I should have voted for McCain

Hindsight is always 20/40, or something like that. I now know I should have voted for McCain for President in 2008.

Does Obama have better ideas and more ideas that I agree with than McCain? Sure. But we have been fooled again by promises from a fake liberal where McCain wouldn’t have fooled anyone. With McCain in the White House, it would now be clearer to everyone what a disaster Republican economic policies are for America.

Do I think McCain would have been a better President? No, I do not. But we wouldn’t have had to live with two years of Obama capitulating to a party full of people who hate him. And I am NOT talking about the progressive Democrats, who love Obama and give him tough love.

For many Social Democrats such as myself, the worst part of Obama’s failings is that he is trying to compromise with people who hate him. It’s like seeing a friend in an abusive relationship they won’t leave, despite the evidence that it will never work.

McCain might have chosen the same economics team, Summers, Geithner and Bernanke, that has taken many a cautious step in their effort to shore up the economy for their banking and wall street allies and interests instead of creating jobs. The blame for the economy would rest firmly where it belongs, in the hands of Republicans. Yes, some of their Democratic accomplices supported their tax cuts and war funding during the Bush presidency. But in a two party monopoly, one party takes the blame and the other takes control. And the budgets came from Bush for eight years.

If McCain had been elected, progressives and Democrats wouldn’t have been fooled into supporting a false liberal (Obama) and they might have actually fought for what is right.

Yes, we did get that health care bill passed that is another give away to health insurance companies with a couple of good ideas around pre-existing conditions and insurance for adult children to age 26. Whoopee!

What we have now is a lying media and lying Republicans trying to make 8 years of Bush’s economy Obama’s fault. And the less Obama does to address the inequalities in the Bush economy, the more we can lay it at his feet. If McCain had been elected, the Republican/Fox/Internet lie machine would have had to work harder to blame the Democrats for the collapse of the economy. A collapse, may I remind you, that started months before Obama was sworn in as President.

If McCain was President, there would have been more Democratic opposition to Afghan and Iraq war funding. The wars would have stayed in the “Republican mistake” column on the ledger instead of now being a joint effort of Bush and Obama with unabated funding from the Democratic Congress of the last four years.

If McCain had been President, I doubt there would have been liberals going to Republican town halls with McCain signs featuring McCain as Ebenezer Scrooge, Lord Voldemort, or Hitler. But it would have been great fun for comedians as McCain made gaffs about protecting Veteran’s health care while proposing to end government run health care programs.

McCain would have energized the pro-choice movement and perhaps gotten them to change the name to the “pro-life choice movement” as I have suggested. McCain as president would have energized the Democratic youth in our society who hate that “grumpy old man” in the White House who wants to “take away all their X Boxes, their skateboards, and their fun”.

With McCain in office, all that fake hatred of big government from the right would have less power because McCain would be big government.

With McCain as President, Obama could have done what he does best and motivated the base to even wider margins in the House and Senate in 2010.

A McCain presidency might have once and for all put the full spotlight on the Republicans as the party for the rich, by the rich, and of the rich. A McCain presidency might have been all the encouragement some Democrats needed to once again support unions, gay rights, and be anti-war among other traditional Democratic positions.

With a Republican House, we now have the chance to emphasize what the party of plutocrats is all about. Go forth and spread the word.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Inspiration for this article can be found here:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/22-5#comment-1674454