:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 9.09.2004 ::

:: "HEROES AND VILLAINS" ::

REFRAMING THE 2004 RACE
From an e-newsletter
By Arianna Huffington

John Kerry is suddenly being bombarded with more advice than an obese,
alcoholic, unwed teenage mother seated between Dr. Laura and Dr. Phil on a
cross-country bus trip.

Spurred by Bush's convention bounce, jittery Democrats of every stripe --
including a hospital-bound Bill Clinton -- are urging him to "throw
caution to the wind," "start smacking back," "hammer home jobs, the
economy, health care and education," and concentrate on domestic issues.

So the party faithful have gone from expecting John Kerry to beat George
Bush by outmachoing the counterfeit cowboy from Crawford to expecting him
to win by offering a better Medicare plan.

The truth is neither of these strategies addresses the greatest challenge
facing the Kerry camp: the need to change the frame in which the campaign
is conducted -- a frame thus far constructed by Karl Rove and the
Bush/Cheney brain trust.

A new poll by CNN/USA Today/Gallup makes it clear that, unlike 2000,
issues are not driving this year's election. Voters are more concerned
with leadership skills than the candidates' issue-by-issue positions.

There is no doubt that Kerry wins on the issues. Indeed, among the
minority of voters making their decision based on the issues, Kerry has a
20-point lead. But Bush has opened a 20-point lead among the majority
that's focused on leadership.

Of course, leadership is about more than "a spine of tempered steel".
It's about character, values, priorities, and a clear vision of where the
country should be heading. So Kerry needs to offer a compelling,
overarching narrative tying his strength -- and Bush's weakness -- on
issues like jobs, the economy, the environment, and health care to his
vision for America's future.

Thankfully -- and ironically -- during its convention, the Bush/Cheney
team delivered the very narrative that can defeat it. It was offered to
Kerry on a platter in Madison Square Garden when speaker after speaker
relentlessly and shamelessly ridiculed the undeniable reality that we are
two Americas, separated by an ever-widening gulf -- not just in income but
in educational opportunities, access to health care, and the ability to
realize the American Dream.

Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney even went so far as to use the notion of two
Americas as the set up for jokes.

"Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas," said Cheney. "It makes the
whole thing mutual. America sees two John Kerrys." And according to
Giuliani, Democrats need "two Americas -- one where John Kerry can vote
for something and another where he can vote against the same thing."
Hardee-har-har.

It's worth noting that this frivolity at the expense of the Other America
came just days after the release of a devastating report from the Census
Bureau showing that over 12 percent of the American people -- 35.9
million, 12.9 million of them children -- now live below the poverty line,
and that the number of Americans with no health insurance has increased by
5.8 million under Bush, bringing the total to 45 million. Pretty funny,
eh boys?

And the growing chasm between the Two Americas is chillingly documented in
a report released this week by the Economic Policy Institute which shows
how over the last few years "income shifted extremely rapidly and
extensively from labor compensation to capital income (profits and
interest)." As Jared Bernstein, co-author of the report, put it: "The
economic pie is growing gangbusters and the typical household is falling
behind."

And yet Arnold Schwarzenegger had the gall to tell us at the convention
that "America is back!" The fact that the Republicans chose not only to
render the increasing pain of increasing millions invisible but to use it
as a punchline tells you all you need to know about the current mindset of
the Grand Old Party. And, even more importantly, it offers an
unparalleled opportunity for the Kerry campaign to stop defending itself
against the flip-flopping caricature of Kerry that Rove has created and
start defining who George Bush really is -- a callous leader whose
regressive policies have made America a crueler and more dangerous place.

The Two Americas narrative shows that, far from providing strong
leadership, Bush has turned his back on the traditional American values of
fairness, opportunity, and responsibility.

What's more, it's impossible to talk about the reality of the Two Americas
without talking about Bush's miserable failures in Iraq, as Kerry did on
Labor Day, pointing out to a crowd in Cleveland that this "wrong war in
the wrong place at the wrong time… cost all of you $200 billion that could
have gone to schools, could have gone to health care, could have gone to
prescription drugs, could have gone to our Social Security."

It's the Other America that's paying this cost in forgone opportunities
and investments. And it's the Other America that's also paying the
highest price of all in lost lives and maimed bodies. There are precious
few denizens of Bush's America slogging through the bloody streets of
Najaf and Fallujah -- other than the occasional Halliburton executive,
there to check on the company's investment in democracy.

It was a great relief to hear Kerry slam Bush on Iraq, and ignore the
siren song of those advising him to cede the foreign policy front to the
president and stick to domestic issues. This, of course, is the same
strategy Democrats followed in 2002, when they went along with Bush on
Iraq in the hope they could take it off the table as a campaign issue and
win on the economy. And we all remember how well that turned out. For
the GOP.

The storyline of this campaign is really about heroes and villains. John
Kerry and John Edwards are running because they are committed to the most
important and heroic task facing our country: the building of one
indivisible nation. They desperately want to make us one America. Bush
and Cheney are running so they can continue to make life easier, plusher,
and more privileged for the only America they choose to see. To succeed,
they have to convince enough people between now and Election Day that the
Other America is somehow a pessimistic figment of the Democratic
imagination.

The people who flock to John Kerry's rallies know the truth. People like
Lori Sheldon, a 45-year old mother of two who approached Kerry at a Labor
Day rally in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania where he spoke of the struggle of
middle-class Americans no longer even trying to get ahead but just to hang
on.

"You told our story," she said, sobbing. Sheldon's husband is a baggage
handler for financially strapped US Airways and faces being laid off this
fall. So her story is the story of one more family the Republican
convention had no time for, living paycheck to paycheck, in fear of losing
it all.

This is the voice of the Other America. And no matter how vehemently and
blithely the president and his surrogates insist that it doesn't exist, it
does. And if John Kerry continues to tell its story, amplify its voice,
and give the Other America a reason to turn out in November, he'll win in
a landslide.

© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.

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