Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
What are you going to do if Bush wins? Sob? Start a revolution? Get leaner, meaner and tougher? Or move to Canada?
Oct 30, 2004 | Amid get-out-the-vote efforts, bouts of nervous poll watching and Osama-video viewing, there's an unspoken question in the stop-Bush camp. What if the U.S. president, who wasn't exactly elected in 2000, wins in 2004?
We asked blue-leaning cartoonists, comedians, bloggers and activists to pause in their last-minute pre-election machinations to ponder what they'll do if the U.S. turns just a few pinky shades to the red next Tuesday. Their responses ranged from predicting civil war, to plotting to take Congress in 2006 and even pledging to give up on the "reality-based community" altogether and live in the absurd.
One told us he'd cry.
But sorry, red America, no one said they'd leave the country. Here's an edited version of some true-blue partisan thoughts on what they'll do if faced with four more years of Bush and Cheney in the White House.
"Ginmar," who blogs from a "sarcastic, blue-collar liberal perspective" from her reservist station somewhere in Iraq
What I intend to do if Bush wins is to take the fight to the conservatives. The Republican Party now no longer bears any resemblance to what the GOP used to be. It is so beholden to big business and the so-called moral majority.
Being a blue-collar liberal is an advantage in this case. The college liberals have safer lives, but people like me feel the effects of conservative policy a lot faster and a lot harder. I'm angry, and I'm not alone.
The conservatives have counted on the complacency of the left to be part of their victories. No longer. Until they learn to either be honorable or play fair, it's going to be back in their faces.
Part of the problem in dealing with these radical conservatives is that poor liberals like me don't get much of a voice. I'm poor, I'm pissed, and I've had it.
If I had my way, I'd confront Ann Coulter with every one of her ridiculous statements, and make her find a source for them that's unbiased. She says we should convert Muslims forcibly. Yet my experience has been that a lot of Iraqis are easier to deal with than some of the scary sexist "moral majority" people back home.
Like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, there's just so many lies that you get exhausted rebutting them after a while. I want to make people angry, but I don't want to do it in the PETA kind of way. I think that's stupid, and that's my blue-collar roots showing. Why is it stupid? Because it turns off reasonable people, and wanting politics to be about the truth is nothing but reasonable.
This stuff matters. This stuff is real. This is the real war, here, on American soil.
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" actor turned author of "Just a Geek," Wil Wheaton blogs at wilwheaton.net
For four years, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have lied to the American people about everything from the cost of Medicare "reform" to their ever-changing justifications for invading Iraq. Throughout this campaign, they have tried to terrorize us into giving them four more years to mislead the country and further enrage the world.
A Bush victory would mean much, much more than just the defeat of John Kerry. It would endanger the values that the vast majority of Americans -- the majority of Americans who voted for Al Gore or Ralph Nader in 2000 -- hold dear. It would be a victory for terror. So if George W. Bush wins, I will sit down, and I will cry. I will cry for my children, who will most certainly face a military draft, and I will cry for my country, because I believe that America can, and must, do better than George W. Bush.
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