obama supporters, with hindisght are you glad kerry lost in 04?

[angus]

I'd think that there are many of us.  Both won clear majorities of the popular vote in their respective contests--something like 53% for Bush in 2004 and 53% for Obama in 2008.  And even if there were lots of once-in-a-lifetime voters in both those elections (e.g., normally nonvoting traditionalistic idealists for Bush in '04, and normally nonvoting progressive idealists for Obama in '08), it would still take the main swing group to have shifted en bloc in order to deliver such impressive majorities in both cases. 

That said, I doubt all the respondents who checked yes in your poll (around 2 out of 5 so far), fall into that swing block category.  Many may be Democrats who don't like Kerry, or perhaps Republicans who don't like Bush, or Obamaniacs who prefer this version of reality. 

I'm not sure that I like having both elected branches of government controlled by the same party.  Seems that we do well when one party controls the white house and another the congress.  And in fact a Gallup poll, released on October 28, just days before the election, showed that a majority of respondents favored a Democrat-controlled congress if McCain is elected and a Republican-controlled congress if Obama is elected.  So apparently I'm not the only one who regards "gridlock" as a good thing.  (If they're not doing anything, then they're not screwing anything up, right?)  But then again, we don't get to vote on 435 house seats and 100 senate seats.  We vote on one house seat and, at most, one senate seat, at a time.  So at-large proclivities aren't often reflected in this way.

But I'm still glad Bush won last time and Obama won this time, even though in both cases the president's party also won (or maintained) control of both chambers of the congress.  2004 didn't feel like a good time for change in executive leadership, so the choice of Bush made sense to the deciding element (that's us; you and me and rice owl and email king).  2008 was definitely a time for change in executive leadership. 

I think the reason that there aren't more of us is that the role of the federal judiciary is so over-rated.  Or, more precisely, because of the propensity of many people to react to federal appellate court rulings as though they were tantamount to legislation, and to lose sight of the fact that the federal court system will undergo a one-hundred percent turnover at least twice during the average lifespan anyway.  You need merely to eat right and stay fit in order to wait it out.  If you like what they're doing today, chances are you won't tomorrow, and vice-versa.  In the more sophisticated view of the mature, patient voter, it is easy to set aside the irrational fears of what Progressive or Traditionalistic appointments will do federal court system.  And setting that aside, it becomes merely a question of executive leadership (economic, diplomatic, and military).  It then becomes easy, given the circumstances of 2004 and 2008, to understand why the malleable swing block swung the way it did.

[Boris]

53% for Bush

50.7%, bro

[angus]

okay, I got the number from Dave Liep's US Election Atlas.  Maybe I glanced at the wrong column.  Anyway, it doesn't happen often that a candidate gets a majority.  How often since I have been old enough to vote has it happened?  Let's check:  1988, 2004, 2008.  Okay, that's three of six.  So half the time.  I think half still makes the point.  Short of creating alternate universes with different outcomes at the bifurcation, and an ability to objectively study four different situations without affecting anything, we can only speculate.  I think that the results show that this was a good time to choose Obama over McCain, and 2004 was a good time to choose Bush over Kerry, and that the majorities in those years was made possible by the perceptions of the swing block, which in 2004 was wracked by indecision over a losing war but generally low unemployment rates and rising mutual funds at home and in 2008 was mostly concerned with rising unemployment and tightening credit markets, even though it is clear, in hindsight, that McCain's ideas about how to manage a war that he didn't start were successful.

[Platypus]

Not at all...It's BUSH, after all

[The Mikado]

The War in Iraq ending ~summer 2006, a government that actually believed in effective disaster relief (and that would have noticed Katrina before the storm struck), the ability to replace O'Connor and Rehnquist with suitable Supreme Court Justices, a President who wouldn't have vetoed SCHIP, a President who wouldn't have waited until the collapse of Lehman to take aggressive actions on the financial crisis (no, the first stimulus package doesn't count as aggressive action)...a Kerry Administration would've been good for, or at least prevented significant harm to this great Union of ours, and that, after all, is what government is about.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

No.  Had Kerry won, he would have appointed replacements for O'Connor and Rehnquist, and possibly Stevens as well; Kerry would've reacted quicker to the economic crisis, and we'd probably be out of Iraq, and numerous other things already mentioned.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Hell no. This "Democratic" Congress has been a complete joke, and this country is in deep sh**t right now, the economy and otherwise. We'll definitely be in much worse shape in 2012 than we would have been now or in 2012 with a President Kerry.

[Brittain33]

No.  Had Kerry won, he would have appointed replacements for O'Connor and Rehnquist, and possibly Stevens as well;

Assuming that the Senate still goes 55-44-1, what kind of nominees does Kerry get? I could envision an impasse that only ends when he appoints a conservative and a moderate liberal at the same time, or putting a senator like Orrin Hatch up there to assure a vote.

[JohnCA246]

This win was more fun and satisfying.  But politics isn't about what is fun, so I would have rather won with Kerry and prevented some of the mess that has occurred in the last four years.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

No.  Had Kerry won, he would have appointed replacements for O'Connor and Rehnquist, and possibly Stevens as well;

Assuming that the Senate still goes 55-44-1, what kind of nominees does Kerry get? I could envision an impasse that only ends when he appoints a conservative and a moderate liberal at the same time, or putting a senator like Orrin Hatch up there to assure a vote.

Someone moderate, or highly respected; I don't have any names at the moment.

[7,052,770]

No.  Had Kerry won, he would have appointed replacements for O'Connor and Rehnquist, and possibly Stevens as well; Kerry would've reacted quicker to the economic crisis, and we'd probably be out of Iraq, and numerous other things already mentioned.

[MR maverick]

I hated Kerry and still do.

[perdedor]

No, the Kerry administration would have been a vast improvement on the Bush administration...even though his victory would have ceded control of the house and senate to the Republicans for the foreseeable future. Pick your poison I suppose, but I still believe that Kerry would have been a respectable president.

[King]

Yes.

I never really liked Kerry nor or any of the schmucks running in the Democratic Primaries that year who were vying to replace the schmuck.

[Smash255]

No, while I like Obama more than I did Kerry, Bush has just done too much damage.

[King]

I think the damage of Bush was pretty much inevitable.  Even if Kerry had won Ohio, he wouldn't have control of Congress and with the exception of the Supreme Court change (which will likely be regained when Obama replaces the retirees in the next 4-8 years), none of the decisions Bush is hated for were made in the 2nd term.