For which presidential ticket would you vote in 2008?
Hillary Clinton/Joe Lieberman
John McCain/Lincoln Chafee
I've been wanting to ask this question for some time as a poll. I've also wanted to steer clear of 2008 issues. However this poll is not really about 2008, it is about the direction of the party today, and for 2006.
What if the Democratic Party gets more and more uptight on social issues, more "tough" on civil liberties, more hawkish on war, flat out trying to insist on new invasions against the reluctance of this administration? What if its left wing lights are dimmed by lack of DNC support in 2006 including centrist primary challengers? What if the party turns pro-business instead of pro-people, deciding that all the small donations in the world are worth nothing without the blessing of the media giants and the Diebolds.
What if the Republicans succeed in walking a fine line through the rest of the Bush administration between the puritans and the porn-monger wingers? What if they succeed in pretending to be libertarian socially by leaving alone, even promoting middle-of-the-road excess, while going after gays and pro-choice only very mildly. What if they never propose another religion-promoting or sexuality-punishing bill without heavy democratic backing? What if their fervor for more civil liberties encroachment is wisely muted, like the music in a disco suddenly shut off, leaving the Democrats shouting lots of embarrassingly fascistic things at the top of their lungs? What if the NeoCon agenda is dead and the Repubs even start talking about pulling out while Dean, Kerry, and Hillary insist we need to stay and finish the job whatever the sacrifice?
What if Hillary really does become the inevitable 2008 nominee, and picks Lieberman or similar as her veep? What if she looks for all the world like Margaret Thatcher on her positions? What if she is proposing a health care program that would give you healthcare, yes, but do so in such a way as to extract considerable amounts of tax money and funnel it to the major medical corporations in a sleazy-seeming way? What if there is no chance in shinola that a healthcare plan would be enacted in any case as the Repubs still have congress locked up tighter than a drum?
What if McCain picks a real RINO veep, maybe even a surprising Democrat, or perhaps a neutral-seeming military figure like Colin Powell? Then runs a campaign as if he were running against Dubya? What if he proposes increasing our protected wild spaces and restoring more? What if he does something tricky like saying while he can't support a government funding healthcare plan, that he will regulate healthcare costs down and promote pro-bono care by hospitals and doctors by offering big tax breaks for doing so. What if he says he will make alternative energy happen. What if he says the culture wars are over, and nobody won, so let's get government out of that arena and leave it all up to letter-writing campaigns and market forces? What if he promotes civil unions while the Democrats had forgotten to even talk about those for the past three years? What if Hollywood stars all fall at his feet, as they once did, and he looks like the Reagan we wish Reagan had really been? What if McCain makes a habit of making campaign appearances with very moderate/progressive religious figures and talking about reconciliation and openness.
...No, I wouldn't vote for McCain. But it would be possible for him to run the campaign I described. And the vociferous McCain haters in his party are no more pivotal than we will be in blocking Hillary (whom even Kos supports in some capacity, although he hasn't spoken up about it lately). Plus, the anti-McCainers are largely just running like abandoned wind-up toys from Rove's 2000 campaign, and their perceived need to block him as Kerry's veep.
The question is, what would you do? And more importantly what do you think a lot of your Democratic friends would do?
If we are to avoid either of these hypothetical candidacies or platforms we need to get on it. I think that at least one of these things is very likely to happen, and that both coinciding is even likelier. (And no, that's not a hopeful thing, because the moment that fictionalized McCain won, the same present-day pack of thugs would step out from behind the curtain and continue apace.)
...