Kerry Needs Courage

Here we are, heading into the most crucial election we may ever see in our lifetimes. On one side sits a man, the incumbent president, who ran up the biggest debt in American history, savaged civil liberties, allowed a ban on dangerous assault weapons to expire and proposed a homophobic amendment to the Constitution - a man under whom over 1.8 million jobs were lost and 45 million Americans went without basic health care.

Worst of all, he led the nation into an unjustified and unnecessary war that cost the country 1,000 young American lives and billions of dollars.

Should be no contest, right?

Wrong. The polls were tied for a while, and now the incumbent Bush is winning.

Much of the blame must fall on the Republican "noise machine" - the apparatus that puts out defamatory ads against challenger John Kerry and that convinces Americans that jobs were actually created under Bush or that Osama bin Laden is even remotely affected by our invasion of Iraq.

However, a substantial part of the blame must also fall on the Democrats and their nominee, John Kerry, who is lacking the courage necessary to make a real impression on voters by voicing real opposition.

Apparently the Democrats did not learn their lesson in 2002, during the mid-term Congressional elections -- the bonehead Democratic Congressional strategy was to act just like Republicans, voting for and supporting things like No Child Left Behind, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the war in Iraq.

Of course, when the opposition party provides no real opposition, they aren't likely to win, and they didn't. Republicans forcefully took control of Congress after wresting many seats from the "Democrats."

John Kerry is the poster boy of that era. He voted for all these things, like the PATRIOT Act and No Child Left Behind.

Worst of all, he voted for the war in Iraq. Bush's biggest liability by far should be this war - he took us in saying we remove a threat, and no threat was found. In the process, over 1,000 American lives, 10,000 Iraqi lives and billions of dollars were wasted.

Whether you believe Bush lied to get us to war or simply failed to challenge his intelligence reports, it's still a major leadership failure. His ticket back to Crawford should be punched on that reason alone.

But this unjust war is not a major issue in the campaign, because the Democrats nominated someone who voted for the same war. Kerry cannot launch an outright challenge to Bush on the war issue because he voted for it.

Kerry will say he only voted to give Bush the power to go to war, and that he thinks the way Bush unilaterally pursued action was wrong.

Really? Then where was Kerry in February and March 2003, when Bush was heading to war without international support? Where was Kerry during the war and after victory was declared? Where was Kerry right up until Howard Dean gained rapid support by opposing the war?

Kerry is trapped by his war vote. It's unfortunate because he probably knew the war was wrong - he is, in general, a sensible man - but was following the misguided strategy of voting like a Republican. This strategy is based on the false assumption that the country is very conservative right now, and so to gain votes, one must appear to be as conservative as possible without alienating the liberal base of the Democratic Party.

The problem with this strategy is most of the country really isn't conservative, as defined by the Bush administration. The majority of people don't support the war, don't favor tax cuts that benefit only the rich, don't favor massive debts, don't favor serious reductions in civil liberties, don't want to see police taken off the streets and dangerous assault weapons put back on, and don't want to see a law prohibiting marriage between certain types of people.

Instead of letting Republicans set the political discourse, Democrats should redefine the debate.

Sure, at the time most people supported the Iraq war. But that's because leaders like Kerry weren't challenging the obviously suspect rationale. The only side the public was hearing from was the Republican side.

Democrats should muster up some courage and stake out the issues as they see them. It's time to provide some much-needed opposition to the Bush regime.

While John Kerry isn't everything I want him to be, he's a league (or three) above Bush. He can be a good president, and despite the poll numbers, he can still win. He just needs to take aggressive, independent and truly Democratic stances. It's time to stop letting Republicans set the political climate.