GOP hopes liberal tag will dog Kerry

[mrgorth]

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/7903982.htm

<snip>
And they are cherry-picking tidbits from Kerry's Senate career to buttress the Bay State connection - for instance, his support for higher gasoline and Social Security taxes; his opposition to the death penalty; and his opposition to mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers. They have also found a 1988 Kerry remark defending Dukakis' inmate furlough program, the famous one that granted 48-hour passes to convicted killers.
<snip>

[RobertSeattle]

1. And tag Bush with Credibility (lack of)

This administration hsa no credibility in regards to Intelligence, the Deficit, Job Creation, Economic Estimates (always wrong).

[blm]

2. Well, let's see what working class voters who voted Reagan are saying now:

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=cohn020904

Workable

by Jonathan Cohn

Only at TNR Online
Post date: 02.09.04
Warren, Michigan

John Kerry's campaign swing through Michigan on Friday showcases the support of almost every big-name Democrat in the state, from Governor Jennifer Granholm to Congressman John Dingell. But at a late morning rally in Warren, the person who makes me most optimistic about Kerry's political potential is a guy in the audience wearing a black biker t-shirt. His name is Chuck Kulikowski, and his shirt bears the emblem of American Bikers Aiming Toward Education, a group that crusades against helmet laws and other "motorcycle-unfriendly" legislation. (Motto: "Let Those Who Ride Decide.") Yet while Kerry is a well-known Harley Davidson enthusiast, Kulikowski says it wasn't the senator's interest in motorcycles that drew him to the Friday event. Instead, he says, it was Kerry's desire to drive President Bush from the White House--a desire Kulikowski shares fervently. "He's too rich, too arrogant, and he thinks he's running the world," Kulikowski says of the president. "He does what he wants, and doesn't care what other people think."

You expect to hear those sorts of things at a Democratic campaign rally, but not from a guy like Kulikowski and certainly not in a place like Warren, smack in the middle of Macomb County. A northern suburb of Detroit, Macomb is legendary for its large population of "Reagan Democrats"--white working-class voters who abandoned the Democratic Party in the 1980s because it had veered too far to the left. And Kulikowski is an almost perfect Reagan Democrat specimen: Having voted for Reagan during the 1980s, he tends to agree with Republicans on hot-button issues like abortion and gun control. But even after I point out all the issues on which he seems to disagree with Kerry, Kulikowski says he likes what he sees. "What good is a gun if you don't have a job?" says Kulikowski, a 57-year-old unemployed toolmaker. "You can't buy the bullets."

It's no great secret that white working-class voters in heavily industrialized states like Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri could propel a Democrat to the White House in 2004--just as they did in 1992, when Bill Clinton won back Reagan Democrats with a campaign based around the catchphrase, "It's the Economy, Stupid." The problem for Democrats is that Kerry, whose 35-point victory in the Michigan caucuses makes his nomination appear ever closer to inevitable, seems so conspicuously ill-suited for the task. Unlike Clinton, who regularly broke with his party's leadership over issues like affirmative action and welfare, Kerry has an impeccably liberal voting record, one that Republicans are already starting to mock. And unlike his current chief rival, John Edwards, Kerry has about as much rapport with the average American as fellow Yalie William F. Buckley.

<snip>
Then again, working-class authenticity doesn't seem to matter to the Macomb voters I meet. They are so annoyed at President Bush--for his failure to save their manufacturing jobs and preoccupation with foreign affairs--that they'll embrace even a mechanical New England liberal like Kerry. "I like anybody but George Bush," says Jeff Terry, 33, who works at the nearby Ford axle plant and describes himself as an independent. Just as I did with Kulikowski, I start running through the standard lines of attack against Kerry--he voted against the federal defense of marriage act, against the partial-birth abortion ban, for NAFTA, and so on. Terry shrugs. "Me, personally, I'm more concerned with my job. And I hope that people don't get sidetracked with the other issues." But what about the war with Iraq, supposedly President Bush's trump card with blue-collar voters? "I wouldn't want to give up on the troops," Terry says, "but to think that we were led there under such false pretenses...."
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