Kerry's Liberal: So What?

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Roger Hickey and Michael Tomasky

October 14, 2004

Despite President George W. Bush's repeated references to Ted Kennedy—we counted four—TomPaine's analysts say the president failed to make the case that Kerry's liberal leanings are a liability. To the contrary, argues The Nation's vanden Heuvel. Campaign for America's Future co-founder Hickey offers some ideas for how John Kerry can step up the rhetoric in the final days of his campaign to help voters understand why this administration pursues such reckless policies. And The American Prospect's Tomasky says it's Bush who's been flip-flopping each debate by trying out different—though unsuccessful—attack tactics.

Katrina vanden Heuvel : Kerry In The Mainstream
Roger Hickey : Bush's Special Interests Are Corporate
Michael Tomasky : Kerry's Highs And Lows

Kerry In The Mainstream

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor, The Nation

What do you do when your record is one of staggering failure? If you're George Bush, you imply that you're an agent of God who's rallying the armies of compassion, distort your opponent's record, and campaign and govern by sowing division and fear. And for the last debate, you learn to look like a Stepford-style political wife—attentive and wide-eyed, circa 1952—in the cutaways.

For all of Bush's tired and tiresome talk about how Kerry is a clueless liberal out of touch with the mainstream, last night the senator seemed downright mainstream as he stood up for values and issues supported by majorities of Americans: a higher minimum wage (unchanged since 1997), pay equity for women, retirement security (no privatizing of Social Security), the right to import cheaper prescription drugs, reproductive rights for women, accessible and affordable healthcare, a ban on assault weapons, and more funding for college scholarship (Pell) grants. Kerry is also against enshrining discrimination in our Constitution.

Downright mainstream—and effective—when contrasted to Bush's extremist record and agenda. Do I wish Kerry had talked about the importance of unions when it comes to preserving decent wages and health and retirement benefits? Or challenged media concentration? Or laid out a plan to address the crisis of poverty in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world? Sure. (And, yes, I did hold my nose when Kerry praised Alan Greenspan for doing a wonderful job on monetary policy.)  But, sadly, there are many issues that matter—but are missing—in this campaign.

But what matters now is re-defeating an administration that has a messianic militarist project abroad and, at home, rejects any meaningful role for government in expanding economic opportunity or preventing the abuses of private economic power.

Bush's Special Interests Are Corporate

Roger Hickey, Co-Founder, Campaign for America's Future

CNN's instant poll showed that by 52 to 39 percent, Americans thought John Kerry won the third and final debate with George W. Bush last night on domestic issues. When CNN's sample, half Republicans and half Democrats, were asked "Which candidate agrees more with me on issues?" the same percentage said Kerry. And this is clearly because Kerry made better points—in a more effective way—on health care, jobs and outsourcing, education, the federal budget, abortion rights and all the other issues presented through questions from CBS's Bob Schieffer.

But sounding smart and explaining that Bush's specific policies hurt most Americans is just one way to show that Bush is misleading the country. It would be even better if Kerry had been able to plant an explanation in the minds of the voters as to why Bush has repeatedly hurt middle-class Americans. From his tax cuts, to Social Security privatization, to his refusal to raise the minimum wage or reduce drug prices, to his failure to crack down corporate abuses by Halliburton and Enron—all points that Kerry made effectively against Bush—it would be great if he had also planted a reason in voters’ minds, a larger reason as to why Bush is unfit to be given another term as president.

How about this explanation: President Bush has consistently pursued policies that enrich the very wealthy and corporations who have been his consistent financial backers?

After months of trying, Kerry has now found a way to put the terrible setbacks in Iraq in a context that explains why we all feel less safe. As he said last night, "I believe that this president, regrettably, rushed us into a war, made bad decisions about foreign policy, pushed alliances away, and, as a result, America is bearing this extraordinary burden, where we are not as safe as we ought to be." Try as he did, Bush failed in his attempt to tag Kerry as "sitting on the far left bank of the American mainstream." Now—between the last debate and election day—one of Kerry's key jobs is to explain to voters  why Bush has been pursuing policies that help the few at the expense of the rest of us.  The good news is that Kerry has time to do this—and, as he showed last night, he has a lot of material to work with.

Kerry's Highs And Lows

Michael Tomasky, Co-Editor and Executive Editor, The American Prospect

Threepeat, pretty much. If you go back over the arc of these three debates, you see that John Kerry is the one whose arguments have been consistent, while George W. Bush has tried different approaches in each debate. "Flip-flopper," for example, was nowhere to be found last night. This suggests that his polls were telling him that the charge wasn't having impact now that voters had had two chances to watch Kerry in action.

I'll be interested to see how hard Bush hits the super-liberal theme over the next few days. The line about Teddy Kennedy being "the conservative senator from Massachusetts" was a good one, but I got the sense that the 98 tax increases (fact-checked effectively on ABC, at least, by Jake Tapper) wasn't exactly electrifying the room. He'll certainly fall back on the traditional (for GOP candidates) "he'll raise your taxes" argument. On that point, I should think the Kerry campaign would spend the next few days putting the lie to Bush's preposterous claim that most the benefits of his tax cut went to the middle class. Finally, and importantly, Kerry didn't hurt himself when discussing religion (the faith without works trope was exactly the right choice and, I'm betting, far more effective among non-winger people of faith than last night's pundits realized).

In sum, while Kerry missed several chances (I was apoplectic early on when he failed to seize on the flu vaccine question by going into the current controversy over whether the FDA was tipped off to the problem in Liverpool) and fell into the usual and infuriating Democratic habit of thinking that a bunch of statistics tells a compelling story, he played very effective defense and occasionally smart offense. Could it be that the Bush/Rove/Swift-boat/et cetera smearing of Kerry over the spring and summer will end up helping Kerry, because it left America with such a low opinion of the man that once the debates came, he had nowhere to go but up? In a word, yep.