[Mb-civic] ROBERT SCHEER Kerry a Bleeding Heart? Hardly LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer12oct12.story

ROBERT SCHEER

Kerry a Bleeding Heart? Hardly
 Robert Scheer

 October 12, 2004

 Thank you, George W. Bush, for trying to assure me that John Kerry is a
liberal. Wish it were so.

 I like liberals. They gave us the five-day workweek; ended child labor;
invented unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare; and led us,
despite fierce opposition from "America First" pseudo-patriots on the
political right, to victory over fascism in World War II. Liberals also
ended racial segregation and gave women the vote.

 But when Bush used the L-word in the second presidential debate, Kerry did
not defend that proud progressive tradition. Nor did I expect him to. Kerry
is one of those New Democrats who rejects the "liberal" label that I find so
honorable. After all, Kerry, as he bragged in the debate, voted for the
atrocious 1996 welfare reform bill, which has contributed to the 4 million
additional people, mostly children, pushed below the poverty line during
Bush's tenure. 

 However, after Bush's attempt to tar him as a bleeding heart, I thought I
had it wrong ‹ so I checked the website of the National Journal, the source
cited by Bush as branding Kerry the No. 1 liberal of our time.

 As is his habit on so many things, Bush had the facts wrong. The career
voting record of the "Massachusetts liberal" ranks him as only the 11th most
liberal, behind current colleagues from Iowa, California, Illinois,
Minnesota, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Vermont and Maryland ‹ and his running
mate is a miserable 27th.

 It turns out the duo moved up in the journal's 2003 rankings only because
they were both out campaigning and, just as Republican presidential nominees
have in the past, missed many congressional votes. As the journal later
explained in disclaiming the GOP's misinterpretation of its ranking system,
the 2003 rating of Kerry as the top liberal was based only on the 19 votes
he cast on economic issues.

 But even that narrow selection was misinterpreted, as noted by Al From and
Bruce Reed, the leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council ‹ and thus the
guardians of the party's dominant centrist ideology. They define Kerry not
as a liberal but as a Clinton-style moderate, even when looking at only his
2003 votes. 

 Eight of Kerry's "liberal" votes last year dealt with cutting back Bush's
tax giveaway to the 1% richest Americans. Another four reflected moderate
pro- environment positions, while two others should have been supported by
all Americans: an extension of benefits for folks thrown out of work, many
by the outsourcing abroad of decent jobs, and a challenge to the Bush
assault on overtime pay.

 The DLC guys further point out that Kerry's "centrism" has been affirmed in
the last decade by his votes for measures that many liberals rightly
opposed, such as the 1997 balanced-budget agreement, free-trade extensions
without commensurate protections for the environment and workers' rights,
and the knee-jerk 1994 law-and-order "100,000 cops" anti-crime bill.

 So, once again, as with Bill Clinton, I find myself supporting a Democrat
with a domestic agenda to the right of Richard Nixon. Yes, the man Arnold
Schwarzenegger eulogized at the GOP convention was in favor of a guaranteed
annual income for all Americans ‹ something that can be made to sound even
more socialist than liberal. Nixon's point man on such issues was Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, who as a Democratic senator from New York later blasted
Clinton's anti-welfare bill as an immoral assault on the poor.

 I interviewed Nixon in 1984, long after he had been chased from office, and
found him to be quite proud of his domestic agenda. How sad for the nation
that his domestic policy is now considered progressive compared with Bush's.
Many excellent programs such as Social Security and Medicare that once had
strong bipartisan support are now under attack by a perversely destructive
president. 

 OK, Kerry may not be a daring liberal, but he is an enlightened moderate
who would at least safeguard the gains made since Franklin Roosevelt's New
Deal. By contrast, the Bush administration seems determined to return us to
the 19th century, when corporate robber barons owned the White House and
employed crude "gunboat diplomacy" to serve their greed.


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