2004 Election

I know a lot of people are flashing back to 2016 right now. It’s eerily similar. I’m scared to death that the minority will win again, and I’m scared to find out what four more years of control by a party that hates government will look like. How many people will die in the next pandemic? What other unforeseen crisis will Trump ignore?

Truth be told, though, it’s 2004 that really has me worried. At this point in 2004, Bush had already proven to be a disaster. He had already blown the surplus with a giant tax cut; he had already failed to keep us safe on 9/11; he had already filled the swamp and laid the groundwork for economic disaster.

Worst of all, he had started the disastrous Iraq War.

Yet, somehow, people still voted for him. Somehow, people believed that John Kerry, a decorated veteran, was a coward and Bush, who avoided Vietnam, was some sort of a hero.

12 years later these very same people did a 180 degree flip and voted for Trump, the polar opposite of George W. Bush. They voted for the guy who said that the Iraq War was a disaster and who blamed Bush for 9/11.

It’s great that, after countless deaths and wasted treasure, these folks changed their minds, but they seemingly did so without recollecting that they were the ones who put Bush in office.

Anyone who voted for Bush in 2004 took ownership of the Iraq War. All of those deaths and all of that wasted money is on them. They had a chance to change course, and they didn’t do it.

Now, here we are again. Anyone with any sense of objectivity or analytical skills can see what an absolute disaster this president has been. At least in 2004, it was a little obscured. In 2020, it’s in your face with 230,000 dead Americans and a 3.7 trillion dollar deficit.

In spite of that, most of those folks are gonna vote for Trump. Then, in 10 years or so, they’ll barely remember ever having supported him, and they’ll move on to their next mistake.

For me, that’s the saddest part about all of this. These are good, smart people. I don’t get it.