Kerry is the real deal

I bet few people were really anticipating what is now unfolding in the Democratic primaries across the nation. Only a few weeks ago, Washington pundits were already writing Senator John Kerry's political obituary and asserting the inevitability of a Dean nomination. Well, surprise, surprise! Kerry is now well on his way to win his party's nomination and Dean is well on his way to become, as some have put it, "an obscure trivia question."

I must say that, for one, I am not surprised to see Kerry doing so well. I have always believed he was the strongest Democratic candidate from day one. In April of last year, well before the race was under way, I wrote a column entitled "The man who can beat Bush"(4-24-03), in which I outlined the reasons why I thought Kerry was in the best position to win back the White House. Even at the height of Governor Dean's popularity among Democrats I still believed Kerry was the best option to confront Bush. In a column entitled "Pragmatism or Idealism: The Democrats Dilemma" (11-12-03) I tried to explain why voting for Kerry would be much more sensible choice than the seemingly unbeatable Dean.

I mention this not because I think I am a political guru with the power to see the future. I say it because my support for Kerry's candidacy is rooted on the solid conviction that he is the best candidate out there -- a conclusion I reached a while ago. Now, having said that, I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised with the way the Democratic electorate has behaved during the primaries.

I confess that I feared that Dean would be able to channel the raw anti-Bush sentiment among Democrats to his favor. His emotional appeal -- some would say radical -- to the Democrat's sense of powerlessness at first resonated strongly amongst the liberal core of the party. But at the end of the day, his message was not compelling enough to convince the voters that he could take on Bush.

Kerry, on the other hand, offered a more mainstream alternative, backed up by a bright resum‚ and a presidential image. And that is the central lesson of these primaries: electability, or the perceived probability of beating an incumbent president, proved to be the most important attribute for a candidate. In the eyes of voters, Kerry had a better chance of beating Bush, and that is why Kerry has been winning almost every primary. This simple truth is a great case study in electoral politics; the fact that voters could discard Dean's raw meat of Democratic indignation in favor of Kerry's pragmatism and solid credentials tells me that voters are more sophisticated than I would have thought.

Now it looks increasingly clear that the November election will match Kerry against Bush in what will undoubtedly be a fierce and, despite what some people would wish to believe, extremely close race. Bush and Kerry are already sparring each other, throwing around accusations in a decidedly negative confrontation. It will be rough campaign, and I will enjoy it every step of the way.

As far as I can tell, Kerry has a great advantage: Bush is now on the defensive. The president has everything to lose. Imagine him being defeated, being fired from his job just like his daddy was. That would be too much for him to handle. He now has to defend his record, which has been under incessant attack by the Democrats for many months now. Experts say that re-election campaigns are basically referendums on the incumbent's administration, so this may be all about what kind of a president Bush has been. Bush's problem is that the important parts of his record are pretty much indefensible. He cannot claim he has created jobs. He cannot claim there were WMD in Iraq. He cannot claim Iraq is a success story.

Another problem for Bush is that he does not have much ammunition against Kerry. He cannot say Kerry is unpatriotic because the Senator is a war hero. He cannot say Kerry would be fiscally imprudent because the president has created the worst deficits in history! He cannot claim Kerry is controlled by special interests because, as the Kerry campaign rightly pointed out, nobody in history has received more money from special interests that president Bush.

Kerry does have one conceivably weak spot: his senate voting record. But that does not seem much compared to all the ammunition Kerry has against Bush.

We'll see what happens. This election is just getting started and the contenders are just warming up. It will be an epic fight. But for now, all we can do now is sit back, relax, and turn on our TV's to CNN or Fox News, or both.

Rodrigo de Haro is a senior majoring in International Relations. He can be reached at deharo@tuftsdaily.com.