Chicago Indymedia : http://chicago.indymedia.org/archive
Chicago Indymedia

News :: Elections & Legislation

Kerry: What He Stands For, And Why He Doesn't Deserve Your Vote

With the election less than two weeks away, and the third Presidential debate now over, it is time to take a serious look at exactly what Senator John Kerry says, what he does, what it all means, and why he doesn't deserve your vote.
The constant talk from Kerry about Bush favoring the extremely wealthy is merely disingenuous. Kerry himself favors the extremely wealthy enough to have married one of them. Besides this, he brags often about his support for former President Clinton’s economic record, and it is a record that favored the rich just as much as any other President‘s record. The 1990’s gave us NAFTA and the WTO, and gave us a long period of massive economic expansion that primarily benefited the wealthy. The gap between rich and poor grew; wealth was concentrated into a smaller number of hands at the very top of the economic ladder; environmental standards were dismantled (contrary to popular perception of the Clinton-Gore record) to the benefit of corporations and the detriment of everyone else; and jobs were increasingly moved to nations offering a pool of cheap labor and little or no workers’ rights.

While Kerry denounces Bush’s favoritism of the rich in terms of taxes, Kerry himself offers an economic plan that in fact includes a massive corporate tax-cut, certainly an example of “favoring the wealthy” as much as anything Bush offers. A return to “Clintononomics” would be a return to policies little different from those of Bush, with regard to favoring the wealthy. In fact, while it’s true that Bush’s tax cuts have helped increase the economic problems in the U.S., it is also true that the recession had already started when Bush came into office. The recession is a legacy from the Clinton years, and probably anyone in office at this time would face much of the same problems Bush faces in terms of a stagnant economy.

Bush’s major contributions to the recession are the tax cuts and the massive increase in the military budget, largely for the wars that followed the attacks of September 11th 2001. Those attacks would have led at minimum to the war in Afghanistan no matter who was in the White House. In addition, the overall increase in the military budget would likely have taken place after the attacks whether Bush was in office or not -- and there was certainly little complaining about it from Congress, who even wanted to increase the military budget further than the White House wanted. I’ll post more about the issue of whether anyone besides Bush would have taken the U.S. to war, but not within this article itself -- I’ll post remarks about this in the “comments” area below.

The tax cuts themselves are actually the primary example of a Bush policy that served to enhance the recession and inflate the deficit, but here we can only speculate as to whether another President still might have used a large portion of the budget surplus at least some tax cuts to ease the impact of the recession on voters, as well as perhaps instituting new federal programs that also would have made use of some of the surplus funds. It is likely that had Gore won office, he would have felt compelled to enact some type of recession-package for so-called “economic stimulus”, and that usually translates to tax cuts -- and traditionally, tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the wealthy and corporations, so especially as this years election approached there is reason to suspect the budget surplus would not have remained in a Gore administration. And as noted, the September 11th attacks and the subsequent military build-up and warfare added significantly to the problem anyway, things probable regardless of who won the 2000 election.

On economic issues, there is more to note about Kerry here. Speaking in general terms, there are many examples of Kerry denouncing the loss of jobs in the U.S. He has made it a central talking point in his campaign. The problem is, Kerry himself has directly supported policies like NAFTA that are primarily responsible for the dramatic increase in U.S. companies moving their production overseas.

One glaring example in particular came up during the final debate between Kerry and Bush. Kerry referred a few times to the need to close certain tax loopholes, and explicitly mentioned the problem of tax incentives for U.S. corporations to shut down production domestically and relocate in other nations. What Kerry didn’t mention, and surprisingly neither have the Republicans, is that this particular tax aspect of the issue is deeply connected to the passage of a certain law by Congress -- The 1986 Tax Reform Act. At that time, there was one specific high-profile Senate Democrat backing the law that is noteworthy, someone who encouraged his fellow Senators to pass the 1986 Tax Reform Act, and who told the public that the new law would make “unfairness a thing of the past” so that the citizens can “once again trust their federal government.” It was, of course, Senator John Kerry.

The horrific economic fallout from this law is well-known, but perhaps some readers are not aware of Kerry’s strong endorsement of the legislation. The same legislation that created and/or grossly accentuated the explicit tax problems he now denounces and illogically seeks to suggest are President Bush’s fault. While of course the President can be held accountable for the extent to which he does nothing to address the unfairness of the tax system, the same can be said for Senator Kerry --- and he’s had roughly five times as long to do something about it as Bush has had, besides having explicitly and enthusiastically supported the creation of many of these problems in the first place.

Regarding the questions about gay marriage, Kerry makes attempts to distinguish his position from Bush’s when in reality there is no real distinction at all. Kerry opposes gay marriage, it is as simple as that. At the end of the day, his opposition to a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage is really inconsequential. He knows, as everyone does, that the amendment wasn’t going to pass in Congress, so opposing it while totally agreeing with its intent is overtly inconsistent. The question is whether gay marriage should be legal, and Kerry says “No.” So there is ultimately no difference whatsoever between the two campaigns. Well, that’s not entirely true: Democratic Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards agrees with Kerry that gay marriage should not be allowed, but Vice President Cheney actually does not favor restricting gay marriages and so is at odds with Bush on this issue.

With regard to Israel, Kerry offers absolutely nothing different from the Bush administration. A look at the Democratic Party Platform shows that in fact many of the references to Israel and the Palestinians are taken almost verbatim from either Bush’s own comments and policies, or (more shamelessly) from letters exchanged between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. Kerry openly endorsed Bush’s embrace of Sharon’s entire plan for essentially annexing large portions of the West Bank, Kerry has supported the Israeli Wall, and he has been silent on the recent Israeli attacks inside Gaza.

On Iraq, Kerry is perhaps his most visibly hypocritical. Kerry gave approval for Bush to conduct the war. He knew, as did pretty much everyone else in the entire world, that the Bush regime wanted war and fully intended to invade Iraq. Granting Bush the authority to wage the war, with only the laughable condition that he report back to Congress that there was no option left but a military one, is the same as voting for the war. Any attempt to pretend otherwise is simply dishonest.

Kerry knew as much about the questionable nature of Bush’s “evidence” as the anti-war movement did at that time --- and there was a mountain of evidence even prior to the invasion showing that the claims of the Bush regime were either dubious at best or outright lies. So for Kerry to pretend he was merely “mislead” is patently absurd. In fact, he was in an even better position than the anti-war activists to have access to additional information that cast further doubt on the validity of the intelligence used to make the case for war. The extent to which Kerry was simply not aware of what so many of the rest of us knew about Bush’s lies and misrepresentations only proves he is woefully ill-suited to have the Congressional power to vote on whether to authorize a war. The other option, and of course the more likely one, is that he is lying now and he obviously knew at the time that the pretext for war was based on falsehoods, but he voted for it anyway.

It is especially interesting to consider Kerry’s decision to characterize the invasion of Iraq as the “wrong war at the wrong time”. Kerry himself supported making “regime change” in Iraq the official U.S. policy towards Hussein, and that was in 1998. The stage was set at that time for the toppling of Iraq’s government, including possibly by force. Kerry supported the illegal “No Fly Zones” which were not part of any UN Resolution or agreement, making them a violation of international law. Kerry supported sanctions against Iraq, which led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis --- meaning that technically President Clinton is responsible for the death of more Iraqis than is President Bush (the sanctions would have disappeared overnight if the U.S. wanted it to happen). So if the invasion of Iraq was the “wrong war at the wrong time”, Kerry certainly did nothing to help prevent it and in fact did all he could to assist in laying the ground work for it.

Kerry has (and this boggles the mind) somehow claimed the mantle of “anti-war” candidate. He is “anti-war” to the extent he voted for the war; to the extent he later said that, knowing what he knows today, he would still have voted for it; to the extent he really only seems to object to the manner in which Bush went to war, more than anything else; and to the extent that he intends to send at least an additional 40,000 troops into Iraq (“at least” because the number Kerry gives fluctuates from time to time). In addition, Kerry goes to great pains to express how gung-ho he really is -- he plays upon his service in Vietnam constantly, such as with his embarrassing “Reporting for Duty” line; he insists he’s “tough enough” to be Commander in Chief; and he insists he wants to “win the war on terror” and take the fighting into other nations, a point rarely noted by the press.

There is a question nobody bothers to ask Kerry, and it is a damning one. The Senator, as mentioned, characterizes the invasion of Iraq as the “wrong war at the wrong time”, he says that the U.S. was “misled” by Bush into the war. He is saying, then, that this war is a mistake, something a great number of us agree with. So as Kerry speaks about increasing the number of troops by tens of thousands, when he says the U.S. occupation must continue even as fighting intensifies, and when he says he will “stay the course” and not “cut and run” in Iraq, the question that nobody asks is this: Senator Kerry, how do you ask a person to be the last person to die for a mistake?

There’s another point relating to the “war on terror” that nobody seemed to notice during the final debate. Kerry said he will create two new active-duty divisions to send to Iraq, and that he intends to pull out most of the National Guard forces. Those forces, he said, would be deployed domestically to fight “the war on terror” at home. The implications of that sentence by Kerry should have been the most chilling of any spoken during the campaign, yet it has passed without any comment so far.

Kerry was very clearly not merely referring to sending the National Guard troops home. He chose his words very carefully, and there are important nuances that cannot be forgotten. What is being said is that there is a need to generate tens of thousands of new regular-army personnel, so that they can deploy to Iraq and free-up the National Guard troops needed back in the U.S. for domestic deployment. Apparently a very large domestic deployment. This will be discussed more in the additional remarks in the “comments” section below.

The Kerry campaign constantly reminds the public of his military service in Vietnam. He is portrayed as a war hero, a medal-winner, a leader, someone who can use his war experience as Commander in Chief. What Kerry prefers to forget, to run away from, is his time as an anti-war activist. Kerry prefers to change his claims about throwing his medals back to the government, something he once tried to insinuate he did but later went to great lengths to deny (in truth, he had tossed the medals of another Vietnam Veteran, not his own). In short, Kerry now acts ashamed of his activism, and he wants the public to remember only the “soldier” part of the story, to see him as a “warrior”.

This is linked to another sort of “amnesia”, the fact that Kerry once stated that he was “proud” to be a “liberal”. He used those words, “proud” and “liberal”. Now he rejects the term “liberal” completely, he seeks to cast himself as a “conservative”, a word he has actually used. He denounces Bush for blurring the line between church and state while at the same time he transparently bounds from church to church and increasingly talks about his Catholic faith. Kerry is making an attempt to project a very specific public image of himself -- he gets a hunting license, he talks about guns, and suddenly he can’t drive past a church without stopping to go in. He is trying to look like he has socially conservative “family values”.

This extends to the abortion issue. Here, things get very fuzzy with Kerry. While on the one hand claiming to be committed to defending abortion rights (and having won a 100% approval rating from NARAL and NOW on the abortion issue), Kerry publicly stated that he believes life begins at conception, that abortion is morally wrong, that he would support a ban on late-term abortions if there is an exemption to save the mother’s life, and that he is willing to appoint judges who oppose abortion. Kerry made these exact assertions, and has only altered one of them -- he said during the third debate that he would not appoint any judge who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Yet Kerry has also gone to great lengths to point out that he is most certainly willing to support justices opposed to abortion rights. For example, he pointed to Supreme Court Justice Scalia (whom Kerry voted to confirm) as an example of a judge he was “proud” to have helped put on the bench. The fact is, on the issue of abortion, like so many other social issues, Kerry has sought to move towards the right and portray himself as having conservative views. So much so, in fact, that his actual voting record itself should alarm anyone concerned with abortion rights.

As noted, Kerry received a perfect score from abortion-rights groups for his record in the Senate. Unfortunately, the facts about his recent voting record do not warrant any such score. Does Kerry, for example, support the Global Gag rule? Well, he didn’t vote against it. Nor did he bother to show up for votes on the vast majority of abortion-related laws in this session of Congress. Kerry voted on only three of the fourteen bills relating to abortion. His running mate, John Edwards, at least bothered to show up for a wopping six of those votes. Precisely how much of a commitment to abortion rights does this really show, especially if viewed alongside his “proud” vote to confirm Scalia? How does it look in relation to his other comments about his views on abortion?

Kerry is trying to take the Bill Clinton position on abortion -- “I’m against abortion, but I’m for it.” This eventually led to Clinton supporting parental-notification laws, to Clinton endorsing a ban on late-term abortions (he only refused to sign the law because it lacked the same condition Kerry calls for, allowing the procedures to save the mother’s life) and in fact it was Bill Clinton more than anyone who helped inject the term “partial-birth abortion” into popular discourse, especially in the Democratic Party. Clinton was willing to allow multiple restrictions on abortion rights and on federal funding for abortion, and this was largely because he had already given up ground by taking the “I oppose it personally” position and so he continued to play to that socially conservative set of attitudes.

The danger is, Kerry has gone on record with much more strongly-worded opposition to abortion than that used by Clinton. Kerry has constantly related it to his “faith”, a word he uses with such increasing frequency. Essentially, Kerry has said that in his opinion abortion is murder -- if human life starts at conception and abortion is morally wrong and Kerry feels that God thinks abortion is wrong, then it is not at all a stretch to say that Kerry simply must ultimately feel that abortion is murder. But supposedly, the fact that he thinks abortion is immoral, sinful, and murder does not mean he thinks it should be stopped. Or rather, he does think it should be stopped, but as president he won’t let his views be influenced by…well, his views. Is it even possible that anyone could hold such a rambling, contradictory, illogical perspective?

Probably not. Probably, he’s lying again. But the extent to which he has taken a strong personal stance against abortion will make it even harder for him to oppose certain gradual restrictions on abortion, it will make it harder for him to actually use abortion as a “litmus test” for judges. The question of judicial appointments and nominations, we are told, is highly important in this election. Just like in the 2000 election. And just like we are told the same thing in every election. Because the fact is that Supreme Court Justices are consistently old, and the average age of the Court today is 70. So for the next few elections, most of the judges will basically be right at the average life-expectancy for human beings and so there will be the ever-present danger that whomever is President appointing someone to the bench. In other words, be ready because every election for the foreseeable future will each be “the most important election of your lifetime” just like this one, and just like the 2000 election was also the most important election of our lives.

Abortion is just one of a handful of regular social issues used to divide the population and which play a major role in elections, primarily because this allows the public to be distracted by these issues while larger, deeper issues are neglected. Flag burning, gay marriage, abortion -- the classic divisive issues of distraction. And in the end, what either candidate actually does while in office with regard to these issues differs only slightly. It’s more a matter of the Democrats moving more slowly to the right on the issues and the Republicans moving a little faster. On abortion, Kerry has chosen to move more quickly to the right than usual.

In fact, on just about every issue Kerry and the Democrats have increasingly moved more quickly to the right than they normally do. Kerry has staked out the worst positions on the most important issues, and even on the social issues he is likely to have little impact on. He does not deserve anyone’s vote, and he most certainly will not get mine.
 
 

Donate

Views

Account Login

Media Centers

 

This site made manifest by dadaIMC software