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April 15, 2004

The Devil You Know

I realized, late yesterday, that I had done my taxes incorrectly. Fortunately, I was able to correct the problem in time, print out new tax forms, and write a check for the whole $6 I ended up owing the IRS. All that because I had forgotten to account for advertising revenues from a website I haven't actively run in over a year.

But a lot of people are getting great refunds this year, thanks to the current administration's tax cuts. This can't be a good day for John Kerry, as millions of Americans are reminded what they've gotten under a Bush administration. Of course, this doesn't matter if you have lost your job.

Kerry seems to me to be in trouble either way. At heart, he's not appealing. He's not appealing to Democrats, who made the mistake of nominating someone they thought someone else would vote for, instead of somebody who THEY would vote for. And he's not appealing to mainstream voters, because he doesn't offer them anything other than an alternative to Bush.

Despite the fact that Kerry is claimed to be one of the most liberal Senators in office, he's running on a much more mainstream platform, much of which contradicts what he has stood for in the past. The real question is, which is he... a liberal running as a moderate, or a moderate who got elected as a liberal? Either way, Democrats didn't nominate him because they agreed with him, and that is likely to be their ultimate undoing in this election year.

To make matters worse, Democrats are presenting Kerry as an alternative to President Bush, not an alternative to Bush's policies. Kerry does a lot of criticizing of the current administration, but he rarely backs up that criticism with an alternative plan. He says he'll create 10 million jobs, but how? And as some pundits have pointed out, there are only 8.5 million unemployed Americans. Who will take up the other 1.5 million jobs? Maybe we can outsource them.

But the reason Kerry isn't connecting with voters the way he ought to is because Democrats are too self-consumed with hatred toward Bush. They don't seem to recognize that the majority of Americans not only don't hate Bush, but actually like him. With polls showing the two candidates in a dead heat, it comes down to those few undecideds, and virtually none of those undecideds hate Bush, or else they'd already have sided with John Kerry. Still, liberals are out in droves supporting Kerry, with the primary reason being "we need to get George Bush out of office."

That kind of talk isn't going to work. If Kerry doesn't present a defined vision for America, or worse, he presents one that is not markedly different from Bush, voters will pull the lever for Bush. Taxes are low. The economy is looking up. We've defended this country against further terrorist attacks. Trying to get voters to vote against Bush is a mistake. When voters pull that lever, it will be for the devil they know.

Posted by March at April 15, 2004 12:00 PM

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