Original post, but worth repeating:
A vote for Bush is a vote for reckless, failed, fatal foreign policy which may require a draft. A vote for Bush is a vote to ignore Osama bin Laden, loose nukes, vulnerable targets, and threats from North Korea and Iran. A vote for Bush is a vote for more sky-rocketing health costs, run-away gas prices, more pollution, and exporting jobs. More Bush means more poverty, more rancor and division as he advocates tampering with the Constitution to race-bait, gay-bait and eliminate our basic rights.
Bush's inattention and prevarication proves his concern centers on keeping his job not protecting your job. His policies threaten to bankrupt Social Security. He's making it tougher to pay for college and tougher to find a decent job after graduation - while pushing us toward a military draft.
Either Bush can't do the job for America, or he refuses to do the job. Either way, it's time for serious leadership. It's time to end the blame games, the trivialization, the excuses, and the lies. We cannot afford four more years of more of the same. Bush is unfit to serve four more minutes. Bush whines that the job of president is "hard." Let's do him a big favor and fire him next week so he can find a job he can do.
more...1. Conservatism has failed. The overwhelming majority of the American public now sees the Bush administration as a failure. They failed in Iraq, they failed after Hurricane Katrina, they failed on health care, they failed to deliver rising wages, they failed on the deficit, they failed, they failed, they failed. Why? Liberals need to argue that it wasn’t a product of incompetence, it was a failure of conservative governance. As Alan Wolfe put it in a recent Washington Monthly article, “Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.”
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2. Conservatism is the ideology of the past—a past we don’t want to return to. Liberals need to embrace the culture war, because we’re winning. The story of American history is that of conservative ideas and prejudices falling away as our society grows more progressive and thus more true to our nation’s founding ideals. Conservatives supported slavery, conservatives opposed women’s suffrage, conservatives supported Jim Crow, conservatives opposed the 40-hour work week and the abolishment of child labor, and conservatives supported McCarthyism. In short, all the major advancements of freedom and justice in our history were pushed by liberals and opposed by conservatives, no matter the party they inhabited at the time.
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3. Conservatives are cowards, and they hope you are, too. We’re afraid, they shout. We’re so afraid of terrorists, we have to become more like the things we hate. We’re so afraid, we have to let our government sanction torture. We’re so afraid, we have to let the government spy on us. We’re so afraid, we have to give the president dictatorial powers. We’re so afraid, we just want to rush to the arms of politicians who say they’ll protect us. ...
more... By Michael Kinsley
Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page B07
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The numbers in the Economic Report of the President undermine both theories. Spending goes up faster under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. And the economy grows faster under Democrats than Republicans. What grows faster under Republicans is debt.
Under Republican presidents since 1960, the federal deficit has averaged $131 billion a year. Under Democrats, that figure is $30 billion. In an average Republican year, the deficit has grown by $36 billion. In the average Democratic year it has shrunk by $25 billion. The national debt has gone up more than $200 billion a year under Republican presidents and less than $100 billion a year under Democrats.
As for measures of general prosperity, each president inherits the economy. What counts is what happens next. Let's take just two measures, although they all show the same thing: Democrats do better under every variation. From 1960 to 2005 the gross domestic product measured in year-2000 dollars rose an average of $165 billion a year under Republican presidents and $212 billon a year under Democrats. Measured from 1989, or measured with a one-year delay, or both, the results are similar. And how about this one? The average annual rise in real per capita income -- that's the statistic that puts money in your pocket. Democrats score about 30 percent higher.
Democratic presidents have a better record on inflation (averaging 3.13 percent compared with 3.89 percent for Republicans) and on unemployment (5.33 percent versus 6.38 percent). Unemployment went down in the average Democratic year, up in the average Republican one.
Almost forgot: If you start in 1981 and if you factor in a year's delay, Republican presidents edge out Democratic ones on inflation, 4.57 to 4.36. Congratulations.
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