I said something very similar to my fiancé (now wife) during the 2002 midterm elections while we were watching the outcomes. Basically I said that having Republican majorities in everything might be a good thing in the sense that everyone would be so disgusted that there'd be a left-leaning majority for decades as a result.

I don't know that Republican control will ever have the kind of effect I hoped for and that you now are claiming is possible. Not to mention the fact that it will take literally decades of positive steps forward to regain what we had in 2000 for environmental statutes, judicial fairness, and international prestige. (And who's to say that future presidents, if Kerry *is* elected, would share his desire to fix the problems?)

Unfortunately, the sad fact is that, even if the education system started telling the truth (i.e. that liberalism has been a good thing for history as a general rule) to everyone rather than only in certain parts of the country, we are saddled with right-wing nutjobs for the long term. This is because of two simple facts:

1) It is illegal to kill or imprison them without just cause (and rightfully so).
2) Parents always have the potential for more influence than schools do.

Combine the two and you get the fact that the wingers of today will continue to perpetuate their filth indefinitely. If everyone in America was open to new opinions and facts, there might be hope for reasoned democracy again. But we unfortunately fall prey to the Forrest Gump principle that stupid is as stupid does. And stupid does a damn lot.

Scary, cynical, and wildly impractical.

The pragmatic in you says, parenthetically, "Of course, there might not be a vote!" And maybe, by that, you mean to indicate that the whole post is meant as a joke. But the reality is that there is a sort of rachet-mechanism (how I think of it) that locks in movement in one direction or the other. There's no pendulum that inevitably swings back and forth, certainly not in the short- to medium-term. "And in the long term, we're all dead," as J.K. Galbraith said, once upon a time.

The time scale for some of these things is generations. For myself, when I wonder about the importance of carrying on the struggle in every moment, I consider the retrograde motion of post-Reconstruction in the 1870s and '80s, which locked in dynamics that persisted in our legal apparatus for nearly a century (Jim Crow segregation and anti-union/pro-corporate legal framework). The tactics used today by Republicans (e.g., threatening black voters with prison for minor violations) are an echo of those times we would have thought were long past.

Then with such issues as nuclear proliferation and greenhouse warming, militarization of global conflicts, I wonder if we even have the time to lose by giving way now, hoping to make it up later. We can give way to "history" -- as the GOP-right see it -- and hope to climb on board the pendulum when it swings back the other way in 2008, or 2012?, or 2016?, but do we want to live in the world that accrues from decisions made by OUR elected representatives between now and then? Sorry, bub, it's on us, now, to do what we can to stop and defuse the current dynamic.

Wow, someone took their pessimist pill this morning. Kerry will win and its the best thing that could happen for this country. Four more years on the road to destruction won't "wake people up", it will only result in us being in an even worse jam. And guess what? If Bush wins the Dem that takes over in 4 years gets the blame, not Bush. Do you really think that the Republican FUD and media machine will let Bush go down in flames? Think they won't shield him for the next twenty years and then write revisionist history that blames the other side? Your be wrong then.

The best thing that could happen is Kerry wining. If that means 4 years of -gates on every little matter then so be it. The alternative and your thoughts about rolling over are much worse. What your waiting for will never happen.