Post-Debate: Passion and Candour

EVENT: CONNOR

Here's the post-debate post, as promised.

Here's what the DNC has asked me to do, as part of their Media Corps.:

We need your help to keep the Republican spin machine in check --write letters to your local newspapers and call in to local radio stations. Over three debates, John Kerry has left no doubt that he has the strength and character we need in a commander in chief. He has shown the American people his command of the facts, steady demeanor, and well reasoned arguments. He offered hope and optimism, and showed that he will fight for middle class families.

And here is where I, Connor, build credibility through candor.

I did not think Kerry had a particularly strong performance tonight.
I did think that, after tonight's debate, to the unresolved, Kerry may well have left "doubt that he has the strength and character we need in a commander in chief." He doesn't have the Andy Griffith smile. He doesn't have the affable laugh. He has a more solemn, less congenial, manner, and it left him at a disadvantage tonight, a night when he should have enjoyed a tremendous advantage.

HERE'S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NOW:

- Write a letter to the editor of a local periodical.
- Call a radio program.
- Talk to friends and relatives about their vote. Usually there is a tactful way to do this.
- Request an absentee ballot. That way you can volunteer for a get out the vote drive on election day.
- Volunteer on the webpage: www.johnkerry.com.
- DON'T SIMPLY PREACH TO THE CHOIR. It does help the blood pressure, but it does not cost Bush votes. You have to be clever and sensitivie in order to do this; many "undecided" voters have been harangued and are tired of being barked at. Listen, and then speak.
- Don't chirp up the party line... make acknowledgments of points scored.
Moreover, don't pander... be aggressive in pursuing your points.
One thing we as citizens can exploit is the desire most Americans have for an honest and vigorous debate uninhibited by unyielding decorum and the priorities of certain constituencies.
- Need points? Here are some starters, ready for use because Kerry has let many slide:

a. Bush has declared Kerry to be the "liberal Senator from Massachussetts," vs. Ted Kennedy In actuality, Kerry is one of the most centrist Democratic candidates that has ever run for president, partly explained in his choices to break from his party on issues like welfare and his much-maligned vote on Iraq. Reports on his voting for tas increases are easily matched by the number of times he has voted against them. This divide in votes actually shows a sense of discretion regarding what should and should not be reasonably taxed.
Bush, on the other hand, has been so fiscally reckless that he had divided a large portion of his own party against him, to the extent that his hopes now rely on social conservatives and an effective PR campaign. While he decries liberal "government meddling," through the Patriot Act and Homeland Security, the Bush Administration has given the government unprecedented access to our lives. In short this is an easy argument to make, because evidence is plentiful that Bush, more than Kerry, demonstrates a radical political inclination.

b. Bush often wins support on the account of the war against terror.
When we argue, the most commonly pursued threads in this argument involve our disengagement of Afghanistant, Iran, and North Korea. These are good arguments to make. The pro-Bush argument contends that resources have not been directed away from these situations.
One appropriate response is to demonstrate attention... given the Bush-pushed doctrine of preemptive war, it is the threat of waging war that induces states (eg. Libya) to disarm. The problem is that we're not much of a threat when our attention is all caught up in Iraq.
Moreover, HOLD PEOPLE to the notion that we were in Iraq because of WMDs. This is one front where I think the Democrats have been too passive. They want to address all justifications the Bush camp has made. It isn't necessary: we went on a presumption of a tangible threat that we deemed the most grave. Period. We need not engage questions of whether there were terrorists trained in Iraq or Saddam Hussain was a monster, because terrorists haven't led us to bomb Syria, nor did we touch Molosivic with a ten foot pole without full NATO support.
An underutilized argument in the War on Terror are the ballistic arms treaty we withdrew from (ie. how can we discourage nuclear proliferation if we don't agree to cut back ourselves), the chemical weapons ban we rejected (ie. how can we discourage the manufacture of such weapons if we don't agree not to manufacture them ourselves), and the Kyoto protocol (ie. how can we build broad support internationally over issues supposedly of priority (the War on Terror?) if we can't make concessions on matters of less gravity).

c. Domestically, everything has gone wrong. Most pro-Bush arguments have relied on an extremely superficial glance at the facts. They'll almost always fall back on the increase in education funding.
This argument, again, should get them nowhere, because the No Child Left Behind (besides being an awful bill in the first place) was very ambitious, but was never adequately funded. Furthermore the "accountability" checks on public schools as a result of NCLB is a piece of abysmal planning that ensures that poor public schools, already strapped for resources, tend to receive even less.
Shoot down the Pell grant remark. Less money is awarded overall. Period. The fact that coservatives rely so heavily on one marker suggests that their argument is fragile in the first place.
Unemployment. Median wage. Outsourcing. These are not superficial arguments. Make them again and again. Draw comparisons to the 80s recession, the oil crisis of the 70s, the tumult of the 60s and Vietnam, the red scare, World War II, and Pearl Harbor. These are powerful enough points to bring up numerous times, and as do so, round it out with a bit of fiscal wisdom: NO PRESIDENT HAS ROLLED BACK TAXES IN WARTIME.

~ Connor

EDIT: Incidentally, I was wrong again about the debate. Kerry won decisively in most polls.