E-Mail This Article to a Friend Good riddance The year 2004 will not be missed — but 2005 could be even worse if decent Americans fail to start fighting back

FOR THE UNITED States, 2004 was a disaster cloaked inside a false sense of triumphalism. George W. Bush’s election both symbolized the sorry state into which this country has fallen and raised fears that things will only get worse in 2005. That may sound hopelessly pessimistic. But with Bush’s Republicans controlling every branch of government, and Democrats and progressives sounding increasingly defeatist, it is hard to be otherwise. Still, we have to try.

At the international level, our misbegotten war in Iraq rages on with no end in sight. Bush tells us that we are fighting for freedom and democracy. But all that has really been accomplished is the lowering of our standing in the world community to a new depth. More than 1300 American soldiers have been killed. Thousands more have been maimed — most of them kids. Last week’s suicide attack on a US base in Mosul showed how deeply our presence in Iraq is hated, and how vulnerable our young men and women are to terrorism.

At home, our economy is in trouble, with the dollar plummeting in value, thanks in large measure to Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy. Our reliance on foreign oil, our mounting budget deficit, and rising consumer debt have all made the prosperity of the Clinton years seem like a distant memory. And the rise of the religious right to positions of real power and authority (like the presidency, for example) has even some staunch liberals wondering whether the Democrats should seek to curry favor with social conservatives by softening their traditional support for reproductive choice and gay rights. Yet if the Democrats can’t be counted on to fight for these basic human and civil rights, why, exactly, should anyone support them?

Sadly, the year ahead would appear to offer more of the same, and then some. Bush’s decision to replace Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft with loyal apparatchiks was a sign of what is to come, and there’s not much that Democrats can do about it until the congressional elections of 2006. Dumping Ashcroft, a religious-right ideologue, in favor of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, an amoral inside player who helped write the administration’s torture policy, was an especially odious move (see "Just Say No," Editorial, November 19). But Democrats say they have no plans to block the Gonzales nomination, which makes you wonder what will happen when Bush, inevitably, gets his chance to pick one, two, or more Supreme Court justices. Democrats have to start fighting back. And they have to start fighting now.

Unfortunately, Bush’s warped priorities are trickling down to the state and local level, too, aided and abetted by Governor Mitt Romney, who would love to succeed him. The tax cuts have hurt the delivery of services across the country, as Bush has essentially ended the partnership that the federal government once had with state and local leadership. A modest rollback of those cuts, targeted at the rich, would go a long way. Yet not only is that not in the offing, but Romney refuses to budge from his own no-new-taxes position, leaving the state with a structural deficit whose impact falls most heavily on the poor (see "How You’ll Feel the Pinch," News & Features).

Still, the situation in Massachusetts is not nearly as dire as it is nationally. Last spring, Romney failed in his efforts to overturn the Supreme Judicial Court’s historic Goodridge decision, which made Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. If anything, support for same-sex marriage has grown in Massachusetts since then. Voters also decisively rejected Romney’s attempt to elect more Republicans to the state legislature, dealing a blow to his overweening ambition. And, of course, Massachusetts is the home of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, whose vision of a better future was supported by nearly half the country. Perhaps it’s time to drag out those old bumper stickers from 1972: DON’T BLAME ME, I’M FROM MASSACHUSETTS.

In Boston, 2005 could be marked by the sort of political renewal that national Democrats would do well to watch. Mayor Tom Menino will be running for re-election; and though his likely challenger, City Councilor Maura Hennigan, faces an uphill fight, she can be counted on to hold Menino accountable on a wide range of issues, from the city’s rising murder rate to the continuing disappointment of the public schools. The real action, though, will take place at the level below the mayor’s office, with an engaging group of challengers — several of them young, ethnic, and/or female — seeking to unseat an incumbent or two on the city council (see "Talking Politics," page 14).

The city’s spate of good publicity in 2004, cemented by the successful Democratic National Convention and the Red Sox’ World Series victory, should continue as the leak-plagued, monumentally expensive Big Dig finally moves to completion and the redevelopment of the former Central Artery land gets under way, with at least two new museums scheduled to be built.

If only prospects were as bright at the national level. In addition to the ongoing horror of the war, we now live in a country where the rights, even the safety, of lesbians and gay men are at risk; where the environment is under continuous assault; where defending civil liberties for foreigners, and even for Americans, is denounced as supposedly being weak on terrorism; where the legally guaranteed right of abortion is threatened; and where, in too many circles, Bush’s narrow victory is interpreted as a sign that constitutional democracy itself has grown decadent and irrelevant, and should be replaced by something approaching a theocracy.

The America of 2005 is not a country of our making — far from it. But if we want it to change, to better reflect the humane, progressive vision of most of its citizens, we must not wallow in our bitterness. We have to fight back.

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