Regards, Ivan
Posted on 08/15/2004 12:50:33 AM PDT by MadIvan
THE battlefield is shifting closer to home. Presidential candidate John Kerry will this week try to put the war on Iraq behind him with a concentrated blitz to promote his economic and tax plans.
The switch began last Thursday as Kerry toured the key south-western states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada that could prove decisive come November’s election.
Stubbornly, however, Iraq kept getting in the way of his message as Kerry was forced on to the back foot to defend his vote for the conflict and his comment that the US needed to be more "sensitive" in the war on terror. His own Vietnam record as a decorated riverboat skipper also came under renewed scrutiny.
But his clear new tack towards domestic issues came for very good reasons. First was a leaked memo from two of the Democratic party’s most influential strategists which suggested that the party made a tactical error by concentrating almost exclusively on national security issues at last month’s convention in Boston.
Second was a new poll from a respected research institute that found that while Bush was still beating his challenger hands-down on security issues, Kerry had a clear lead on the economy, health and education. In the absence of any Bush initiatives for a second term, Kerry seems to have the ear of Middle America.
The memo, by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, argues that Kerry should play to his strengths, suggesting that the party needs to present its domestic policies in a more coherent fashion to make the most of the advantages its candidate currently enjoys.
Although the pair concede that the Kerry campaign has made some progress towards reassuring Americans that the Democrats can be trusted on national security, they argue that the small "bounce" in the polls Kerry achieved had to be considered "disappointing" and that, overall, "Kerry did not make broad gains from the convention".
This was, they believe, because the inevitable post-convention bounce was "contained", largely because the message concentrated too strongly on military strength, security and foreign policy.
The new poll, from the influential Pew Institute, also demonstrated why Kerry should spend more time talking about domestic issues. The survey found that Americans think, by a margin of 49%-39%, that Bush can deal with the threat of terrorism better than Kerry.
Among swing voters those figures are much worse for the challenger, with just 17% believing he is the better candidate on terrorism issues compared to the 51% who back Bush.
Meanwhile, 44% of swing voters feel that the president is better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq compared to the 24% who think Kerry is more suited for the job.
By contrast, the Pew poll reported that 52% of all voters think Kerry can do a better job on the economy than Bush. Among the crucial swing voters, Kerry also fared better on healthcare and education.
Those numbers help explain why Kerry has started to concentrate on domestic issues even as he tries to reassure voters that he does not regret voting to give the President the authority to take military action against Saddam Hussein.
Kerry has stopped talking about the war and has started devoting his campaign message to the economy, promising to lessen the burden of taxation currently borne by the middle classes.
A survey released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported that middle-class American families earning $75,000 a year saw their share of federal taxes rise from 18.7% in 2001 to 19.5% this year. By contrast the wealthiest 20% of Americans earning more than $182,000 saw their share of the federal tax bill fall from 64.4% to 63.5%.
The Kerry campaign will continue to press its case that despite steady economic growth and low inflation the American middle class is being squeezed.
"Middle-class families can’t afford four more years of a tax plan that drives up unemployment, drives up the deficit, and drives up their tax burden and the costs of health care, child care and college tuition," said Kerry. "There’s a very simple reason we’ve gone four years without a real plan to fix [the economy]: no-one in the White House thought anything was broken."
Kerry plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $200,000 a year and use the money for a $419 tax cut for middle-class Americans.
Healthcare is also proving a fertile vote-winner for the Democrat candidate with his attack on the president’s opposition to allowing the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada playing well with pensioners. Last week, Kerry argued that "George Bush stood right there and said, ‘Nope, we’re not going to help people to have lower cost drugs in America, we’re going to help the big drug companies get a great big windfall.’"
Some commonly used drugs can be as much as four times as expensive to purchase in the US as in Canada.
Kerry’s new emphasis on domestic policies has prompted Bush to take almost the opposite direction. The president appears to have ditched his initial plan to lay out his domestic policy proposals for a second term. Instead, much of the time the Republican campaign seems to know, or at least chooses to play, only one tune: it’s national security and the war on terror, stupid.
On his own tour of the crucial south-western battleground states - including New Mexico which he lost by just 400 votes four years ago - the president repeatedly stressed his own national security credentials and, in an interview with CNN’s Larry King, he said he had not seen a series of controversial advertisements that question whether Kerry really earned his purple hearts in Vietnam.
"Senator Kerry is justifiably proud of his record in Vietnam, and he should be," Bush said. "The question is: who can best lead the country in a time of war? That’s really what the debate ought to be about. And I think it’s me. Because I understand the stakes."
As the president prepares for his own party’s convention in New York later this month he could also take comfort from the most recent Gallup poll which reported that his approval rating had inched up to 51%.
As well as portraying himself as the only candidate who can safely be trusted on national security issues, the President has been at pains to campaign with the popular, independently minded Arizona senator John McCain who will have a prominent speaking position at the convention.
Hollywood is also riding to the rescue. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated that he would be happy, contrary to previous suggestions, to campaign for the President outside of his state.
Schwarzenegger will also speak at the convention as the party seeks to portray a gentler, kinder, more moderate image as it, like the Democrats, swings to the centre to appeal to the few remaining undecided voters. They may be just 6% of the electorate, according to some surveys, but they may decide who enters the White House.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
I am starting to be more and more certain of it too. Its a very nice feeling. Almost as good as when I was on the riverboat in Vietnam, I mean Cambodia.. wait... I was born in '72!!
Last minute brainstorming from the mental midget who ended up having to sport a trashcan over his ugly, bald, Whitley Streiber alines-like head on nationwide TV in '00, after predicting a massive pro-Gore electoral blowout...?
Oh, yeah. That's impressive. :)
Kerry's 'secret' plans for everything from soup to nuts isn't mentioned, and the fact that his 'enemies' would sabotage these plans if the electorate knew of them before Nov. 3. His economic plan to RAISE TAXES HIGHER THAN A KITE, which he won't admit to. One lie after another. He won't release medical records, military records, his wife's tax records. His senate career is damning -- nothing accomplished, plus he's been a no show for more than 90 per cent of the votes. It's astounding that the MSM treats Kerry as if he's sane. This seems to be wishful thinking. The author forgot to mention Kerry's stand on national security, that if we were attacked with nuclear weapons, he wouldn't respond. No flip flopping possible since we'd all be dead.
The media will let him get away with anything. He himself has made the ludicrous charge that a millions blacks were disenfranchised in 2000. The media will never challenge a thing he says and he knows it.
By the time W gets to the convention, Kerry will be talked out, with nothing new to say. Unless he wants to tell us about his adventures on Omaha Beach.
bttt
I am beinning to think America agrees
"Among swing voters those figures are much worse for the challenger, with just 17% believing he is the better candidate on terrorism issues compared to the 51% who back Bush.
Meanwhile, 44% of swing voters feel that the president is better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq compared to the 24% who think Kerry is more suited for the job."
If it stays that way we wil will.
Can't. Hasn't any.
Oh, I suspect it had much more to do with the lackluster Democrat candidates for President and Vice President of the United States of America than anything else.
Prairie
So the liberals finally realize after eight months of campaigning against President Bush and sixty years since the start of the Cold War that the electorate prefers Democrats on Mommy issues like health care and prefers Republicans on Daddy issues such as terrorism. Wow, what geniuses.
Uh did you ever think that maybe you WERE in Vietnam & Cambodia - in a previous life.
Maybe you're the reincarnation of KIA serviceman?!?
I mean no disrespect, religious or otherwise :-)
Purchased in Canada, paid for in the US.
More than likely it's been a couple 360's....
bttt
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