Posted on 12/15/2003 8:07:51 AM PST by Valin
Wesley Clark had some pointed comments recently about his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. As reported by The Associated Press, the former general said, "They're just carving each other up," and he added, "I've never seen anything more effective \[in destroying the Democrats' election hopes\] than when they go at each other about who did what 10 or 15 years ago." Indeed, they do slash and stab at one another, and this suicidal fratricide seems to intensify as the voting comes closer.
Most of the attacks are focused on front-runner Howard Dean. At a meeting in Detroit of African-American ministers, an audience where he might do the most damage, Richard Gephardt accused Dean, Joe Lieberman and John Kerry of making comments critical of affirmative action during the 1990s.
Gephardt and Kerry also savaged Dean for remarks made and actions taken 10 years ago, while he was governor of Vermont. In their recent Iowa debate, Kerry actually baited the former governor, asking repeatedly if Dean would try to slow the growth of Medicare, as he proposed some years ago. Such attacks question the target candidate's candor and trustworthiness.
Clark himself has not escaped unmarked in this alley fight.
He has been attacked by most of the other candidates for comments made praising Bush and Co. for the prosecution of the war in Iraq, and about when and why he became a Democrat.
When Dean (followed by Kerry) decided to abandon the campaign- finance system he had indicated he would live by, Gephardt pounced on him, calling Dean "Mr. Change-Your-Opinion-for-Expediency" and noting that Dean was hoping to outspend his rivals; accusing him, in other words, of trying to buy the nomination.
That charge of buying the election is likely to be made against President Bush by whomever the Democrats nominate. The Republicans expect to have almost a quarter of a billion dollars to spend on the Bush campaign. The party out of power, namely the Democrats, is unlikely to raise anything like that amount.
Beyond that huge financial advantage, the Republicans will enjoy watching the Democrats further disadvantage themselves as their candidates continue disparaging each other, thus writing the Republicans' playbook for them. You can almost hear Karl Rove, Bush's top political strategist, saying, "Thanks, guys." Bush has an effectively united party behind him. Republican energies - and money - will be focused on grass-roots organization that can get out the vote next November, while much of the Democrats' energy will have to be devoted to overcoming the political fratricide of the party's primary battles.
Instead of waiting until its platform committee meets next year, the Democrats could be using these primary months to define their basic philosophy. As it is, time and money are being wasted as the primary candidates emphasize a serious split in the party. There are those Democrats who believe the party's strength is its appeal to the farmer-labor vote. These, whom we might call the Old Democrats, include Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich.
Others believe the party's strength is the vast middle class to whom Bill Clinton so successfully appealed, or the New Democrats. They include Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards.
So the issue is: Do the Democrats maintain the Clinton focus on middle-class voters or go back to the farmer-labor-oriented policies of FDR and Truman? Whatever path the party chooses, its hopes for next November are definitely diminished unless its primary candidates sheath those carving knives of which Clark warned.
You mean the middle class that he successfully 'lied-to', and then 'seduced' (eff'd) them...
Good advice Walter. Between the two "groups" you have about 15% of the the voting population, and the rats won't even get all of that.
Long ago, what united farmers and labor was monetary policy. Both favored (and continue to favor) a weaker dollar. Clinton + Rubin put drove the dollar relentlessly higher, a zero-sum game that created a stock market bubble but devastated both manufacturing (see the steel industry and aluminum industries for examples of this collapse) and farm commodity producers.
Farmers now have little in common with a Democrat party that favors consumers over producers and exemplifies "city values" like gay marriage, partial-birth abortion, and gun control. The labor picture is more complex, because the labor leadership has largely abandoned looking out for their workers in favor of left-wing ideology. This is how we get the sickening picture of labor leaders promoting policies like the Kyoto protocols that would throw their own members (coal miners, for example) out of their jobs.
With all the trouble in the Middle East is this country stupid enough to elect a jew as president?
With every issue, Uncle Walter's weekly columns reveal how terribly shallow is the man's thinking.
The Man Who Molded American Opinion in the sixties and seventies stands revealed as a petty partisan intellectual milquetoast.
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