What if kerry won

I do know this is a reason why I think it is very hard to forecast the net impact of a single election. Do you remember the furor and then the agony from ? Email Address. Alex Tabarrok Email Alex Follow atabarrok. Tyler Cowen Email Tyler Follow tylercowen. Webmaster Report an issue. Toggle navigation. You've been successfully added to the Marginal Revolution email subscription list. Learn More. Subscribe via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to updates. On March 13, , five Swift boats were returning to base together on the Bay Hap river from their missions that day, after a firefight earlier in the day during which time Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker , and debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village.

They approached a fishing weir a series of poles across the river for hanging nets , so that one group of boats went around left, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's 94 boat went around right along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 completely into the air.

James Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard PCF, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.

After the crew of PCF-3 had been rescued, and the most seriously wounded sailors evacuated by two of the PCFs, PCF 94 and another boat remained behind and helped salvage the stricken boat together with a damage-control party that had been immediately dispatched to the scene. After Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to re-assignment away from combat duties. Navy records show that Kerry's preferred choice for re-assignment was as an aide in Boston, New York or Washington, D.

On March 26, , after a final patrol the night before, Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await his orders. He was there for five or six days and left Vietnam in early April. On April 11, , he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech.

On January 1, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full Lieutenant. He was discharged from active duty on March 1, He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February Kerry lost at least five friends in the war including Yale classmate Richard Pershing, who was killed in action on February 17, Then numbering about 20,, VVAW was considered by some including the administration of President Richard Nixon to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement.

On April 22, , Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. Wearing green fatigues and service ribbons, he spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been named the Fulbright Hearing, after the Chairman of the proceedings, Senator J.

Kerry began with a prepared speech, in which he presented the conclusions of the Winter Soldier Investigation, and then went on to address larger policy issues. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war.

Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence.

Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: "I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try to make this country wake up once and for all.

No Sir! Because Kerry was a decorated veteran who took a stand against the government's official position, he was frequently interviewed by broadcast and print media. He was able to use these occasions to bring the themes of his Senate testimony to a wider audience. In the Washington Star newspaper June 6, , he recounted how he and other Swift boat officers had become disillusioned by the contrast between what the leaders told them and what they saw: "That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam.

He responded: "There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.

I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down.

And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals. Kerry's prominence also made him a frequent leader and spokesman at antiwar events around the country in The event sought to tie antiwar activism to patriotic themes. Over the Memorial Day weekend, veterans and other participants marched from Concord to a rally on Boston Common.

The plan was to invoke the spirit of the American Revolution and Paul Revere by spending successive nights at the sites of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, culminating in a Memorial Day rally with a public reading of the Declaration of Independence. The second night of the march, May 29, , was the occasion for Kerry's only arrest, when the participants tried to camp on the village green in Lexington.

At AM on May 30, , local and state police awoke and arrested demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW. In February , after Kerry previously passed on an opportunity to run in another district, his wife, Julia bought a house in Worcester.

Residence there would have required Kerry to run for Congress against an incumbent Democrat, Harold D. Instead however, the couple rented an apartment in Lowell. The incumbent in that district, F. Bradford Morse, was a Republican who was thought to be retiring.

Counting Kerry, the Democratic primary race in had 10 candidates. One of these was State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia of Lawrence. On the eve of the September primary, Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J.

Vallely, both then 22 years old, were found by police in the basement of this building, where the telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with "breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny", but the case was dismissed about a year later. At the time of the incident, DiFruscia alleged that they were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts.

Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut. Although Kerry's campaign was hurt by the election-day report of the arrest, he still won the primary, narrowly beating state Representative Paul J.

DiFruscia placed third. Kerry lost in Lawrence and Lowell, his chief opponents' bases, but placed first in 18 of the district's 22 towns. In the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former state Representative Paul W.

Cronin, and an independent, Roger P. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative Sun. The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his "carpetbagging", because he had moved into the district only in April. Subsequently released "Watergate" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon.

The final blow came when, four days before the election, Durkin withdrew in favor of Cronin. Cronin won the election, becoming the only Republican to be elected to Congress that November in a district carried by Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern. After Kerry's defeat, he and his wife bought a house in Lowell. He decided that the best way for him to continue in public life was to study law[citation needed].

In July , while attending law school, Kerry was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.

He received his Juris Doctor J. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J.

After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in , he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor. In that position, Kerry had dual roles. First, he tried cases, winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. Second, he played a role in administering the office of the district attorney by initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and of witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities.

It was in this role in that Kerry announced an investigation into possible criminal charges against then Senator Edward Brooke, regarding "misstatements" in his first divorce trial. In , Kerry resigned from the District Attorney's office to set up a private law firm with another former prosecutor.

And, although his private law practice was a success, Kerry was still interested in public office. He re-entered electoral politics by running for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and won a narrow victory in the Democratic primary. The ticket, with Michael Dukakis as the gubernatorial candidate, won the general election without difficulty. The position of Lieutenant Governor carried few inherent responsibilities. Dukakis, however, delegated additional matters to Kerry.

In particular, Kerry's interest in environmental protection led him to become heavily involved in the issue of acid rain. His work contributed to a National Governors Association resolution in that was a precursor to the amendments to the federal Clean Air Act. During his campaign, Kerry had argued that nuclear evacuation planning was "a sham intended to deceive Americans into believing they could survive a nuclear war". Once in office, he drafted an Executive Order condemning such planning, which Dukakis signed despite having lost the presidential election.

The junior U. Senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry decided to run for the seat. As in his race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Again as in , however, he prevailed in a close primary.

In his campaign, he promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. As the Democratic candidate, he was elected to the Senate despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin.

In his acceptance speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts "emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens. Senator in January John Edwards D-North Carolina. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, , primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico.

Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. On November 3, , Kerry emerged victorious after narrowly defeating Bush in the final state of Ohio and officially ended the Bush-Clinton dynasty. The end result was Kerry winning It was this win that split the United States apart by another four years because while current sources on this site says he narrowly beat his opponent President George W.

Bush were on the West Coast were celebrating as President Bush had just been re-elected for another four years. This announcement came many hours even after California polling had closed and absentee ballots were counted but it wasn't until the next morning on November 4th the day after election day and after everything had been verified were they able to announce that it was President Bush and not John Kerry as first believed that won this election.

This fateful election and the choices that were made from that point have led us to where we are today and the four year time difference that was dealt. So what a predicament and better question what should be done now because many went to bed election night believing that John Kerry would be the next President of the United States. A closed door meeting of minds led to a decision to speed up the time in the people that knew Bush would be returning for his second term as president of the United States while slowing down the time and using careful edited information those who believed it to be John Kerry that defeated the current President Bush.

How could this have happened? How could the world that was so carefully scripted and slow have sped up so fast and now has surpassed those who have always lived ahead?