Just Sad

I am getting seriously sick of discussing the election. Good thing there are only nine more days until the vote, then two months of recounts and legal wrangling, then four more years of griping and backbiting by the losing team.

No, really I don't think it will be that close. I think the undecideds and persuadables are going to break for Kerry, barring any major pro-Bush news, and he should end up with around 300 EV, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Mexico.

What's sad to me (and what I am referencing in the title) is this. It's a comment thread from Tucker Eskew's blog, where the Bush-supporting posters demand to know how anyone could support Kerry and hand a recruiting victory to Zarqawi. They really want to know this.

This is an election, people. If we always supported an incumbent when we could attribute some shadowy motive to a foreign enemy, there would be a perverse incentive for sitting presidents to seek out or even create such an enemy.

Even if it would be a recruiting victory for Zarqawi, I would still vote against Bush, who has been a worse president than any executive in my lifetime. I refuse to vote for a man whose administration:

Argued that it had the power to label a U.S. citizen an enemy combatant and then detain them indefinitely without access to courts or counsel.

Used a moment of national tragedy to pursue a foreign military adventure that members of the administration had been planning since the early 1990's.

Sold tax cuts during the first campaign as returning surplus money to the people, then sold the exact same tax cuts as an economic stimulus when that surplus evaporated in new projections, then cut taxes annually for the length of the administration, despite national tragedy, continuing economic hardship, and a costly foreign war.

Appointed industry lobbyists to oversee regulation of their own once and future employers.

and the list goes on, and on, and on.