What If ... ?

Here's a hypothetical for you to ponder.

What if 60,000 Ohio voters who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 had decided, instead, to vote for John Kerry?

I know the history books tell us that Bush won that election, and it may be hard to imagine him losing, but it wasn't so outlandish at the time. Kerry actually led Bush in public opinion polls through much of the campaign. He had a lot of financial support, and he did well in his debates with Bush.

And if 60,000 Ohioans had voted for Kerry instead of Bush, Kerry would have won the state — and the election.

But Bush, who got less than 50% job approval in two polls of likely voters that were released less than a week before the 2004 election, managed to win because:

• Bush exploited Kerry's own words on Iraq: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
• the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" undermined the qualification for leadership that Kerry emphasized at the national convention — his service during the Vietnam War; and
• Kerry was vulnerable to the Bush campaign's portrayal of him as a Massachusetts liberal.

At the very least, we would have had practically a reverse of what we had in 2000 — when Bush won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote. Kerry would have finished with 271 electoral votes (assuming there were no "faithless electors"), the same number Bush had four years earlier. Kerry would have lost the popular vote — by an even wider margin than Bush did — and America would have had back–to–back elections in which the president–elect was the winner only in the Electoral College. Bear in mind, though, that, in this scenario, in which only 60,000 votes in Ohio are taken from the Republican nominee and given to the Democratic nominee, the results in none of the other 49 states would be altered. And, while it is reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of those 60,000 Ohio voters also voted for the Republican Senate nominee, incumbent George Voinovich, and other Republicans on the ballot, that is more detail than this scenario calls for. Without knowing where these voters were living in 2004, it is impossible to ascertain which congressional races, if any, might have been affected. But Ohio only has 18 congressional districts, 12 of which elected Republican representatives in 2004; even if all 12 could have been reversed in this scenario (and 60,000 votes would not have been nearly enough to accomplish that), Republicans still would have held the advantage in the House. For that matter, Voinovich would not have been denied re–election if he had lost 60,000 votes. He was re–elected that year by 1.5 million votes. Obviously, the GOP's 55–44 advantage in the Senate would have been unchanged. So this would have had little, if any, influence on the party divisions that existed in Congress. All that can be said is that, if 60,000 votes in Ohio had switched from Bush to Kerry, America would have had divided government from 2005 to 2007. Clearly, certain things that happened during Bush's second term — Hurricane Katrina comes to mind — almost certainly would have happened anyway. Natural disasters happen regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Whether Kerry would have been more engaged in evacuation efforts and other preparations before Katrina made landfall is something about which we can only speculate. Likewise, it seems to me, the legal battle over Terri Schiavo that took place in the early months of 2005 would have happened whether Bush or Kerry had been elected president. But, without Bush in the White House, I believe Republicans in Congress would have been hesitant to interfere. And I definitely believe Kerry never would have signed the infamous "Palm Sunday Compromise."
Kerry probably would have had to come up with at least one Supreme Court nomination. Chief Justice William Rehnquist died of cancer in September 2005.

And, considering her husband's health problems, it seems likely that Sandra Day O'Connor would have chosen to retire when she did. She was reported, in 2000, to be reluctant to retire while a Democrat was in the White House, but who knows how she might have felt if Kerry had been president and her husband was in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease? She might well have decided her husband was more important than politics.

Whether O'Connor would have decided to retire may be in doubt, but one thing seems certain. If Kerry had been president, Harriet Miers assuredly would not have been nominated to replace her if she had.

For that matter, it seems doubtful that John Roberts would have been Kerry's choice for chief justice. In fact, Kerry was one of the 22 senators who voted against Roberts' confirmation.

Based on the rhetoric of the campaign, I assume that Kerry would have ended American military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan by the time he would have sought re–election in 2008, which certainly would have eased the budget squeeze to a certain extent.

So I guess the main question that remains is, if Kerry had been elected in 2004, would America have avoided the economic meltdown from which it continues to suffer? That may depend on whether one is inclined to believe that the problems that led to the current recession had been put in motion many years before.

Would Kerry have been able to enact policies that would have spared the nation the anguish of the recession? Or would he have had to ask the nation for a second term while the economy collapsed around him?

And who would have been Kerry's Republican challenger in 2008? Would it have been McCain? If it had been, would Sarah Palin have been his running mate? Or would the Republicans have nominated Mitt Romney under those circumstances?

Whoever got the nomination, would he have been relentless in linking the Kerry administration to the bad economy? And would Kerry have retaliated by trying to make the case that the policies that led to the downturn began under one of the Bushes — or Ronald Reagan?

What would America and the world be like today if 60,000 people in Ohio had chosen Kerry over Bush?