Not Better Off

by hilzoy

Eric has already noted this post by Kevin Drum:

"Back in 2004, I remember at least a few bloggers and pundits arguing that liberals would be better off if John Kerry lost. I never really bought this, but the arguments were pretty reasonable. Leaving George Bush in power meant that he'd retain responsibility and blame for the Iraq war. (Despite the surge, that's exactly what happened.) Four more years of Republican control would turn the American public firmly against conservative misrule. (Actually, it only took two years.) If we waited, a better candidate than Kerry would come along. (Arguably, both Hillary Clinton and Obama were better candidates.)

Conversely, it's unlikely that John Kerry could have gotten much done with a razor-thin victory and a Congress still controlled by the GOP. What's more, there's a good chance that the 2006 midterm rebellion against congressional Republicans wouldn't have happened if Kerry had gotten elected. By waiting, we've gotten a strong, charismatic candidate who's likely to win convincingly and have huge Democratic majorities in Congress behind him. If he's willing to fully use the power of his office, Obama could very well be a transformational president.

So: were we, in fact, better off losing in 2004? The downside was four more years of George Bush and Dick Cheney. That's hardly to be minimized, especially since the upside is still not completely knowable. But for myself, I think I'm convinced. The cause of liberal change is better served by Obama in 2008 than it would have been by Kerry in 2004."

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Obama wins tomorrow. (If he doesn't, this argument can't get off the ground.) And suppose further that we will, in fact, be better off for that fact, which I grant only for the sake of argument. This could still never be the basis for any actual decision in 2004. In 2004 we didn't know nearly enough to be able to predict this with certainty. If Kerry had won, he'd be the presumptive nominee this year, and if he had done reasonably well, we'd be looking at another four years of Democratic rule. Did we know nearly enough, in 2004, to be able to say with certainty that the Democrats would win this time? I don't think so. Among other things, we did not know that the Democrats would get a nominee of unusual political talent; we did not know about Katrina; we did not know that the economy would melt down as dramatically as it did a month before the election, or that the Republican candidate would react to that meltdown in a way that fundamentally undermined the premise of his candidacy, etc., etc., etc. Moreover, did we know, at the time, that even if things went very badly for Bush, the Democrats would react by growing spines? Not as far as I can see; at any rate, induction didn't provide a lot of support for that conclusion.

Moreover, if you tried to predict the future in 2004, you'd end up thinking: my willingness to stop working for Kerry for the sake of gains in 2008 depends on my confidence that Democrats would, in fact, win in 2008. But that depends in large part on how badly Bush does. So I should only consider hoping Kerry loses if I am convinced that Bush will be a complete disaster.

There is something profoundly wrong with that logic. If you think Bush would be bad for the country, that's a reason to work against him, not for him. And if you think he'd be not just bad, but a complete catastrophe, that's a reason to work even harder, not to stop.

Conversely, as Dana at Edge Of The West notes:

"For the argument to even get off the ground, you have to make the case that Kerry would have not done measurably better than Bush. I think it is reasonable to suppose that this is false. (Supreme Court. That’s one. We could make a list.) But suppose this is true; suppose that the various problems facing the country are too big for set of liberal policies to make a meaningful difference. Then what was the argument for voting for Kerry as the Democrats wanted us to do? (Will the same hold true for Obama? All these people seem to be supporting him strongly now. If he loses, am I going to hear how great that is, because in 2012 things will really suck which will be awesome for liberals?)"

Dana concludes:

"This mild rant would not be worth the ink if it were just an attempt to find a silver lining in a Kerry loss. But it seems to be to more than that, this idea that politics for liberals should be largely a game of scoring points, like it's an academic debate or a game of Civilization played as the Americans. It seems like it's meant to be something that should be informing grand strategies, or something that should be a consideration for the average liberal.

I cannot describe fully the visceral reaction I have to this argument, because it's complicated, about one-third "I can see your point…." and two-thirds "… but to endorse that point, I'd have to think we were playing a game, and we're not, and if you think we are playing a game, then you're in the relatively fortunate position of being personally indifferent to the outcome of the election because of the security of your station and finances, and maybe you should think about those who don't have that luxury.""

Or, to put it another way: I think that one of the reasons things turned so toxic for Republicans was Katrina. It made a lot of arguments about Bush's incompetence suddenly clear and vivid and all too easy to grasp. If you're willing to argue that we ought to be glad Kerry lost, then I think you ought to be willing to explain to the loved ones of someone who died as a result of our incompetent response why it was for the best that their loved one died. You might also imagine explaining to the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo -- who were found not to be enemy combatants -- why it is, all things considered, a good thing that they have spent years in solitary that they would not otherwise have spent, years in which children they have never met grow older, and their memories of what it means to walk the earth freely fade even further away. And, of course, you'd need to explain to a lot of families and friends of soldiers why their loved ones had to die for liberalism, whether they themselves were liberals or not.

Those are not arguments I'm prepared to make.

Comments

[mss]

Hear hear, hilzoy.

We need to stop these guessing games. Too many contingencies ride on a presidential election to ever pass one up for a better chance four years later.

[The Fool]

The main problem with the argument is that it has the same problem all those moral games where you know the outcomes have. It is all well and good for an omniscient being to be cold-bloodedly consequentialist, but given what we are we cannot gamble like that. What if Iran had been able to develop a nuclear bomb by 2006? What if Putin really were as blatantly Imperial as Russophobes would have us believe? What if Ginsburg's cancer were to have ceased its arrest? These are merely three instances where cold-blooded analysis leaves us with an unacceptable risk that we had little way of knowing were not the case in 2004. I sincerely doubt that anybody who thought a Kerry loss at the time was a good thing would have been so sanguine should such a scenario to have happened.

[NS]

At the same time, I think you have to consider what Kerry realistically could have done with the Executive branch alone. With a hostile Congress, dominated by the "nuclear option"-era GOP Congress.

And totally hemorrhaging political capital by trying to fulfill his one and only real issue: ending the war in Iraq.

More cynically, how likely would Kerry have been to even TRY to enact any of his other Progressive promises with a razor-thin election behind him and another tough one ahead of him? He's no George W. Bush -- and that was kind of the point -- but it means he would never turn a squeaker into a "mandate." More likely, President Kerry would have continued to have his agenda driven by the Congressional GOP, and would have spent most of his time trying to avoid the landmines they laid out for him.

All of that said, I do believe FEMA would have been better managed by Kerry appointees, and yes that certainly would have been important. But who knows what the ultimate impact would have been -- perhaps the 2006 midterms would have been about the huge scandal of taxpayer money going to "frivolous" things like providing buses to get "irresponsible" poor black folks out of New Orleans? Instead of footage of the Superdome, you get headlines out of the Republicans' Special Committee on Katrina Fraud & Abuse or whatever. One of the uncomfortable truths of modern political life is that Katrina was a transformational event for the progressive movement precisely because it was botched.

Without Bush's second term, I really think the political landscape today would not be all that different from 2000 -- mildly supportive of Democrats as managers, but with very little political space for real Progressive change. I think racial discourse in particular would still be depressingly close to those old Charles Murray/"welfare mom" days.

[Martin]

If you accept the premise that Kerry might well have had a very rocky four years and quite possibly gotten ousted after his first term, leading to a kind of rejuvenated Republican Party in the medium term, and if you accept the premise that an Obama presidency might well be the beginning of a period of Democratic hegemony that will have lots of immediate real-world effects on people, I don't see what people dying in New Orleans actually has to do with anything. Either you prefer this reality or that reality, you don't have to explain to anyone why their relative had to die in the reality you prefer, at all. If you accept those premises, that is. You might not. But that judgment would have nothing to do with anyone's relatives.

Having said that, I don't believe in not trying to press one's argument to the best of one's ability, in 2004 or any other year.

[Incertus]

The argument that we're better off for Kerry's loss is a perfect example of what Dan Gilbert calls "synthesizing happiness." We can also call it rationalization, but what it really is is a way of dealing with the reality and making the best of the situation. It's why people imprisoned unjustly say that they took something valuable away from the experience once they've been released--because that's how we deal with bad situations.

But that's all it is--rationalization. There's no way to really know how good we'd have had it under Gore or Kerry because there are too many variables.

[Adam]

I may be preaching to the choir here, but I think this is important:

The argument that we're better off for Kerry's loss is a perfect example of what Dan Gilbert calls "synthesizing happiness." We can also call it rationalization, but what it really is is a way of dealing with the reality and making the best of the situation.

Wouldn't making the best of the situation entail merely being thankful that we've managed to make some progress, and then rolling up our sleeves for the hard work that remains to be done? Why do we feel the need now to justify our previous failures? It's stealing from our current success to pay back the psychological deficit of previous failures.

The problem with this argument is its fatalism: when we lose, it's OK, because we're setting the GOP up for failure; the flip side is the argument that we're going to be stuck with a GOP-created mess for the next four years.

Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. We're always going to have to clean up after corrupt politicians and they're always going to be trying to get back in. Bush follows Clinton; Nixon follows JFK/LBJ.

Success breeds complacency, and that's exactly what this sort of argument encourages. Bush appointed Michael Brown to FEMA, but we shouldn't have given him the opportunity in the first place. His failure is our failure as well.

There is no "win" or "lose" here -- there's only the struggle to do what's right, whenever we can.

[russell]

George W Bush has been the crummiest, most glaringly incompetent President I've seen in my lifetime. Folks that know about these things say that he's probably one of the top three worst Presidents ever.

The man, with the able assistance of the parade of scheming Machiavellian criminals, world-historical thugs, and jumped-up garden variety incompetents he's brought on board since taking office, has been an unrelenting disaster. He is the King Midas of disaster, the virtuoso of unmitigated flaming train wrecks.

In short, as a President, he sucks.

Every minute that the man did not spend in office would have been, hands down, a gift and a boon to the nation and the world at large.

Would we have been better off? As questions go, this one is a layup.

Thanks -

[socratic_me]

Is there not an ability to say that losing in 2004 really sucked and had horrific consequences, but that the net good for society still lies on the side of that lost (and the subsequent pwning in 2006 and 2008)?

This still leaves room to say, as I would and you would, that someone making this argument in 2004 was being ridiculous because they just couldn't know.

But we are in a much better position to know. Universal health care is really really important and will most likely affect (and probably save) as many lives as were lost in Katrina. It seems pretty safe to say that that policy, along with a whole raft of other liberal policies, wouldn't have a ghost of passing anytime soon if it weren't for the very very strong liberal mandate that is currently sweeping the Dems into power.

[AndyK]

"We're better off for losing" sounds like a retroactive application of the "heightening the contradictions" strategy. I heard enough about that bad idea back in the late sixties and seventies to last me a lifetime. It's a method of fooling oneself that, amazingly enough, was best satirized this year by that modern Voltaire, John McCain, in his "We've got 'em just where we want 'em" speech.

[Matt McIrvin]

One refreshing thing about this cycle is that I don't think I've heard one American liberal actually say "we'll be better off if we lose this one." Many people fret about what continued economic problems will do to the 2010 midterms or Obama's reelection chances, but I haven't seen anyone make that perennial contrarian argument that we want to lose now in order to win later. It's later now.

[Martin]

My, this is an intelligent thread. Question: did many liberals make the "losing is better" argument in 2004? Matt's post implies that they did. The way I remember it, hardly anyone did, it was all about "this election couldn't be more important" etc., just like this year. It's one thing to seek that outcome, quite another to find a silver lining in a fate nobody desired.

[Hartmut]

AndyK, that's my impression too. Even worse, it reminds me of the Weimar communists that saw an advantage in a Nazi takeover because that would lend legitimacy to their own coming coup (the nazis take the reins, run the cart into the mud, then we pull it out and are the heros).
I think the problem was in 2000, not 2004. I doubt that 9/11 would have happened under Gore. More interesting would be the speculation what would have happened under a president Son of Cain in 2000.

Clarification: Neither are the Dems commies nor are the GOPsters (in general) nazis.

[ellis]

I think it was clearly ridiculous for progressives to argue in 2004 that a Kerry loss would be good for the party or for the nation, but I don't think what Kevin Drum is doing amounts to that at all, and I think the tone of moral outrage expressed here is highly misplaced.

We obviously now have a clearer idea of what might have occurred in the aftermath of 2004 than anyone did at the time. At the time, we had no idea that a genuinely anti-war progressive would (likely) win the White House in 2008; now we know this, and can imagine and judge different counterfactual scenarios. This is all that Kevin is doing, and he does not deserve opprobrium for doing it.

Believing that a genuine progressive victory in 2008 is better than a (morally) compromised Democratic victory in 2004 does not constitute treating politics as a "game of scoring points". People care about creating a genuine progressive victory because that victory could be immensely beneficial to the future of the planet, potentially saving many more lives than were lost during Katrina. (Many more lives are lost or ruined due to our crappy health care system, for example, which we now have a real chance to fix.) A Kerry victory obviously wouldn't have constituted a real progressive victory, and there are lots of reasons to think that it would have made something like the (hopefully) forthcoming Democratic sweep less likely. If you disagree with this, fine, but don't accuse those who argue otherwise of being unserious about politics.

There's surely no reason to be glad that Kerry lost; I was devastated at the time. But we do need to understand where we have been and where we are going, and I think that we have an opportunity to do much more good now than we had reason to believe we would be in a position to do four years ago.

[Monte Davis]

"We're better off for losing" sounds like a retroactive application of the "heightening the contradictions" strategy...

Exactly -- and while it may be interesting as a retrospective analysis, it's morally bankrupt and contemptible as a prospective strategy, e.g. the Norquistian "starve the beast" (blow the budget now so Dems can't spend later)... or any revolution's "we need a few more martyrs."

[yoyo]

Well the thing is parties tend to swap in and out of power, and you can't really control a realignment (tho if you get a big event like 9/11 or a depression you can seize it). Kerrey barely holding back the tide and mostly just being as pernicious as clinton was doesn't really seem to do any good. I think the only argument is that getting rid of bush at least means that in 2008 we might have replaced Kerrey with a competent republican, lets say romney or something. Really, we were just due for a realignment, and when bush struck out with 9/11, we had to go get ourselves another.

[Gary Farber]

"Kerrey barely holding back the tide and mostly just being as pernicious as clinton was doesn't really seem to do any good. I think the only argument is that getting rid of bush at least means that in 2008 we might have replaced Kerrey"

Are you talking about Bob Kerrey or John Kerry?

[Ben Alpers]

If Gore had been allowed to assume the presidency in 2001, we'd most likely have Joe Lieberman as the Democrats' presidential candidate today.

Does this mean that it was a good thing that the presidency was stolen from Gore? Absolutely not.

Does this mean that we can at least be happy that Joe Lieberman is not the Democrats' presidential candidate today? Absolutely.

Shorter reality: the same event can have both positive and negative consequences.

[Ben Alpers]

Question: did many liberals make the "losing is better" argument in 2004? Matt's post implies that they did. The way I remember it, hardly anyone did, it was all about "this election couldn't be more important" etc.,

I share Martin's recollection.

December 2004 was an endless series of e-mails calling for secession of the blue states and threatening moves to Canada. No Democrats were saying "wow...at least we dodged the bullet of a Kerry presidency."

The last election was all about ABB.

The Democratic campaign would have actually been a lot more effective had Democrats focused a bit more on who they actually wanted as president, rather than putting all their marbles on opposition to Bush.

[Tom Scudder]

There were definitely some people making the silver-lining argument in 2004. I don't know if it rose to "many".

[dana]

Wow, hilzoy, thanks for the link!

Exactly -- and while it may be interesting as a retrospective analysis, it's morally bankrupt and contemptible as a prospective strategy,

Yes. And I worry that one bleeds easily into the other. We are supposed to learn from analyses, after all. I did hear people speculating in 2004 that Democrats just might get blamed for the mess, so it was better for Bush to win. Not many, but enough that I remember it. I heard a lot more of 'keep the powder dry' arguments, which seem to be a legislative species of the same argument.

But in any case: there's a tension here I haven't fully thought through, but I find it interesting. On the one hand, it's not an uncommon sentiment to hear that Bush is the worst President ever; on the other, some are retrospectively claiming that Kerry wouldn't have done much better. I find the latter belief, if one believes the former truly, an implausible one to hold. My cat would have been a better President; she would have bit Cheney at least once.

What seems more plausible to believe is that Kerry would have done measurably better on several fronts (the Court, Katrina, international relations, civil rights) than the Worse President Ever, but that he still would have been a weak incumbent in 2008 because he wouldn't have been able to fix Iraq or the economy.

And I think that's what's bothering me about this line of argument. (At this moment. I may re-evaluate this after coffee.) It should not be a part of the liberal imagination that we only want power when we're assured of success, that it will be an easy road to re-election and a amenable to a long view. I don't think reality works like that.

Moreoever, I believe that should Obama win today, it's going to be like that scene in the Wire with Carcetti and the story about the silver loving cups full of crap. The man would be inheriting a recession, a foreign policy nightmare, and the Republican base is going to continue to froth at the mouth for four years. Transformational? Universal health care? Maybe. Also entirely possible that he's a one-term mediocre President due to events that eat his progressive agenda.

So part of my reaction here is grounded in skepticism that Obama will usher in a new progressive age that makes up for 2004-2008. I dearly hope so, but there's too much work ahead for me to be able to say with confidence that a second Bush administration was worth it because it set up an Obama presidency.

[Ben Alpers]

Also entirely possible that he's a one-term mediocre President due to events that eat his progressive agenda.

And due to the fact that he doesn't have a really progressive agenda to begin with, especially on the foreign-policy front.

It's safe to say that Kerry would have been less bad than Bush. How much less bad? We'll never know.

And now it's safe to say that Obama will be less bad than McCain. And that, for better or for worse, has been enough to determine my vote (and donations) this election cycle.

[Ugh]

How about an election day open thread?

[Dave S.]

Those who argue that the lives lost in Katrina, or squandered in Iraq for that matter, will be "balanced out" by those saved through future improved healthcare should go to the Lower Ninth Ward and try that line of reasoning.

I'm with Hilzoy on this: I want the (needlessly) dead back.

[Sebastian]

Sadly, as I voted for him in 2004, I have to admit that we as a country would have likely been much better off with a Bush win.

He has been horrible in all sorts of ways, but I find it weird that people are focusing on all sorts of things in which a Kerry administration would likely not have been different.

Dead American soldiers? Do you remember the 2004 campaign? At the time, the surge was Kerry’s idea not Bush’s. I suppose you could argue that if it had been done in early 2005 instead of early 2007 that it would have worked better, but I don’t think there is a lot of evidence for that. Would Kerry have gotten out early enough that some soldiers might have been saved, perhaps even Andy? Perhaps. But that doesn’t seem clear

Katrina? I’m willing to stipulate that Bush could have done a lot better in the aftermath, but an enormous part of the Katrina disaster was people just not leaving the city for the hurricane. There were lots of non-federal reasons why that happened.

For me the worst part of the Bush administration is the institutionalized corruption. Corruption exists everywhere, but the US has historically been able to keep a little bit above world norms on it. But Bush seemed determined to dive down right past Italy and try to embrace Russian levels of corruption. And that did indeed touch on all areas of the Bush administration, making good decisions turn out badly, and bad decisions turn out horribly. And that touched on all the areas of complaint (the war, Katrina, taxes) but also had an incredibly corrosive effect on the national trust in general which I believe is worse than many of the specific manifestations.

Civilization is built on institutional trust. You trust the sewage people to get the sewage away from your toilet. You trust the water people to deliver something you can drink. You trust the gas people to give you a product that will run your car. A million little things that you never verify make it possible for us to operate in our society. Corruption exists, but for the most part it doesn’t touch on those types of things in a modern Western country. Bush’s level of corruption didn’t directly threaten that trust, but it called it into question more than anyone in recent history. And if we have to constantly question and take measures against problems like “can I drink this water” and “is the sewage going away from my toilet” things are going to grind to a halt.
Bush had a level of corruption so deep that it reached toward even the most basic things.

The reason I voted for Obama is that the Republican party as a whole became to entrenched in that corruption. McCain wasn’t a clone of Bush, but he was tied much too closely to the things that were breeding institutional mistrust.
The Democratic Party isn’t as far from those things as many of you seem to think, but Obama isn’t intimately tied to many of the corrupt areas of the Democratic Party. So I’m willing to take a chance on it.

Kerry would have been better than Bush, but I will admit that I’m happier to see a Democratic President ascendant (hopefully…) without being as tied to the Washington establishment as Kerry would have been. What does that mean for the past? Who knows. But as far as that goes, I’m happy that things look to be working out that way.

Of course I’d rather have Andy back…

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

One refreshing thing about this cycle is that I don't think I've heard one American liberal actually say "we'll be better off if we lose this one."

I have, however, heard people who think Obama would make a better President still not want to vote for him "because he might get assassinated, and that would spark race wars that would destroy the country."

I don't know how to argue against that without going into "Shame on you for being a coward!" territory. The closest I can get is, "We survived many political assassinations already; I think we'd survive that one." But how convincing is that to someone who's genuinely afraid?

[shep]

As one who blogged and voted for Kerry (and also wanted him to win), I argued at the time that it might be better for everyone if he were to lose and the reason wasn't so Democrats could win some future election. We needed for the public to come to its senses about the conservative movement and Republicanism and they needed a more dramatic and obvious failure to wake up and send Republicans to the political wilderness (where they belong) for a long, long time.

I'm not about to do any math with people's lives but you can bet your ass that many, many people will be better off if we can drive a stake in the black heart of conservatism once and for all.

[Batocchio]

I agree completely, and thanks for articulating it so well.