Hacker News Reader

Comment by Qz | Hacker News Reader

I keep telling myself, this has to be better than if we'd elected McCain -- right?

Back in 1999, there were a lot of people who took the position of "Doesn't matter if it's Gore or Bush, they're both just as bad." I'm pretty sure no one who had that sentiment before still holds that notion.

It's a lot better than if we elected McCain/Palin, yes.

I suspect McCain/Palin probably would have been better - they would have spent too much time fighting with congress to do any real damage. The more they fight with each other, the less time and effort they have to go after us.

Remember how awesome the Clinton years were? Clinton and Biden tried to push their own Patriot act [1], and Congress hated them so much that they shot it down.

[1] Biden has described the Patriot act as being basically a copy of his "Omnibus Counterterrorism Act" from 1995.

While I'm no fan of George W. Bush, it's hard to hypothesize about a past that never happened. So while not many people have that sentiment today, that's only because we picked one and didn't get to see what the other would've done.

While sometimes it's hard to hypothesize, there are other times when you've done enough research on the topic to make a very astute guess.

I imagine that, by now, you've read The Onion's absurdly prescient "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'" from January 17, 2001 -- http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nigh...

Maybe I have different ideals than the original poster that I replied to, but I feel confident in saying that yes, we are better off not having elected McCain/Palin.

“While the Internet has provided tremendous opportunity for the creators of copyrighted works, including music and movies, to distribute their works around the world at low cost, it has also given rise to a global epidemic of piracy,” reads his plan. “John McCain supports efforts to crack down on piracy, both on the Internet and off.”

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9702/mccain_no_netneutrality_ne...

If nothing else, having a Congress and President of different parties probably would have changed the situation where this would have dropped off the map on the priority list given the current economic realities. Particularly since McCain is also a Senator who has never been a governor of a state which means he (like President Obama) hasn't been through a real budget cycle or done legislation from the executive side. Aides are great but don't seem to be compensating.

Big business is a huge influencer of both major US parties. With Dems, you get unions and Hollywood. With Reps, you get oil and industrial agriculture.

Lesser of two evils! Woo hoo!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com