08.09.2004

Some alternative

Phill Hamilton reports on the John Kerry campaign

With John Kerry slumping from a 7% lead over George W Bush to trailing him by 11% in the opinion polls, the prospects of the Democrats getting their man into the White House are, for the moment at least, not looking good. Surveying their campaign, it is not hard to see why.

Although John Kerry practically drips medals from his tour in Vietnam, he has nevertheless attracted sustained attack by the rightwing ‘Swift boat veterans for truth’ - a dirty tricks campaign that has questioned whether Kerry really deserved his commendations. Though none of these men actually served with Kerry, his response up until now has been to duck for cover instead of decisively meeting the allegations head on. Defensiveness and damage limitation rather than assaulting Bush’s appalling record has set the tone for the Kerry campaign.

The website does not really convey an impression of a dynamic movement tapping into massive anti-Bush resentment either. Under the banner ‘A new direction’, Kerry offers a vision of an America with “good-paying jobs, tax cuts for the middle class, lower healthcare costs, and energy independence”. Inspiring stuff - that will boost the turnout at election time! The stirring image is outlined at length in Our plan for America, a book (apparently) authored by Kerry and his unbelievably photogenic running mate, John Edwards. Perhaps mindful of the short attention span supposedly afflicting American voters, broad overviews of key themes have been thoughtfully provided. It may be easier to read this than ploughing through pages of turgid prose, but it has hardly made the policy content any more palatable. For example, the main objectives of a Kerry/Edwards foreign policy read as if they were lifted from the ultra-reactionary ‘Project for a new American century’: the winning of the ‘war on terror’, stopping the global spread of WMDs, promoting “democracy, freedom, and opportunity”, and ending US dependence on Middle Eastern oil can hardly be described as a departure from Bush’s record. Some alternative!

Left-leaning Democrats tend to suggest that Kerry offers something really different on the domestic front. Unlike the nasty Dubya the good senator will reverse the assault on working class living standards and provide substantive welfare improvements - or so the argument goes. What does Kerry have to say? The positions offered here on jobs, health, and education commits a Kerry administration to providing extra funding to raise educational standards and reduce healthcare costs. Kerry also plans to tackle the problem of job flight by ending tax breaks for companies that export jobs abroad. Yet incredibly the savings made here will not be channelled toward Kerry’s spending commitments, but into reducing corporate tax rate!

If that was not enough, Kerry’s criticism of Bush’s woeful economic performance is from the right. Among the proposals is a pledge to “restore fiscal discipline”, a characteristic “absent from this administration”. To prove his economic competence, Kerry will reduce the budget deficit by half. Coming on top of the tax cuts, increased welfare spending and “modernising” the US military, where will the necessary cash be conjured from? Tax cuts plus military spending v welfare funding? What do you think will come out on top?

Returning to the main field, the visitor can read how the Democrats are really getting tough under ‘Bush-Cheney: wrong for America’. This rapid response centre has been set up to counterblast the rubbish peddled by Bush and his rightwing friends who dominate the media and, to be honest, it does not do too bad a job. Claiming to expose the real Bush, it begins by ridiculing the Republican’s definition of small businesses (under this, both Bush and Cheney are considered small businessmen because they are in receipt of income from some small-scale enterprises), before nailing the Republican lie that Kerry will pile the taxes on low-level entrepreneurs. The rest of the items continue in a similar vein.

Personally I found ‘Real state of the union under Bush’ to be potentially the most interesting because it uses statistics to show how Americans outside the wealthy/obscenely-wealthy bracket have been hammered by Bush’s ‘compassionate’ conservatism. Rather stupidly the web team forgot to add their source, making the statistics pretty worthless outside the already-converted. Still, at least its ‘ad watch’ attempts to pull the Kerry campaign out of the swift boat quagmire with responses that illustrate this supposed non-partisan group’s links with chief players in the Bush camp, but the counterattack is far from biting.

Incredibly there are still some on the left who still think Kerry is a real alternative to Bush. These comrades should take note when he insists he is a loyal servant of US imperialism. They should believe him.