Junto Boys

ARE THERE NO LIBERALS IN AMERICA?

John Kerry’s lifetime voting record registers 92%liberal (according to the Liberal rating group ADA), but this somehow makes him a moderate according to every media outlet and his own campaign. This is a derivative of Eric Alterman’s 2003 book, What Liberal Media, where Alterman claims that even The New York Times is moderate.

We know there is such a thing as liberals because candidates to the right of John Kerry like Lyndon Johnson and Walter Mondale called themselves liberals. I grew up in Indiana and I remember when Dan Quayle was running against incumbent Birch Bayh for the U.S. Sentate. Bayh’s campaign ad trumpeted the fact that he was a liberal. This was when Conservative was a scary word and Reagan had no chance to win the election. Reagan won and Quayle won. In 1984, Mondale called himself a liberal because it had never hurt in the past. He was roundly defeated. Michael Dukakis was a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Forget it. Bill Clinton was a member of the somewhat less liberal Democratic Leadership Council and rode that to victory shying away from the “L” word.

The lesson learned by Liberals was that they’d better give themselves a fresh coat of paint and start using the word “moderate.”

There are a few moderates in the Democrat Party. Joe Lieberman, John Breaux, Ben Nelson are among them. John Kerry is not one. To be a moderate you have to do something moderate, and hopefully in a non-election year.

Since calling John Kerry a liberal or citing his voting record is considered negative campaigning, conservatives are somehow supposed to ignore the philosophy that is contrary to their own.

The media complains that these campaigns lack substance and become beauty contests, but until they are willing to identify leftist beliefs as well as rightwing beliefs, reporters will have nothing to contrast except the amount of tears each candidate can conjure up talking about their humble upbringings or the plight of the uninsured.

Since any ready voting block will find a candidate to take their cause, you would have to assume there are no liberal voters, because there are no liberal candidates. Or maybe liberal voters aren’t fooled by the media and the candidates.