Centerfield

Domestic Reactions to Bush's Reelection

This post contains key quotes from publications that opposed President Bush's reelection -- the New York Times, the New Republic, the Nation, and the American Prospect.  Those of us who hope for a lowering of the body politics' temperature now that the election is over are likely to be disappointed.

From the New York Times:

• Tom Friedman: "This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, 'Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?' the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way."

• Maureen Dowd: "The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel . . . W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or 'values voters,' as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage . . . Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on 'moral issues'."

• Garry Wills: "The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.  Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed." 

From the New Republic:

• The Editors: "Not everybody to the left of Bush is like everybody else to the left of Bush; and it would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party to wallow now in the sort of Michael Moore leftishness that made many Americans worry whether John Kerry was sufficiently obsessed with American security, and sufficiently excited about American power, to protect them at home and to promote their purposes abroad. (On the question of American power, the American people are right and Ted Kennedy is wrong.) An internecine quarrel must now begin. But it cannot begin where there is only alienation, and the self-fulfilling confusion of the Bush administration with the United States of America. This country is bigger than its every president. This Constitution is not easy to destroy. This is not the apocalypse. But it is the most formidable challenge to American liberalism in our time."

• Peter Beinart: "American liberalism is going into a deep internal exile. This will be, at least with regard to our public institutions, Tom DeLay's America--craven toward the economically powerful and vicious toward the economically weak, contemptuous of open debate and thuggish toward an increasingly embittered world . . . The path back to Democratic victory does not lie in cultural issues--it never has, and the best that can be hoped for in that arena is a draw. It lies in a more compelling economic agenda and a more convincing national security one."

From the Nation:

• The Editors: "TV anchors and the candidates themselves call for a new civility and ask the public to 'come together' as one people. Pay no attention. The progressive movement in this country has suffered a huge reversal. But the struggle for the country's future--and its very soul--was anything but settled. It will be renewed at a higher level of intensity, and for higher stakes. There must be a fierce, protracted resistance in defense of democracy . . . John Kerry did not lose this election in the South (those defeats were fully expected). He lost it in leading industrial states that, given their economic condition, should have belonged to the Democrats. Kerry advocated establishment views, on trade and globalization, for instance, that distanced him from his natural constituency. He could not find the words and images to speak authentically about their lives. He did not offer plausible remedies to their pain . . . At least half of the country understands that the war in Iraq is unwinnable. The most immediate need, perhaps, is for a revived antiwar movement, which not only calls for a withdrawal from Iraq but opposes and prevents new bloody adventures."

• Ari Berman: "The
  biggest outrage imaginable occurred yesterday. Despite a lagging economy, an
  unpopular war in Iraq and unprecedented energy on the other side, Republicans
  actually increased their majorities in Congress and held the Presidency. How did
  this happen? A look at last night's exit polls reveal that Republicans
  effectively manipulated voter's anxieties about the threat from terrorism
  abroad and gay marriage at home to solidify their mandate."

• Katrina vanden Heuvel: "The American Right
  understands we are two nations, and cares less about healing than about holding
  power. A Bush wins forces us to understand, in a very deep way, what that means
  for us and for the values and institutions we care about. Not that they are wrong,
  or rejected or weighed down by "identity politics" or some other
  rationale for surrender. But that they are in desperate danger and we need to
  start thinking along the lines of how to resist, delay, deflect, oppose and
  ultimately defeat the assault on our freedoms. As progressives, we will need to
  marshal at least as much dedication, purpose, strategic focus and tactical
  ruthlessness, and The Nation is one of the few places that will have
  earned the trust of over 40 percent of the American people who were against
  Bush and all his works from the beginning . . . And we should be thinking about
  the indispensable work of resistance. We need to identify legislative and
  administrative choke points where Bush's initiatives can be blocked, and make
  clear to both legislators and their constituents that the days of go-along in
  the interest of non-partisan comity have to stop."

From the American Prospect:

• Jim Sleeper: "The Bush camp didn't resort to force or fraud in the voting process itself to win ratification of its old vision of American character and destiny . . . But force and fraud are coursing through the republic's bloodstream and discourse more powerfully than at any time since the early Cold War . . . In some ways, of course, liberalism asked for this. A 'rights'-obsessed liberalism that prattles on about respecting all 'differences' and suspending moral judgments ends up having to rely on virtues and beliefs that liberalism itself cannot nourish, much less impose. Combine such relativism with a misguided respect for the 'rights' of intimately intrusive corporate marketers and you have millions leading lives of quiet desperation and degradation and looking for a Billie Sunday in a commander in chief. On Tuesday, they came out in droves, blaming social decay on liberals, not the casino-corporate economy . . . The challenge for liberals is not to mock those who are being oriented like magnet filings toward a darkening, doomed crusade but to acknowledge American liberalism's own estrangement from a national character that is often, heaven help us, a balancing act as weird as that of a Jack Nicholson movie character, tottering along on a tightrope between rampant materialism and rapturous faith."
  

• Robert Reich: "I don't think most Americans rejected John Kerry's policies. It was Bush's moral vision they found more compelling. When politicians talk about having a plan for this or a policy for that, many eyes glaze over. But when they speak with righteous indignation -- with passion and conviction about what is morally right to do or morally offensive -- they can inspire the nation . . . My recommendation to Democrats is not to become more religious. Religion is a personal matter. But perhaps Democrats need somewhat fewer plans and policies, and a bit more moral conviction. They also need to talk more about faith -- faith in what this great nation can accomplish if we work together . . . I'm not saying Democrats have to adopt my particular moral positions. But unless or until Democrats return to larger questions of public morality, they won't inspire the American public."