Next, Norma-Jean Laurent asked Kerry how he could reconcile his concern with health care costs by picking ace accident lawyer John Edwards as his running mate. "Very easily," replied Kerry, explaining: "I believe that we will be able to get a fix that has eluded everybody else, because we know how to do it." This from two senators who faithfully have voted against tort reform and are supported handsomely by the trial lawyer's lobby.
This is a yearlong struggle waged in a campaign with only three weeks to go. From the start, Kerry advisers warned of a major advertising effort to paint the senator as a liberal. Actually, Kerry's career liberal record is measured by the Americans for Democratic Action as 92 percent, two points better than 90 percent for his indisputably liberal Massachusetts colleague, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Yet, the Republicans are accused of a smear.
So, Kerry describes himself as anti-abortion, pro-tort reform and fiscally conservative. When Bush described Kerry's big health insurance plan as "what liberals do," Kerry charged: "The president is just trying to scare everybody here with throwing labels around."
Acknowledgement that the liberal label comes from a lifetime of public service is studiously avoided by the Kerry campaign. For three decades, Kerry has adhered unconditionally to a multilateral foreign policy. Consequently, at Coral Gables, it was natural for him to repeatedly mention "summits" to solve Iraq and urge a "global test" for U.S. initiatives. After polls showed that these were the least popular elements of Kerry's winning performance in Florida, "summit" and "global test" were dropped from the senator's vocabulary at St. Louis.
Conventional wisdom says the Republicans pin the scarlet L on Kerry because it energizes their conservative base. Much more really is at stake. John Kerry seeks the undecided and persuadable voters by campaigning as an ideologically moderate, fiscally conservative champion of the middle class. George W. Bush made that harder in the second debate.