I heard some woman on ABC saying that this is not what it seems. According to her, the president never wanted Ashcroft but he was forced on him by the religious right. This rumor is being pushed by those in the bush administration who want him out right away before some shit hits the fan (Plame? Kenny Boy?)
Whatever. It occurred to me that if we had a good message machine we would immediately seize upon this to sow divisions between Bush and his newly empowered evangelical base. They love Johnny. Isn’t it a slap in the face that their beloved Bush is pushing him out of office the day after the election?
Divide and conquer, baby. It’s just one of many hardball tactics we must begin to use to break the stranglehold in advance of the 2006 elections. It could be our ’94.
I noticed that there seems to be a lot of discussion around the left blogosphere about the Democratic party not knowing what it stands for. This has been picked up by Howard Fineman who is busy telling everyone who’ll listen that we stand for nothing. I’m a little bit stunned by this and so is The Poor Man.
Obviously, I have no objection to people coming up with new ideas, but I hardly think this is really a problem of the Democratic Party. It is absolutely clear what the Democrats stood for in this election – a generally conservative set of principles based on sixty-plus years of Democratic and bipartisan American thought and action. Respect for the importance of time-tested international alliances, and for the system for resolving global issues through the UN and other international bodies which has evolved over the last century. A measured approach to dealing with foreign relations, a recognition that there are always many crises to be juggled at once, and a disinclination to overextend or rely on ‘magic bullet’ or utopian solutions. Striking a balance between business and labor which benefits both, and judicious use of the state to resolve problems for which the private sector is poorly suited. Fiscal responsibility. A tolerence of difference, a respect for ability and expertise, and a dedication to the ideals of the woman’s rights, civil rights, and labor movements. An America like the America we grew up in and believed in, only maybe a bit better, which stands for and gains its strengths from these common values which are our heritage.
There you go. In a piece from the primaries some months back, I wrote that any Democrat would run basically on the following platform:
To protect and defend the citizens of the United States.
To preserve the separation of church and state
To safeguard the right to choose.
To provide a decent safety net
To preserve progressive taxation
To protect the environment
To advance civil liberties and civil rights
To govern transparently
To provide opportunity
To promote equality
To advance progress
To preserve the American way of life
I don’t think there is all that much question about what we stand for. However, as The Poor Man points out, that has almost nothing to do with how we are perceived by millions of Americans who tune in the Mighty Wurlitzer for their “news.” There has been a decades long attack on liberalism that has demonized us into a party of stoned slackers and caffeinated porno consumers. (More projection. They don’t call Delay “Hot Tub Tom” for nothing.) This character assasination made it possible for a president to be elected with a totally incoherent set of “values” that could only have been designed by someone cobbling together a governing coalition of deaf, dumb and blind people who cannot read.
They didn’t win the campaign because they have a coherent ideology and we didn’t. Rupert Murdock and Jerry Falwell are not pursuing the same goals. “Democracy” and Ilyiad Allawi do not belong in the same sentence. Radical tax cutting and running wars to the tune of a billion a day is not fiscal responsibility. Bigotry is not compassionate and destroying the safety net we’ve depended on for more than half a century is not conservative.
These people aren’t united by a common ideology or set of values. They are united by a common hatred of Democrats, fueled by a massive propaganda machine. They won this campaign by putting on a trash talking spectacle starring George W. Bush as Commander Codpiece. (Those who wanted to ban gay marriage got in two for the price of one.) The problem is that show biz conservatism has become the default channel for more Americans. It’s about identity, not ideology.
In the grand tradition of knee jerk analysis, I am hearing all over the television and the blogosphere that we need to reach out to the religious people who voted for George W. Bush in order to win in the future. We must reject our “Hollywood values” and learn to embrace the real, American heartland values that George W. Bush personifies and which won him the election. One Democrat named Dave Strother just said that the Democrats have to purge themselves of the coasts or risk oblivion.
I wish that just once we would recognise when we are being played. The reason Bush won is because he eked out a victory in Ohio, period. That is the only number that matters in this presidential election and it doesn’t represent a gigantic sea change in America. Bush won that small victory in Ohio because an unprecedented number of conservative evangelicals came out to vote. And, the “American Heartland value” that energized them was an amendment to the state constitution that not only defined marriage as between a man and a woman but also barred public institutions, such as universities, from providing health insurance and other benefits to domestic partners.
“This was the issue that delivered Ohio for President Bush,” said Phil Burress, who spearheaded the Issue 1 campaign. “We mailed out 2.5 million bulletins to 17,000 churches. We called 2.9 million homes and identified 850,000 supporters. We called every one of those supporters on Monday and urged them to vote Yes on 1.”
(I guess we now know why they panicked about Mary Cheney, don’t we? )
My question is this. Is there any combination of issues upon which we Democrats could accomodate these people that doesn’t include backing anti-gay measures like that? In other words, as long as the Democratic party believes in equal rights for gay people is there a snowball’s chance in hell that we will be able to tear the religious vote away from the party that doesn’t with outreach to “heartland values?”
I doubt it. In fact, I think that we are talking about a wedge issue that is insurmountable. Civil rights are a fundamental matter of principle, not a position on specific programs or tax cut legislation. And I don’t see any possibility that we will be able to make inroads with people who believe that homosexuality is a sin as a matter of bedrock religious belief. We can field a candidate who runs a campaign like a tent revival, but this is one of those issues that can’t be finessed. As long as we believe in the separation of church and state and back civil rights for gays we are not going to get the conservative Christian vote. We just aren’t.
If gay rights is the deciding factor for the forseeable future, then I think we may lose for a while. But, it won’t be. It’s really not a matter of law as much a matter of society getting used to the idea and it is happening very quickly. Gay marriage wasn’t even on the radar screen ten years ago — until the last couple of years, everybody had been growing used to the idea of civil unions, which even Junior has endorsed. My guess is that they won’t be able to find an anti-gay measure to put on the ballot every election and as a result they won’t be able to repeat this turn-out in the crucial states where they need it. This was a unique combination of Junior’s phony born again image and the gay rights issue converging.
Pinning this election defeat on an alleged lack of “moral values” is short sighted and it plays right into Republican hands. The Republicans consistently use that club to beat us over the head again and again while they fervently watch the Falafel Factor and listen to Rush as he pops little blue babies between attacks on the Democratic party’s hedonism. They only believe in strict moral values when it’s somebody they don’t like. This is political posturing and we are fools to let them use it to marginalize our 50% of the population.
There are competing values in this world and you can’t be all things to all people. The election was won with 130,000 or so conservative evangelical votes in one state. That is decisive enough to declare victory in the election, but it is far too slim a margin to make the sweeping decision that the Democratic party needs to shelve its values of tolerance and civil rights to accomodate certain religious beliefs that are incompatible with them. The religious people are welcome to their beliefs, of course, but it’s something on which we cannot compromise and have any of our own values left. (Oddly, I think that the truly religious people, as opposed to the poseur majority of republicans, might just understand that.)
I maintain that many people simply want a president whose image fits the role of president. Most of them vote on the basis of how the person makes them feel. They may like a little religion talk because it’s code for a certain cultural ID and leadership archetype they feel comfortable with. And they want some personality in their leader, professionally presented as if it’s authentic. Many of them are religious, (and they may have voted to ban gay marriage) but they are not driven to the polls on the conservative values agenda. Their motivation is not issues, although they tend to assign their preferred issues and solutions to their preferred candidate regardless of the reality. What they care about is style. Some of these people voted happily for Reagan, Clinton, Perot and Junior and see nothing remotely inconsistent in that. Those people we can reach with message, presentation and the right candidate.
The truly committed religious right,however, said to be 22 percent of this last electorate, is simply not obtainable. To even contemplate jettisoning our deeply held values to pander to them is useless and immoral.
But, get ready. The media are lazy and love the storyline of the wicked, hedonistic liberals being ignominiously defeated by the righteous salt of the earth Republicans. They are going to flog this until we are all convinced that the entire country is made up of conservative Christian Republicans and the rest of us are a bunch of freaks — even the moderate and liberal Christians. Everyone will agree that the hope of the party is to abandon the coasts (with all their electoral votes, presumably.) But, just because they like a narrative it doesn’t make it true. If we have learned anything over the years I would hope that at least we have learned that.
Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don’t go around peeing on the furniture and such.
I was listening to Sean Hannity gloat yesterday as we were driving back from Nevada. His guest was Zell Miller. They both agreed that Democrats were completely out of step with nation and that’s why Bush was given this huge mandate. Dems refused to see that you cannot raise taxes, that you must fight evil abroad where ever you see it and that people have the right to practice their religion anywhere and everywhere they see fit. Perhaps, most egregiously, Democrats didn’t understand that you cannot be vicious and angry and expect the real Americans to sit back and take it.
They were both very hopeful that Democrats would learn civility (or was that servility, I couldn’t tell) and reach across the aisle and behave in a bipartisan manner by adopting the Republican agenda.
I screamed, “fuck you,assholes” into the vast emptiness of the high desert. I don’t think anyone heard me.
Like so many things in life, huge disappointment doesn’t come as such a shock when you stop and think about it. There are always signs.
First, let me make one small point. Bush’s large margin in the popular vote is probably too big. They are still counting absentee ballots in the west and there are tons of them. In California there were almost five million mailed out. Al Gore, if you recall, was not secure as the winner of the popular vote for several days when all of these far west absentee votes started to trickle in from California, Oregon and washington.
Here’s a little trip down memory lane from november 9th of 2000, two days after the election:
There are 1.1 million outstanding in California, absentees that haven’t been counted, (and) 900,000 that haven’t been counted in Washington,” said Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Gans added that another 400,000 remain untallied in New York.
In addition, because Oregon attempted an all-mail voting system, about 300,000 votes remained out Thursday, Gans said.
“And then there are scatterings of votes in other places, including Alaska, whose votes are highly incomplete,” he said. “There are more than enough votes to close a 200,000 vote gap.”
Gore does lead in the unofficial tally of the popular vote — but by a narrow and changing margin. On Election Night, he was running behind by half a million votes. By the next day, he led by about 250,000 votes.
By Thursday afternoon his lead over Bush had shrunk to less than 200,000 votes — out of more than a 100 million counted for all candidates.
To be sure, Bush will maintain his lead in the popular vote, but it may not be by the large margin that has all the gasbags breathlessly proclaiming his glorious mandate. A lot more people voted absentee this year than in the past. The fact is that Bush’s popular vote lead mostly comes from a higher turnout in red states. That does not exactly make for a broad mandate. Not that it makes any difference in how Bush will govern. We already learned that the hard way.
This nation is essentially where we were four years ago, the people frozen in position like those horrible scenes from Pompeii. It was deja vu all over again, only this time Florida was Ohio and Bush got a bigger turn-out in the south. Other than the shift of New Hampshire and New Mexico, the red and blue map remains as it has been. The coasts, the midwest and the northeast are one America. The rest of the country is another. More precisely, we now have Democratic city states in the midst of a Republican nation state, each equal in population and diametrically opposed politically. It’s very interesting and highly unusual.
This was always going to be very close because it was always going to be very hard in wartime to prevail against the CW that Republicans are stronger on national security. We were right to believe fervently in the cause and put everything we had into it. It was clearly possible for us to win. But, the reality is that we were scaling a very high wall.
Bush has one of the most effective political machines in history behind him and, more importantly, the full power and majesty of the presidency to help him win. In the last days of the campaign he was landing in football stadiums on the Marine 1 helicopter with fireworks exploding to the tune of “Danger Zone.” That’s a wartime image that’s hard to beat — particularly if your adoring audience is predisposed to love that kind of faux military spectacle.
It’s never easy to unseat an incumbent president and it usually only happens when the country is in palpable economic distress. This was a partisan election and we simply didn’t have quite enough votes (whether to overcome his authetic lead or his rigged machines, either one) despite a valiant effort and plenty of money.
I’m too weary and dispirited right now to get into the inevitable fight that’s gearing up within the party, but suffice to say I don’t agree that we lost because we weren’t liberal enough. But, neither was it because we weren’t culturally conservative enough or populist enough.
I believe it was simply because we weren’t entertaining enough and that’s the sad truth. I think that Democrats are serious, earnest and substantive people. We are the reality-based community. And I think we top out at about forty eight percent of the population.
For everybody else politics is show business, whether in religious, political or media terms. Image trumps substance,charisma and personality trump everything. I don’t find George W. Bush appealing in any way because my vision of an attractive politician is that he be smart, competent and rhetorically talented. But, to many people, politics is interesting because of the spectacle and the tribal competition and they just aren’t interested in any other aspects of it. (See the PEW poll.) Oh, they mouth all the right platitudes about values and all, but this is not about governing for them because they have been taught that government is only relevant to their lives in that it houses their enemies — liberals who want to take things from them and force things on them. This is a reality TV show and they want to vote someone off the island.
It’s clear that a small majority of the country buy Junior’s “Top-Gun” act. His youthful failures are seen as acts of anti-hero rebelliousness. His smart ass attitude is the sign of a macho rogue. He isn’t the smartest guy in the class and he’s often in trouble, but he’s a fearless warrior when it counts. His image is of a fun loving rascal who found himself in an extraordinary position and rose to the occasion. I know it’s bullshit, but that’s the archetype that his handlers have laid upon him and it’s a role he plays with relish.
We have always chosen leaders for superficial as well as substantive reasons. It’s not fair to say that Democrats aren’t seduced by their own archetypal dreamboats. But, Bush is a new paradigm and we need to study him and recognize its power. He is a character created out of whole cloth by marketing and political people for the single purpose of appealing to a specific portion of the population that can guarantee a small political majority without having to compromise in any way with the opposition to enact an agenda. He’s the first gerrymandered president.
Will Saletan gets to the nub of one of the qualities that seem to be required to make this work:
Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don’t – and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don’t believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.
Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. “Government must do a few things and do them well,” he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states- Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire- don’t matter if Bush reels in the big ones.
This is what so many people like about Bush’s approach to terrorism. They forgive his marginal and not-so-marginal screw-ups, because they can see that fundamentally, he “gets it.” They forgive his mismanagement of Iraq, because they see that his heart and will are in the right place. And while they may be unhappy about their economic circumstances, they don’t hold that against him. What you and I see as unreflectiveness, they see as transparency. They trust him.
Schwarzenneger is another example. He comes with the movie star appeal, of course, but his political talent is to speak like a cartoon character and entertain the audience as if he is at a film junket in Cannes. It doesn’t matter one iota what he actually does as long as he says things like this:
This is what I love about election day, because when the people flex their muscles, then the state gets much stronger.
Tha-tha-tha-tha-that’s entertainment folks. The Republicans have clearly figured out that they can get a thin majority by fielding charismatic candidates who speak like children. They don’t even have to make sense.
We know from the polling that most of Bush’s supporters are misinformed about his positions on the issues, so it’s not a matter of backing his agenda. They don’t know what it really is. And his religious base may believe that moral values are their highest priority, but since they are so very forgiving of their right wing brethren (Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Bennet,Gingrich, Swaggert, Bakker) when they stray from the straight and narrow, it’s pretty clear that their high moral standards are extremely selective. I heard over and over again this election, people who said, “he looks you in the eye,” as a reason for voting for him. That’s not character. That’s performance.
If, as the gasbags pontificating about all day, the Democrats decide that our “problem” is that we aren’t appealing to the heartland conservative values, they need to think again. It’s not about the substance of Republican appeals to values, it’s about the style with which they do it and the level of pure, primitive tribal identification they provide. It would be a grave mistake to misunderstand this slim electoral majority as a comment on real values. It’s a comment on production values. The Republicans have ’em and we don’t.
I’ve bever been a big believer in the ground game as the be all and end all of politics even in close races. I certainly think it is essential, but I don’t think knocking on doors and talking to earnest neighbors is the way people make political decisions in this day and age. I think people pretty much live in a media constructed reality and that’s where the votes are gathered.
We have a nascent infrastructure in place with a bunch of smart and dedicated people who must be called upon to sustain the momentum and make it grow. We didn’t lose by very much. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.
The battle begins anew today. Our agenda is more popular. The substance of our message is what people say they want, (except they credit the republicans with giving it to them.) It’s our politicians’ image and style that aren’t making the grade in the new post modern politics. It’s not because they wouldn’t be terrific at actually doing the job. But that is substantially different and apart from special effects campaigning, image management and public relations, all of which supercede all other necessary qualities to get elected today.
John Kerry is the most qualified man to be president in my lifetime. And he might have won except for one thing. He couldn’t fill the role that certain voters require in a president in this era — he just wasn’t enough of an archetypal TV hero. That’s no knock on him, it’s a knock on America. I know it’s not politic to say it, but a majority of this country are obviously dumb as posts. Still, it’s the only country we’ve got and we are going to have to come to terms with this.
Whatever the reasons, I’m devastated about this outcome, of course. But there is a silver lining. We here in the reality based community know full well that Bush and his minions have been dancing as fast as they can to get through this election. They have been desperate to avoid setting off an array of landmines with hair triggers. I am going to enjoy watching him try to deal with them as they begin to blow up in his face one by one. In many ways it is poetic justice that he is going to have to attempt to clean up the huge fetid, stinking mess he’s foisted on this country.
Too bad about the human carnage though.
And I take heart in remembering Richard Nixon. Junior is his true heir and I suspect he will have the same fate. This much corruption cannot be contained. Keep your eyes on purged members of the CIA and the State department. He may have won, but I have a feeling that Commander Codpiece may come to regret it.
There us much to recommend being the angry opposition. Watching our hated enemy squirm is one them.
Quick note. This nonsense with the robocalls is just another example of the Republicans drowning in their own kool-aid. They apparently think that minorities are as deluded and dumb as their own idiot base is so they think they can fool them like children.
Fat chance. This isn’t rural georgia in 1950. The urban minorities in this country have more political sophistication in their little fingers than the entire rural red state vote. They value the franchise and they pay attention. It is a testament to the GOP’s continued racism that they play these games, but it is also a testament to how little they understand this country in 2004. They can continue with this insulting crap and lose as this country becomes more and more diverse or they can wise up and stop the Jim Crow games.
This bullshit will not deter minority voters. They are way too smart to fall for it.
Hello, everyone. I’m out here in Sin City helping do the earnest work of getting people out to vote. Ok,ok. I may have done a teeny tiny bit of gambling when I arrived late last night, but that’s just because I was feeling lucky. Very lucky.
Blogger is bloggered as usual, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to post. I’ll try to check in several times today.
Las Vegas is Kerry country, that’s for sure. There is a much bigger presence of signs and buttons in the environs around here than Bush signs. There’s lots of public talk among strangers and it’s intense but doesn’t seem to be particularly acrimonious.
Yesterday ACT had some star power in — Sean Penn and others were walking the precincts. I’m not sure anybody gives a damn, but all citizens have a right to participate so I’m for it.
As you know, Nevada has been a hotbed of voter suppression activity. The Sproul lawsuit was denied by the Nevada Supreme Court yesterday so the people who’s votes were thrown in the trash are out of luck:
The Nevada Supreme Court refused Monday to grant an order to allow a Sparks couple that suspects their registrations were discarded by a company hired by the Republican Party to vote in today’s election.
The court ruled 5-0 that Eric Amberson and Traci Amberson should have first taken their case to a District Court. The justices ruled against the couple, although the Ambersons had copies of receipts for the voter registration forms they filled out last month. The Ambersons are Democrats, according to their lawyers.
“This court is ill-equipped to resolve factual issues, such as whether petitioners are qualified electors and whether they submitted properly completed voter registration forms,” the court stated in a brief decision.
The Ambersons registered on Oct. 2 with a canvasser outside a Reno Wal-Mart, according to court documents. When they didn’t get sample ballots by mail they became alarmed and contacted the Washoe County registrar’s office. They learned they were not registered.
The couple has receipts for the registrations that indicate their forms were among the batch given to Voter Outreach of America, a firm operated by Sproul & Associates of Chandler, Ariz. Sproul was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters..
The company is under investigation in Nevada and Oregon over allegations that workers destroyed Democrats’ voter registration forms.
Former state Supreme Court Justice Charles Springer, who represented the Ambersons, said he asked the court late Monday to rehear its decision. He said there is still a remote chance the court could reconsider and allow the couple to vote today.
“There are no questions of fact,” Springer said. “They got receipts. No one has ever denied that. They should be entitled to vote. But it may be futile now.”
Springer said it would be irresponsible to deny the couple the right to vote unless it can be shown they are lying.
According to Springer, Voter Outreach was given 4,000 voter registration forms in Clark County and 1,500 in Washoe County.
There are recent reports of bogus phone calls telling people their polling places have ben changed, for instance. Jim Crow crap in Nevada in 2004.
However, the observations of most people here is that it hasn’t deterred turn-out one iota. Most of the poeple I’ve talked to are on to this bullshit and it’s just made them more inclined to do whatever it takes to cast their vote. I’m not seing a lot of shrinking violet Democrats. The voters here are extremely well informed and they are very motivated. I’d like to see the flaccid GOP doughboy who tried to prevent these people from voting.
Wearing my Kerry button in the hotel last night (where the employees are obviously discouraged from talking politics with the paying customers) I got winks, high fives and whispers in my ears from several people — a bellman, a cocktail waitress and the desk clerk who just pointed at my button and winked. One guy just gave me a hard look and said “I feel it.” These are working people and they are engaged.
So, far I haven’t heard of any serious delays, but my knowledge is extremely limited. However, even if there are, these voters will stand in line as long as it takes. Las Vegas in the fall is just grea — clear, cool and sunny. It’s not a hardship to wait in line. Indeed, the ones I’ve observed so far seem downright jovial. There’s a bit of a party atmosphere — not surprising in the party capital of the world.
My coffee is cold and it’s time to get back out there. I’ll try to catch up on the national scene in detail later today. But, from what I’m hearing, it’s looking good. Let’s just say you couldn’t feel a lot of magic watching FOX News this morning.
We’re about to head out to Nevada to try to help those fine union, ACT and DNC people get those four electoral votes in our column. After all, Sin City will do much better under an economically successful Democratic administration when the rubes and the rich alike have enough disposable income that they can afford to throw large amounts of it away.
I’ll be blogging, documenting the massive Democratic turnout and monitoring the media atrocities. Check back frequently.
Ezra Klein has written a beautiful piece making the affirmative case for John Kerry. There is much in it that is original and thought-provoking, but I particularly like the following reflection on the merits of flexibility in a good leader:
Righteousness, as a habit, rejects certainty; in fact, the angels have a troubling predisposition to wander around issues, which makes sticking in their camp a matter of ideological flexibility as much as judgment. There’s no chasm greater than the one Kerry bridged to go from Vietnam war hero to the war’s most prominent opponent, but he was right to serve his country and right to fight for an end to the misguided slaughter. It’s a lesson he’s refused to unlearn, and one he’s spent a lifetime applying. And we need it.
I also am enthusiastic about Kerry. It’s not an ABB thing for me and never has been. Kerry is the right man at the right historical moment. He’s uniquely equipped by temperament and experience to lead in this world at this time.
Back when he won the primaries and I was still smarting from the defeat of my chosen candidate, I spent on evening reflecting and reading about John Kerry, trying to see what it was that so many of my fellow Democrats seemed to get about this guy that I hadn’t seen until he was already half way there. After all, I’d once voted for the man and had plenty of respect for him. Indeed, by the time his nomination was clinched, I thought he was a gift in many ways. A liberal in the White House seemed almost too good to be true in this day and age.
I discovered that what the Democrats in places like Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina saw was a man who was tough enough to win and tough enough to take the slings and arrows of what was going to happen to him afterwards. That flinty, Yankee determination is an all-American trait more authentic than all the faux folksiness and phony posturing that two-faced cowpoke from Kennebunkport could ever hope to conjure. And it’s a trait that people understood was vital as we deal with threats to our democracy from abroad and from within.
That night I wrote an affirmative case for Kerry, more prosaic certainly than Ezra’s fine piece, but from the heart nonetheless.
Obviously, there are many reasons any person runs for president having to do with ego and accident. After observing him for a while, I think John Kerry is responding to the call in the 30 year political civil war with the Republicans. He understands that they have become dangerously radical and that it’s time to break their hold on power. He knows this territory.
In that sense, I confess I’m surprised that liberals aren’t taking more heart in the fact that John Kerry is a card carrying fighting Massachusetts liberal. We should be thrilled that somebody as liberal as Kerry has got a chance to be president. Because let’s not kid ourselves, anybody more liberal than John Kerry is unelectable…
He’s not a crook, he’s not lazy, he’s not stupid. He’s very accomplished, he’s highly experienced and he’s got good instincts. But, I’m convinced that the most important character traits in a successful President at this point in history are resiliance and cunning; even if we win the election, politics are going to remain a bloodsport. The Republicans aren’t going to fade away. This battle is ongoing and we must have someone who can withstand a punch and come back. It is going to be very, very difficult to govern. I think Kerry is running not because he’s “electable,” but because he’s one of the few Democrats of his generation who has spent his life preparing to govern in the face of a radical political opposition. The job is not for the fainthearted…
I believe that right now the Democrats are essentially the conservative party, which means as great an emphasis on preservation as progress. This comes as a result of the two party system that places us in contrast to the radical Republican party which seeks to overturn the New Deal and dissolve the international order of the last 50 years. By necessity, our candidates are not going to be able to run on as progressive a platform as many of us might wish. One has to take into consideration the nature of the opposition and the character of the body politic when framing a case.
Kerry is not a reformer as Dean was perceived to be, nor is he a champion of a particular constituency as Gephardt was. But, perhaps at a time like this it is more helpful to judge the candidate by the quality of his enemies than his friends. His career has been about fighting bad guys, from Vietnam to Dick Nixon to BCCI.
In light of that, I believe Kerry is running for the simple reason that this time and place requires somebody who has the experience and character to keep the country secure while fighting back a rabid political opposition at home and a series of difficult threats overseas. His life has uniquely prepared him for this political moment.
He is the man called by history to bring America from the brink of radicalism from within and without. I’m grateful that he’s willing to take on this thankless task. That’s real patriotism.
