The New Yorker: Kerry for Prez

I guess the New Yorker magazine hasn't ever endorsed a candidate for president. But this year, they have. And it is scathing to Dubya. In the last third of the editorial, this paragraph sums up pretty much how I've been feeling and puts into a few sentences the gross incompetence of Bush and his neocon cronies.

The damage visited upon America, and upon America’s standing in the world, by the Bush Administration’s reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.

I was talking to the lady who cuts my hair and she's not even going to vote because she hasn't paid attention to politics this year. All I can say to this is (in my best Chandler Bing mode) "OH MY GOD!" I just can't understand how Bush might end up the president for the next four years. I try to stay positive, I read all my favorite lefty blogs and news sources, but the trouble there is the danger of ending up in an echo chamber. That was ultimately the biggest trap of the Dean campaign. Towards the end when you were checking Blog for America every 5 minutes and surrounding yourself with people who agreed with each other all the time, you lost a lot of your objectivity.

I just hope that election night turns out the right way. I hope Kerry blows Bush out of the water. I hope he wins by a much larger margin than anyone's expecting. If not, may God help us, because we're sure gonna need it.