What If-Kerry had won

[Kevin]

what if Kerry had won what would happen would he get reelected?

[nini2287]

Waaay too early to even foster a guess.

[Ronald Reagan]

Good 4 years:

Kerry - 272
GOP - 266

Bad 4 years:

Kerry - 227
GOP - 311

[True Democrat]

Very good four years, with Edwards visiting North Carolina a lot and pushing it on the agenda:

[Kevin]

Could somebody give me a timeline of his presidency please?

[afleitch]

I'd like to, but its all very painful at the moment....sigh.

[skybridge]

Foreign policy wouldn't be much different. Kerry doesn't have a clue about how to handle Iraq any better, really. The Republican Congress would try to suffocate a lot of Kerry's attempts of setting the country on a better course. Starting in 2006, the Democrats regain some control over Congress, and the economy (not just in the US) starts to recover. The resurgent economy could win him re-election. However, it could just as well happen that voters get fed-up with his incapable handling of the quagmire in Iraq and go with the GOP again.

[Jake]

Social Issues:

Little gets done on the abortion, gay marriage, gun control, etc issues. A Republican Congress would be at odds with Kerry on all these issues and as a result, nothing would get passed on the federal level. At the state level, I can see more legislatures, especially in Kerry states, attempting to pass gay marriage laws in their state. This fires up evangelicals to oppose Kerry.

Judicial Nominations:

Kerry will gain little headway on this front. With a Senate stacked against him, Kerry will need to nominate very moderate judges, lest they be voted down or almost get voted down. Republicans will not even have to filibuster, only vote down nominees they deem to liberal. O'Connor may or may not retire in July, if she does, I very much doubt Kerry would nominate a dyed in the wool liberal as it is very possible the Senate would reject them. He would be forced to name a moderate with a clean record on hot button issues to get his Justice.

Economic Issues:

It seems rather unlikely that Kerry's healthcare/education plans would get passed by a GOP controlled Congress. A tax hike on the rich would also most likely fail. Little would get done here either unless there was somehow a large consensous.

Iraq:

It is doubtfull in my mind that we would still have the numbers of troops in Iraq as we do now. Most likely, Kerry would remove some troops from the country in mid-2005 and begin the main pullout later this year. It's also possible that he would see the successful elections and see the opinion polls and pull large numbers of troops out in February-March. There is little reason to suspect that Kerry would gain any more allies and little reason to expect him to handle to situation better than Bush. There is actually reason to believe that his policy towards the war would be shaped much more on public opinion than Bush's as it did not appear during the campaign that Kerry had a firm position on the war.