Obviously the presidential election was a disappointment. I can only remind myself of several facts: My home state Pennsylvania went for Kerry, so my vote actually did count for something. 51% of the popular vote going to Bush is hardly a mandate, regardless of what FOX News would have you believe. And lastly, damn near half the country still hates Bush.
It sucks and it hurts and it's difficult to understand how so many people can continue to be enchanted by this man, given the unacceptable spending, the thinly veiled bigotry, his persistant incoherence, and the unbelievable right turn away from al Qaeda and into Iraq. So, in memoriam, here's some quotes from other Kerry-supporting weblogs:
from Wil Wheaton:
"Apparently, my country holds a fundamentally different set of values than I thought we did, and that scares the shit out of me. I still believe that Bush is bad for America, and though I'm virtually certain that the next four years will be an absolute disaster. Not just because we have gotten four more years of the Bush agenda, but because this election has been an enthusiastic endorsement of that agenda."
from Mark Evanier:
"Presidencies have a way of not going the way we expect. No one who voted for Bush four years ago thought he'd drive up the deficit and get us deep into "nation-building" in Iraq. His second term may be equally full of surprises for all. At the very least, he's the one who got us into debt and Iraq and now, he's the one who's going to have to figure out how to get us out of both. I sure hope he succeeds."
from Margaret Cho:
"I think Bush is probably really scared, if he is smart enough to be. He should be, because he has an enormously difficult task in front of him. There is no way he will regain public popularity. All he can manage to do is not fuck up too badly, which will probably prove to be impossible, as he is the rare maestro of the fuck up."
from Peter David:
"It is amazing that Bush can make 9/11 the centerpiece of his campaign without the vast majority of Americans saying, "Hey, wait...that happened on your watch, didn't it? And the guy who did it is still out there, but we're supposed to feel safer with you in charge? What's up with THAT?" It's like the people of South Park strangely feeling safer when Officer Barbrady is running things. And yet polls show they do. Of course, a poll also showed that 75% of Bush's supporters believe Saddam had WMDs and 72% think Saddam was connected with 9/11. So you just get the feeling a lot of people aren't paying attention."
from Evan Dorkin:
