Will “Broken Glass Democrats” Be Enough?
By Vincent Fiore (10/28/04)
It seems like only yesterday that Saddam Hussein was roused out of his spider hole in Iraq, and George W. Bush seemed near impervious to any challenge mounted by anyone seeking the White House.
But it is getting late in the game, and Bush is far removed from those triumphant and invincible days in December, 2003, when he and the nation witnessed the complete defeat of the despot.
Late in October, Bush is fighting for his political life against a seemingly formidable candidate in John Kerry. After defeating Howard Dean in Iowa, Kerry established a reputation as a tough in-fighter who would cede no ground to a popular incumbent president.
Kerry has spent dollar for dollar against Bush, assembled a who’s who in the way of campaign advisers, and stood toe to toe with Bush in four-and-a-half hours of debate between the two.
If you had asked people in December of last year if the election would wind up as close as the 2000 election, most would have considered that as fantasy. But it’s not fantasy. A large number of the public seems open to changing presidents, even in the middle of a war.
But what really puzzles me the most is how John Kerry could ever inspire this kind of thinking from Americans. How can a man with no principles to speak of and a record so devoid of accomplishments be within striking distance of the presidency?
After countless hours of hearing John Kerry at the dinner table every night for over a year, a large number of Americans will pull the lever for him on November 2. This mass of voters, it seems, were paying more attention to their dinner plates than what Kerry was telling them night after night.
But what I heard, though not verbatim, was clear and concise in its meaning. What John Kerry’s words indicated to me was that a vote for him is a vote for depravity in America. What John Kerry’s words indicated tome is that a vote for him is a vote for inequality in America. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for racism. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for class warfare in America. This is how John Kerry sees America today, his America.
What John Kerry further indicated to me, night after night, is that a vote for him is a vote for defeatism, egalitarianism, elitism, liberalism, and terrorism for America.
To sum up an entire election season--a vote for John Kerry is a vote for the paralysis of America-- at home and geopolitically.
For me, I wondered how the country could listen to John Kerry, and then come up with such vastly differing opinions regarding the man. The rhetorical stretches that he regularly spouts out across the country are essentially a litany of “Bush did this” or “Bush didn’t do that,” but nearly nothing about what John Kerry will do.
In Bush, you have a man whose presidency was interrupted by the carnage of September 11, and then changed course to combat America’s terrorist attack and future danger. Nobody really knows what would have happened during the course of a normal Bush presidency, meaning the absence of the September 11 attacks.
Kerry rails against tax cuts, education, Medicare, the military, and abortion, all issues which the Bush administration has had a major impact upon. But the senator from Massachusetts does not detail his objections to these Bush initiatives; he can only accuse the president with a populist-type message of “Us against Them,” and then condemn Bush as a “misleader.”
Then I realized something that is a very basic truth: people hear what they want to hear, and will not let truth get in their way. If they hate Bush, and a lot of voters do, Kerry could rob widows out their life’s savings and kick stray dogs in the light of day, and they would still vote for him, as it is a vote against Bush. In reality, Kerry is just an empty vessel to fill up with the extreme hate that poisons the Democratic Party today, and hang a big “D” next to his name in the voting booth.
In 2000, American Spectator writer Byron York made famous the phrase “Broken-Glass Republicans” to illustrate to just what lengths Republicans would go to remove the Clinton/Gore stain from the White House. The phrase was originated by a “freeper,” on Free Republic.com, who goes by the moniker “LonePalm.” Sounding more like a quip then a quest at the time, it has in some respects become an article of faith and duty among the GOP today.
But for the Democratic Party, crawling through broken glass will not be not enough. There has to be something on the other side worth crawling to. The minority of Bush haters will most certainly crawl through the broken glass come November 2, but they have nothing to crawl to. There are not enough of them to put Bush out on Election Day. That leaves the remainder of an electorate who believes in casting a vote for a worthy candidate, and not one that inspires hate or fear.
In the end, it will be John Kerry’s inability to lead and inspire that will be his undoing. His only accomplishment to date is his diligence to further stoke the fires of these “Broken-Glass Democrats” who despise President Bush. But in a political history that began with shameful displays against his country after returning from Vietnam, and culminated with a 20-year senate career that is remarkably unaccomplished, Kerry needs more than voters that hate. He needs voters that believe in him.
But Americans do not believe in the hate and fear that John Kerry is selling these days, and all the Broken-Glass Democrats will not change that fact, or make the difference come Election Day.
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