If Kerry wins the election, what does it mean for Democrats and liberals?

[mot78]

I know a lot of people attack Kerry for being miquetoast, DLC-ish. But if he wins the election and destroys *, how would he lead the Democratic Party out of the wilderness? Realistically he won't be able to deliver on every promise because of a hostile Congress. But will he strenghen our party or will be be like Clinton, who while sucessful on a personal level, let the party languish at the grassroots.

[fujiyama]

1. I'd say...

If Kerry were elected, he would be one of the most liberal presidents the nation has had. He's much more liberal than Clinton, and seems more liberal than Gore (who until recently was quite the moderate). It's true, Kerry has made bad votes (Patriot Act, IWR), but on the whole he has a very liberal record. I think he'd make a hell of a president.

[tedoll78]

2. I'll tell ya what it'd mean..

we'd dominate the Supreme Court for the next 20 years. At least.

[mot78]

3. Maybe the SCOTUS could legalize gay marriage then

I doubt the Repugs can pull an amendment through by then.

[tedoll78]

5. That's actually..

my #1 reason for voting for whomever the nominee is. All of them will appoint people who interpret the Constitution's guarantees as applying to all citizens.

---

My theory on how gay marriage will come-about:
1) This is THE last chance for the amendment to be passed. The nation's younger voters will begin to vote more often, and they're significantly more liberal than their elders. The WW2 generation is dying-out about now, and they're the most rabidly against gay equality. The GOP will not fare well in this respect.

2) The amendment won't pass. It'll fail so badly that a filibuster wouldn't be broken.

3) A case will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It'll take 3 or 4 years to get there, but it'll make it. By that time, we may have seen O'Connor or Rehnquist step-down, in which case a Democrat replacing them would be a net gain of 1 liberal each on the court. If one retires, the court would be 5-2 liberal-conservative at least.

4) The Supreme Court will rule in-favor of gay marriage equality with a 5-vote majority.

5) Congress & the public will react. However, the voter influx mechanics will work in the favor of equality, and the amendment will barely fail. This will end the question of gay marriage policy.

---

At least, this is how I'd like it to work-out.

I see four possible retirements in the coming years. In the order of probability (most to least), they are: Stevens, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Ginsburg.

If they were to all retire with a Democrat making the appointment, the court would end-up 6-1-2 Liberal-Moderate-Nazi.
If they were to all retire with Bush making the appointment, the court would end-up 6-1-2 Nazi-Moderate-Liberal.

If there's any reason to vote for the Democrat this year, this is it.

[Lexingtonian]

4. We win Congress and the war

With Kerry in, likely with a majority (and thus a mandate) and the Republican Party in evident decline across the board, it's hard to see an upper limit. Congress will continue to break away from the Right, the 2006 elections look very much like a return of Democratic majorities in both chambers.

Most of the first year of a Kerry Presidency would be about getting good people into running the federal agencies, a revamping of the budget, Bush Administration investigations continuing, and other good government stuff (Iraq, bin Laden, North Korea, tackling the most overt corporate abuses, breakdown of Republican social policy crap). The second year would be a run at the corporations' privileges and such (sort of a Left wet dream) that enable outsourcing, tax dodging, excessive management power. And fully breaking Republican control on the federal level and in a general way nationally in the midterm elections.

Clinton's problem was that the Democratic Party was the minority party between ~1984 and 1998/99 when it became the plurality party. It probably became the majority party (socially liberal, economically moderate at its center) in 2002/03 but is only now reuniting and taking over power again nationally. I think everyone around here sees the great pain involved in getting over more than a decade of conservative domination- not everyone deals with and eliminates their internalized conservatism successfully, and for those who do it often takes quite some time and struggle. (Don't forget that the paleo-Left is internally just as conservative as the paleo-Right.)

Clinton never had the liberal-leaning majority that any Democrat who becomes President between 2002 and 2020 will have to fall back on. It was an amazing high-wire act by Clinton, really, to achieve so much with minority or plurality backing. He got overconfident in his amazing abilities to do so, though, a bit of hubris he paid for in spades.