|
Edited on Mon Feb-23-04 09:28 AM by Armstead
Here is the main problem I have with John Kerry.
He is a good man, and would probably make a fine president. So please don't construe this as an attack.
Politically, I think with Kerry we get the worst of all worlds, because he is so nebulous. He is a tepid DLC centrist who has some acceptable liberal positions. He has done some great things in the past, but he's also been an opportunist, and he has too often gone with the kind of policies that alienate both liberals and conservatives.
The problem in terms of "electability" is that his basic elitism and his centrist policies bother the liberal and progressive "base" and don't address the source of their dissatisfaction.
But he is just enough of a liberal to really upset the conservatives, and will open him up to an all out attack. And quite possibly,after the GOP does its job on him, he will seem too "risky" and "too left" to too many swing moderates and they will go for Bush.
I'm not one of those who thinks we ought to be defensive and avoid liberal and progressive values simply because conservatives will attack them. In that sense, I echo Kerry in saying "Bring it on."
However, it's the vague pandering and the amorphous mix of positions that gets us into trouble.
The thing is, no matter how "moderate" Kerry tries to be, he is gonna get blastd as an ultra liberal anyway. The conservative press and Bush machine are already pulling out all the stops to make him into a granola crunching peacenik, a dangerous ally of Hanoi Jane, limosine liberal, a bastard spawn of a marriage between Michael Dukakis and Ted Kennedy...and every other form of btanding him as "too far left for the mainstream" they can trot out.
So he's vulnerable to all of that. But he also is too much of an insider and DLC type to overcome the inertia that has led to.
Like with "free trade." The problem with things like NAFTA and the WTO are not just "jobs" or obscure provisions that don't get enforced.
The problem is the whole agenda of this so-called "free trade" which is to impose a corporate conservtive political model on the entire world. It is anti-democratic and ultimately anti-competition. But Kerry wants it both ways. He wants to support that agenda, while seeming to say it should be a kinder and gentler form of abuse.
He's that way on so many issues. Neither fish nor fowl.
IMO if Kerry would throw off his years of centrist conditioning and become a clear and honest liberal/progressive populist in his campaign, I believe he'd do much better than this amorphous brew the DLC still wants to serve up.
I'm not talking about mouthing empty phrases, but instead start calling a spade a spade on that and otehr issues, I think he's be a much stronger candidate. And if he would honestly address the faction of disenchanted and disgruntled that Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton represent he could win them over.
If the election is going to be about GOP conservatism vs. liberal/progressive values anyway, I believe we'd stand a much better chance it we set the terms and make it a clear fight.
|