Posted on 02/03/2004 5:27:11 AM PST by mikeb704
This is written the day before this year’s first Super Tuesday. Voters in seven states will cast ballots for a challenger to President Bush.
John "Botox Boy" Kerry is, according to the pundits, the obvious front-runner. With enough victories tomorrow, he may have a lock on the nomination they say.
What makes Mr. Kerry the front-runner? Well, it’s mainly because he won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and has rapidly gained strength because of that.
Howard Dean’s primal scream therapy may have played a role, but the principal reason for Mr. Kerry leading the pack is he won in those two states.
That doesn’t make much sense. Iowa sends a measly 45 delegates to the Democratic convention. That’s 45 out of the 2,161 delegates it takes to win the nomination.
Senator Kerry, who served in Vietnam and really should publicize that fact more because no one knows it, won a whopping 20 of those Iowa delegates.
That’s only part of the story. Iowa has close to 1.8 million registered voters. Less than seven percent of that number participated in the Democratic caucuses.
There’s a similar pattern in New Hampshire. It represents just 27 delegates of the necessary 2,161. John Kerry picked up 13 of them.
The Live Free or Die state has almost 700,000 registered voters. Less than a third voted in the Democratic primary.
Nevertheless, many in the media decided those two victories make John Kerry a heavy favorite. If, as expected, he wins most if not all of this week’s primaries, there’ll be no stopping him.
Voters got the media’s message and the Massachusetts senator, who ranked behind Al Sharpton in a CBS News poll six weeks ago, is enjoying a skyrocketing popularity. And not just among those lobbyists he’s taken so much money from over his long senate career.
Mr. Kerry has won a very small percentage of the delegates he needs for the nomination. Sure, the results from Iowa and New Hampshire have some significance, but must they be interpreted as make or break crucial? I don’t think so.
North Carolina’s John Edwards probably won’t be the Democrat’s selection for president this year, but he’s moved from obscurity to appearing on news programs more often than the Ditech commercials. Pretty hair isn’t all he’s got going for him.
His stump speech promises to end the "two Americas" that exist. We have two nations you see, one for the rich and one for everybody else.
Ah, the old class struggle routine again. It’s worked for Communists and their philosophical descendents, Leftist Democrats (forgive the redundancy), for many years. Still, it’s very thoughtful for Mr. Edwards, whose financial disclosure statements place his assets at as much as $36 million, to care about the rest of us.
Mr. Edwards harps on one particular statistic: There are, he moans over and over, 35 million Americans living in poverty.
That figure came from a Census Bureau report. As the Heritage Foundation points out, however, living in poverty in today’s America doesn’t necessarily mean the grinding destitution many people imagine.
A study released last month by the Washington think tank includes some interesting data from various government reports. Over forty percent of those households defined as poor own their own home. More than three-quarters have air conditioning. The "average" poor American has more living space than the "average" person living in Paris, London or Athens.
Better than three-quarters of poor households have a car and 97 percent own at least one color television. More than half subscribe to cable or satellite TV.
I’m not arguing that being poor is a day at the beach. What I am saying is that a considerable proportion of Americans living in what is defined as poverty has a living standard that would be envied by most of the world.
Undoubtedly there are people who struggle to make it from day to day. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves in distress and in need of help.
This in itself is an indictment of the Kennedy-Johnson war on poverty. Two generations and trillions of dollars later, we still have 35 million fellow citizens living in poverty.
Clearly, Washington is incapable of effectively tackling the problem. Perhaps Senator Edwards is right: we do have two Americas. The one that recognizes government isn’t the answer and the one, like John Edwards and his comrades, who haven’t figured it out yet.
Being a Democrat, he probably means foced disarmament of the citizens, followed by shipping us to re-education camps in Alaska.
If he tries that, what he'll GET is armed revolt and rebellion.
Ummm. WHICH redundancy? Communists and Leftists? Communists and Democrats? Or Leftists and Democrats? They're ALL redundant.
The Left concludes that the poor are poor because the rich are rich, and that there is no possibility that ANY of the above described are where they are by CHOICE.
It also is beyond their understanding that targeting the rich (read entrepreneurs, investors, employers) inescapably has negative repercussions to the poor.
Better than three-quarters of poor households have a car and 97 percent own at least one color television. More than half subscribe to cable or satellite TV.
I’m not arguing that being poor is a day at the beach. What I am saying is that a considerable proportion of Americans living in what is defined as poverty has a living standard that would be envied by most of the world.
The Democrats are bellowing to their base, and in the process insulting the intelligence of both their constituents and the swing voters they hope to attract. Would you believe any Republican rhetoric "distancing" the Bush administration from Corporate Capitalism? Would it help? Or would he just look as phony as the Democrats look now? There is no thinking going on in the Democrat mind, outside of conniving up the next way to deceive the public. We don't need any more of that kind of politics. Solutions to the problems posed by Globalism and outsourcing will not be found in protectionism, and Democrat style anti business recession. And those solutions certainly aren't to be found anywhere in the current sludge of political rhetoric.
This would be really annoying to those of us who know how wonderful Alaska is, and want it to remain that way.
Believe it was Bastiat who said government was: "That legal fiction by which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else."
The Dems have been doing that for decades, all the while scarfing up big bucks from the fat cats they claim are rock-ribbed Repubs.
Good point. I also think there's in some instances more than a little envy involved.
Rrreally... What was it called?
/big fan of Stirling's stuff (obviously)
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