Posted on 05/29/2003 5:24:49 AM PDT by AbsoluteJustice
Democratic candidates start to embrace liberal themes again
By William Saletan SLATE.COM
May 28 — Last week, seven Democratic presidential candidates addressed a forum convened by EMILY’s List, an organization that raises money for pro-choice, Democratic women candidates. Compared to previous debates before Democratic audiences, this event was notable for signs that the candidates are growing increasingly comfortable with liberal themes.
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HERE ARE A few of those signs.
1) The return of anti-war politics. After the American victory in Iraq, the anti-war candidates — Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton — muffled their criticisms of the war. As looting spread and U.S. forces failed to find weapons of mass destruction, Kucinich, Braun, and Sharpton resumed complaining, but Dean — the only one of the four with a serious chance of winning the nomination — kept his head down. The recent bombings in Saudi Arabia seem to have erased his fear. At the outset of his speech, he called the ouster of Saddam Hussein “a war, which I’m the only major candidate who did not support, which we have now no way to pay for. We are now paying for what we did in Iraq, because when you see al-Qaida coming back, that is the price of taking your eye off the ball and spending our resources beating up on a tin-horn dictator who, as evil as he was, was no threat to the United States. And we are now being paid back, because al-Qaida is reconstituted, [and] we’re not spending the money that we spent in Iraq instead on buying back the plutonium stocks in Russia that really are a threat to the United States if those should get into the hands of terrorists.”
I don’t know whether this position is a net loser for Dean. But obviously it’s no longer too lethal to campaign on. The glory of conquest is receding fast. Even if we eventually dig up a barrel of nerve gas, further chaos in Iraq and al-Qaida bombings elsewhere are likely. Opposition to the war, coupled with vigilance against terrorists, is looking more politically viable all the time.
‘President Clinton said a month or two ago that the Democrats lost in 2002 because we were voiceless, and we were. … We saw it proven that strong and wrong, as he said, can beat weak and right.’ — JOHN KERRY 2) The return of Bill Clinton. Last year, Joe Lieberman was the only prospective presidential candidate willing to praise Clinton by name. Now others are joining in. At this forum, Dick Gephardt credited “the first Clinton budget” for “the best economy we’ve had in 50 years.” Gephardt also spoke of youth programs for which “Bill Clinton and I” worked. But the big surprise came when John Kerry declared, “It was President Clinton and the Democrats who had the courage to expend their political capital” to pass Clinton’s economic program. Kerry added, “President Clinton said a month or two ago that the Democrats lost in 2002 because we were voiceless, and we were. … We saw it proven that strong and wrong, as he said, can beat weak and right.” Kerry is as calculating as anyone in the race. If he thinks the Clinton stigma is over, the Clinton stigma is over.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
You have to be a dunderball to buy this logic.
Iraq's fall represents THE biggest threat to terror in general, and all the al-Qaedas of the world in particular. It is THE cathartic event for the exposure of the lies which the "Arab street" had to buy in order to see America as the enemy, instead of their own leaders.
There is no scenario whereby terror can be defeated that does not include the humiliation factor provided by the swift butt kicking delivered to Saddam by Bush.
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