hadn't been raided so many times to fudge the budget in other areas, it'd be totally solvent now. seems to me somebody could, in theory, put that money back into the fund and the crisis would be averted. but i'm just guessing, because i don't know if that's even legal.

Well, there *isn't* any "trust fund" which is one of the dirty not-so-secrets of domestic policy (along with "there is no 'welfare' program that just pays you for being poor"). Taxes are assessed for SSI, then they go into the general fund; that, along with all sorts of other federal income not specifically and irrevocably (like anything is irrevocable in legislation) earmarked for some specfific purpose, is used to pay all the government's bills.

The "trust fund" is a theoretical construct, kind of like Adam Smith's invisible hand or Schrodinger's Cat :-) If the amount of income from SSI tax is more than what is spent on SSI, the Treasury Department makes up special issue bonds for the difference out of thin air and puts them in an accounting column makred "SS trust fund" and then spends the actual money on whatever Congress authorizes spending on. The money doesn't get saved in a bank account, just bonds that (hopefully) whoever is in government when they mature will find some way to pay.

Wow...

[cotharyus.livejournal.com]

Good to see lots of open minded people here.

The system is broken. One of the people running for president can effect some start of changes to the system. The other doesn't even realize the system has a problem.

I get sick of hearing this bullshit about Bush is going to try to rewrite the constitution so he can be president for the rest of eternity. First off, he won't live that long. Secondly, in case you fucktards didn't notice, there's this thing called checks an balances that prevents stupid shit like this from happening.

So, in closing, don't bother replying to this post, because I'm not going to look at this thread any more. I'm going to sit here, and polish my .45 auto, which one of two men running president defends my right to own. Most likely, not because he thinks I need it to defend the country, or shoot harmless furry creatures, but because he knows that the right to keep etc. is provided for in case someone does get stupid and try to take all of our freedoms away. There are more people that politians, and we can take the system back any time we want to.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

I think that the Bush administration is oceans more psycho and callous than that, but you have to make your own decisions.

I gotta agree with the Lunatic on this one.

Re: Wow...

[shutupjosh.livejournal.com]

Well, I see someone didn't forget to take his crazy-pills today...

[sujata.livejournal.com]

Democrats should be allowed to run things? Surely you jest!

the reason democrats should be allowed to run things is that they think goverment can do things better than profit motivated private enterprises, which is demonstrably false

Of course it's false. We need look no further than Enron and Halliburton to see that business efficiency and ethics is far superior to government's handling of anything.

education can be delivered better and more inexpensively by the private sector, but Kerry & his ilk prefer to spend still more money on a broken system that yields no results

Precisely. Polls in the 1970s indicated that the majority of Americans felt public schools were doing a good job, and prepared people who wouldn't be going on to college to earn a good living with only a high school education. But of course, the 1970s were the latter part of the Dark Age. We know now that outsourcing jobs that don't require a college education is a good thing, and No Child Left Behind has revealed that our public schools (even those that were celebrated by their states as models of excellence) are abyssmal failures that only vouchers to attend private schools can remedy.

And no, it doesn't mean anything that in areas where vouchers have been implemented, there are now calls to eliminate the requirement that children receiving vouchers be from lower-income households. There's no insidious plot here to divert public school funding to send well-off kids to private schools. It may be that there's a plot here to destroy the public school system altogether, but if so, that's just what we need. (See above regarding public schools being abyssmal failures.)

and social security is going to require huge tax increases if it isn't fixed now

Indeed, that is a problem. But how to solve it?

Certainly not by increasing anybody's taxes. Not even by restoring the taxes on the rich that were cut by giving away the budget surplus built to guarantee the survival of Social Security.

Oh! I've got it! Let's just do away with Social Security, and replace it with private retirement accounts. We'll allow people to deposit, say, up to $30,000 per year tax-free. That none of the poor and over half the middle-class doesn't even earn that much per year isn't a problem, really; it's high time those freeloaders learn how to save and invest.

Now, what will we do with the payroll tax that we imposed (on the wage-earning poor and middle class) to fund Social Security...? *ponders* Oh, hell, let's keep it. That one, we might even raise. With Social Security gone, we can use the revenues from the payroll tax to afford still more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Who can then, in theory, use that capital to produce more, with increased production creating a gazillion new jobs... Just like they've been doing throughout the first three years of the Bush administration!

;-)