...or heesa gonna DIE?? < |:)~
Posted on 09/06/2004 3:41:00 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry will today take a refocused campaign - and some of Bill Clinton's former advisers - on the road as he tries to battle back from a 10-point deficit in the polls. Mr Clinton may be about to undergo heart bypass surgery, but he spent 90 minutes on the phone with Mr Kerry over the weekend urging him to reinvigorate his campaign by attacking George Bush on bread and butter domestic issues such as jobs and healthcare.
With less than two months to go before the US presidential election, Mr Kerry has drafted former Clinton advisers to galvanise support after several national polls showed Mr Bush opening up a lead after months of a deadlocked race. A Time magazine poll conducted between August 31 and September 2 found that 52% of likely voters would choose Mr Bush, 41% would vote for Mr Kerry, and 3% would vote for Ralph Nader.
From his hospital bed, Mr Clinton suggested Mr Kerry shift the focus from Vietnam to the state of the economy, the New York Times reported. The paper added that Joel Johnson, a former senior White House aide, delivered a strategy speech at Mr Kerry's headquarters over the weekend detailing the new line of attack.
"Bush has taken us in the wrong direction. If you want more of the same for the next four years, vote for President Bush. If you want a new direction, John Kerry and John Edwards," Mr Johnson said in an interview yesterday.
Most Americans settled down to relax for today's Labour Day holiday, but Mr Kerry and his vice presidential nominee, John Edwards, planned appearances in six swing states, while Mr Bush and vice president Dick Cheney were scheduled to visit three states. Polls in half of the states on the candidates' Labour Day agenda - Minnesota, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Ohio - show the candidates running neck-and-neck. Those four states offer 58 electoral votes, more than 20% of the total needed to win.
Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns said they expected the race to slip back into a statistical tie as the lift Mr Bush has enjoyed following last week's Republican national convention fades.
"After a week of relentless negativity, we will be fighting back using Bush's own record on the economy, jobs and healthcare," Democratic party chief Terry McAuliffe said in a conference call with reporters.
Although payroll jobs have grown by 1.7m in the last 12 months, the economy still has lost 913,000 jobs overall since Mr Bush took office.
Mr Kerry chose to spend his Labour Day in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, telling workers in those states that Bush had done little to help them weather bad economic times.
"If you believe that losing good paying jobs and replacing them with ones that don't pay the bills means that America is heading in the right direction, you should support George Bush and his policies of failure," the Massachusetts senator said.
Jobs created during Mr Bush's term paid less and offered fewer benefits than those lost, as employers struggle to handle increased healthcare costs, the Kerry campaign says.
Mr Bush, campaigning yesterday in West Virginia, said Mr Kerry would "stifle job creation" with tax increases. Mr Kerry has said he intends to roll back Mr Bush's income and investment tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of the nation.
"My opponent has promised to raise some taxes. That's a promise politicians tend to keep," the president said. "This Labour Day weekend, it's important for America's workers to know that my opponent wants to tax your jobs."
Mr Bush was due today in Missouri, where strategists say the close race leans in his direction.
A second Time magazine poll showed six out of 10 US voters described economic conditions as poor or only fair, while 32% described them as good or excellent.
The poll showed Americans evenly split on Mr Bush's handling of the economy, with 49% approving and 48% disapproving. However, 57% said they felt they had not personally benefited from his tax cuts.
Forget twow moths..he's got TWO WEEKSA to try and get his poll numbers back up...if not,
Kerry is going to have a hard time convincing voters that current unemployment numbers are although better than the much celebrated numbers of Clinton are actaully much worse.This is a kool aid type lie. The only people that would buy it are already voting for Kerry anyway.
When you're explaining, you're losing.
The perception that Kerry is a loser is catching up to reality.
...or heesa gonna DIE?? < |:)~
Bump!
All great questions. I think the MSM will investigate this starting....... never.
I think it's too late for Kerry, unless some disaster befalls Bush before Nov. The democrats won't admit this of course, but history does tend to repeat itself. No challenger has ever come back to win a presidential election being this far behind in the polls this late in the game.
I just hope it bodes as well for the State races. Short of some kind of compromising deal with the democrats, we can't get any judges appointed unless we gain 6 seats or so in the Senate to break the fillibuster. A lot of people say that it's a long shot that we will gain that much this time around, and that's sad, because the majority is out there to do it, IF they'd get off their butts and get out there and vote their conscience.
Somebody here said (actually, a lot of people here have said) we can't rest on our laurels. That's absolutely the truth. We've got a lot of work to do and it is going to be a tough fight to get rid of the secular godless scum who've infested the lesislature and the court system who think the constitution says senior citizens can't pray in a public building that their taxes helped build, among other absurd notions.
A while back when six civilian contractors were beheaded and dragged through the streets of Iraq (before Iraq was given soverienty), Senator Clinton and some of her cronies sent out a letter saying we need to be sure that the contractors allowed into Iraq do not violate the rights of Iraqi citizens.
But what about the contractors who were brutally murdered? What about their rights? She didn't say anything about that.
They all gotta go.
Only in this country would a guy who deserves the Firing Squad get a shot at the Presidency.
Now here's the thing - it is almost impossible to defeat a strategy that is working, and has shown tangible results, with an untested and probably badly flawed plan with unpredictable outcome.
The Democrats have NO ORIGINAL THINKERS. The one lone virtue they hold up, "We're not Bush!", does not have much substance in the light of day. These "not-Bush" candidates have never met a payroll, never attended a school board meeting, never even worked out their own taxes. They haven't ever had to choose between mortgage and medicine, despite their loud protestations that they are for the "working man".
So the Democrats do not TRY to defeat the program that the Bush Administration is pursuing only on merit. They invent possible scenarios in which hypothetical victims could be adversely affected, and claim that things "might" be worse if the situation is not reversed. How things could get worse is not adequately explained, nor is there any certainty that things will get worse. Just that they "might".
Take the job situation. Did the US really lose three million jobs? Then why is the unemployment rate at its lowest level in YEARS? SOME of these supposedly jobless people seem to be living reasonably well, we do not see the highway underpasses lined across with "homeless" people, and the proportion of food stamp program recipients has not swelled immensely. Do you suppose that many of these "jobless" people are in fact working either self-employed, or on a contract basis as temporary workers in their speciality? It may be a little hard for a card-carrying union steel worker to go into self-employment in his speciality, as back-yard iron smelters are a rather inefficient method of steel production. The steel industry should become even more automated than it now is, because we are competing with Chinese steel workers working without any kind of safety or environmental safeguards. Productivity per worker shoots up, but number of workers continues to shrink, resulting in even more unemployed union steel workers.
But somebody has to look after the automated systems, right? And high school dropouts don't get offered the opportunity to just step into that job. They may have to return to the classroom and absorb what they most resisted in their formative years, sufficient technical education to understand their new role. And carry it out competently.
Then again, I couldn't think of anything that could be more appropriate then Kerry losing this election and being publicaly humiliated beacause of those who served our country with honor in Viet Nam whom he betrayed.
Now that's what I call justice.
It's really strange. I was thinking why is it that many good people have heart attacks, and accidents, and the Clintons just keep on keeping on like the Energizer Bunny...
Then Clinton went into the hospital for heart surgery. I stuck a pin into my Clinton voodoo doll. I had one in it's head right before he was impeached. I think I should throw the voodoo doll out!
We just had over a thousand people lose their jobs last week here and the economy here is worsening pretty fast with huge jumps in property taxes in spite of falling wages overall. This area will go for Kerry no matter what though so it really doesn't matter as far as votes. The rest of Texas apparently is doing well with the economy.
My company was downsized 26,000 in the late 90's and the state still voted for Gore in 2000. If the people feel safer with GWB at the helm they will tolerate the rest.
I think Bush will win because of the War on Terrorism but not because the economy is excellent or improving.
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