BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
KERRY'S LIBERAL APPEAL. It's
5:30 p.m. as I finish this. In just a little less than six hours,
John Kerry will deliver his acceptance speech - the proverbial
most-important-speech-of-his-life, and one that will go a long way
toward determining whether he can defeat George W. Bush this
fall.
My Phoenix colleague Kristen
Lombardi and I have stopped by a WiFi-enabled Starbucks after
spending a good part of the afternoon in Cambridge with the Campaign
for America's Future - an
umbrella group that brings together various lefty and progressive
causes and organizations. Al Gore was a no-show. His former top
campaign strategist, Donna Brazile, had still not arrived by the time
we had to leave. So the highlight turned out to be the Reverend Jesse
Jackson, who delivered a rambling but occasionally moving speech.
(You'll be able to read Lombardi's account here
once she's done with it.)
One thing I want to address in
these final hours of the convention is the notion that John Kerry is
nothing but a centrist weenie, and that the left will have to push
him continually if he's elected president. Jackson said as much
today, telling the throng, "When Kerry wins, the anti-war movement
will just have to get bigger the next day."
Texas populist Jim Hightower, at
last
Sunday's tribute to the
late senator Paul Wellstone, got at much the same thing. Speaking of
Kerry, Hightower said, "I don't care if he's a sack of cement, we're
going to carry him to victory" - and, afterwards, be "in their face"
to get Kerry and John Edwards to toe the line.
What spurs a lot of this talk, of
course, is the experience with Bill Clinton. But Clinton really was a
centrist with a lot of conservative impulses. Kerry is not the most
liberal member of the Senate (click here
to find out why), but he is an actual living, breathing liberal. As
David Corn explained
(sub. req.) recently in the Nation:
Kerry did support NAFTA,
and he has proposed corporate tax cuts to spur investments. He
once raised questions about the political costs of affirmative
action (while still backing such programs). He's not a Wellstone
Democrat. But compare Kerry with Bill Clinton, who still
captivates the Democratic faithful. When Clinton ran for
President, he burnished his centrist credentials by pushing
welfare "reform" and advocating highly punitive crime legislation.
This year, Kerry's post-primary lurch to the center entails
cooling down the populist rhetoric (which he borrowed from his
Democratic rivals) and emphasizing his "values." He has done
nothing as crass as when Clinton left the campaign trail in 1992
to return to Arkansas for the execution of a mentally disabled
convict. Kerry, a former prosecutor, opposes capital
punishment.
Outside the Wellstone service
Sunday at the Old West Church, Corn told me, "Progressives are going
to vote for Kerry. Bush energizes the base enough that he doesn't
have to worry about that." Corn's analogy is the Republican Party's
extreme right wing in 2000, which swallowed its doubts about Bush's
moderate rhetoric out of a burning desire to recapture the White
House. (Of course, few knew that Bush would actually govern from the
extreme right.)
Corn added of Kerry: "He is not a
DLC Democrat," referring to the Democratic Leadership Council, a
centrist faction that Clinton once headed. "I don't think
progressives have to swallow too hard to see the positive aspects of
a Kerry candidacy," Corn said.
We all know how maddening Kerry can
be - the nuances, the grays, the reluctance to take a clear stand and
to stick with it. But when it comes to broad themes, Kerry is a true
liberal - the first to win his party's nomination since Walter
Mondale in 1984, if you subscribe, as I do, to the theory that
Michael Dukakis in 1988 was more of a proto-New Democrat.
There's been a lot of talk this
week that the American people are much more liberal than is generally
thought. "Most Americans in their hearts are liberal and
progressive," filmmaker Michael Moore told the Campaign for America's
Future crowd on Tuesday.
Tonight, Kerry has a magnificent
opportunity to bring those liberals back into the fold - to appeal to
them not as a centrist looking for liberal votes, but as a liberal
who is able to explain himself in mainstream, centrist terms.
posted at 5:34 PM |
comment or permalink
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
