It's kind of forgotten how much liberals hated Bush in the 2000s because since Trump came along they have sort of rehabilitated Bush. But at the time liberals straight up could not believe that Bush had managed to win a second term. It seemed so obvious that Bush was a fuck up that the idea that Kerry could lose seemed unbelievable. It's kind of hard to do a "what if?" where Kerry wins, because I absolutely believe that he could have won if he had done things differently, but the version of Kerry that wins the election would be a different person to the Kerry that ran in 2004 and probably would have governed differently to how actual 2004 Kerry would have governed if he had won.
I remember seeing the scene of Kerry giving testimony against the Vietnam War in the Ken Burns documentary. And I remember thinking "this guy would have won in 2004, he seems like an actual human being." But 2004 Kerry was more like an automaton the Dems wheeled out, he needed to be willing to show the same anger he had shown in the 70s, because a lot of people were angry, some of it was anger at Bush, but I think there was a sort of frustration with the global war on terror that just turned into a sort of generalized anger directed at nothing in particular. And Kerry absolutely failed to capitalize on that, some Clintonite aide must have said something about "when they go low we go high" and Kerry believed it.
I don't think President Kerry does anything too different in Iraq to what Bush did. Howard Dean is the one that wanted to withdraw from Iraq, Kerry had this dumb triangulation strategy of "the problem with the Iraq War is that we aren't doing it properly." He might have flirted with withdrawing troops, but I think he would have been too much of a coward to go through with it. There was a definite anti-war vote in 2004 and they ended up getting behind Kerry in a "lesser of two evils" sort of way, but their hearts weren't in it. There was this very strong desire for revenge in the aftermath of 9/11, I think that was starting to break by the time the 2004 election happened, but there was still a lot of what I can only call "revenge inertia" behind Bush. And Kerry absolutely failed to neutralize that.
I think the biggest difference with a Kerry presidency is that he would have tried to do some sort of healthcare reform that probably would have ended up looking very similar to Obamacare because like Obama he would have been too much of a coward to push for a public option. Obamacare was meant to be a version of liberal healthcare that appealed to conservatives, but it just pissed off both sides and pleased nobody but the insurance companies, because liberals thought they were getting a European style system and they didn't get that, and conservatives just straight up did not want any liberal healthcare reform at all.
Obamacare led to a dem wipeout in the 2010 midterms, but Obama was a skilled enough politician that he was able to recover in 2012. I don't think Kerry could have done that after a similarly unpopular policy. On the other hand Obama really triggered conservatives on a personal level, and I don't think Kerry would have done the same because he is just so boring, there isn't much to hate with him. But then again Republicans do seem to work themselves into a frenzy over the stupidest shit, so maybe they would have found something. Anyway, I don't think he avoids the GFC, though it's impossible to say really. Maybe he would have, but I think if he did have to deal with the GFC he would have gotten the blame for it, so his reelection bid probably would have been doomed.
I feel like this is too serious of a post for an OP that contains "John Kerry and John Edwards were gay lovers," I don't think Obama would have been the nominee in 2008, gay Kerry scandal or not, the dems would have been very reluctant to change horses mid race. It took so much to get them to dump Biden and his brain straight up doesn't work anymore.
The main thing I remember about 2004 Kerry is that he was a coward who was trying to find the path of least resistance in everything he did. Liberals couldn't believe that he ended up being perceived as weak and indecisive because he actually fought in Vietnam while Bush hid out in the Texas National Guard. They didn't really get that it wasn't really a question of how bravely Kerry fought in Vietnam so much as a question of whether he would be brave enough to fight back when called out by Bush in 2004. The last thing is that liberals were just completely blind-sided by the swiftboating strategy that sank Kerry. This is when troop worship was at its height, so liberals though that by nominating a troop they could take advantage of that. They didn't really get that supporting the troops in the abstract wouldn't necessarily translate into support for a particular troop.
