| Seven Dwarves Again
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December 2002
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Democrats Already Losing 2004 Vote
Senator John Kerry, liberal Democrat from Massachusetts and husband of a Heinz Ketchup heiress, has formed an exploratory committee for a presidential bid in 2004. For our non-American readers, that means he's running, but for election fundraising reasons, he's not running yet. If he, or any Democrat, is to beat George Bush the Lesser, the Democrats in Congress need to help. Sadly, there's no sign of that yet.
What is needed, despite the punditry to the contrary, is not more liberalism nor more centrism, but rather more action from the Congressional Democrats. They need to sit down and create their own version of the Contract for America, and they need to make national security and the economy the exact same issue -- the war on Fascislam requires a healthy economy. A weak economy is a threat to national defense.
Defeating a war-time president is virtually impossible, but it can be done if the case can be made that the president and his minions have failed to prosecute the war as they should. The key will be to fight the war on terrorists on Wall Street, in the shopping malls and in the unemployment line.
Instead, we have new House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi trying to appear more moderate than she is, and more non-threatening than the opposition should be for fear of losing more votes. Some commentators have said that there is no place for the Democrats to go but up. That isn't true. Just ask the Whigs, another party that ceased to stand for anything or articulate a policy.