Sell me on Kerry. What will he do differently?

Great Debates
1

I had a screed written here, then deleted it and sent it to the Pit, then decided it’s probably best here. Here goes.

(considering the favored terms of “Pubbies”, “Bushco”, “Bushistas”, et al)

I’m calling on all Dummycrats to tell me why Kerry is the best choice in November. What will he do better than Bush?

I know he likes to keep the SDMB meme’s about the Iraq war alive. But he voted for the war and has said he wouldn’t pull the troops until the job was done. So we’re there no matter who’s living in the WH. But he’s trying to play the angle that he’ll bring the troops home?

He’s calling for more health care paid by revoking the “tax cuts for the rich”. However, he hasn’t mentioned a word about what the income limit is for “rich”. As I’ve said before, my wife and I have benefitted from the tax cut. Forget about us being rich or not (we aren’t), will we be affected? Tell us how your policies will make us vote for you.

Foreign policy. You voted for the use of force. Then you voted they shouldn’t be used. Then you voted that money should be used to pay for the troops in Iraq. Then you said the troops should be pulled out ASAP. Then you said the US has to stay the course and not abandon the Iraqi people. Now you say you’ll not only find a way to bring the troops home, but that you’ll keep them there long enough to finish the job because you have a plan.

John Kerry, pick a frigging position and stick with it long enough to make somebody think it’s a core value.

When you figure that one out, make an argument that you are a better candidate than “Anybody But Bush”.

I’ll give you until November 3rd to figure out what your message is. Hate to rush you.

2

Provide much-needed adult leadership.

I see someone’s getting their Kerry campaign news from the RNC. :rolleyes:

3

WOW! That was your argument for someone to vote for Kerry?!? I was trying to find someone that could offer a concrete position, but you’ve proven it’s likely, well…unlikely.

Thanks for validating my view of the left-wing.

4

It seems you already made up your mind. How are we supposed to “sell” you on anything but what you already believe?

5

Do I have to hold your hand while you cross the street, too? The thread is for Kerry supporters to tell us why he should be President. OTHER THAN NOT BEING BUSH!

If the best argument you can come up with is that ‘It seems like you’re voting for Bush, so why bother’, you’re in the wrong thread.

6

Why isn’t “not being Bush” a good reason? In my opinion, Bush is destroying this country economically. At this point, i don’t care if we get a mediocre president, i just want one that will stop harming our country at an alarming rate.

And for what it’s worth, i’ve heard that “rich” is defined as $200,000 family income per year. I’ve heard this number many, many times.

7

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

LISTEN PEOPLE!!!.

Give us reason to vote FOR Kerry instead of AGAINST Bush. Do you not understand that simple fucking concept?!?

Oh, I know, this would be a legit campaign for Hitler. “Vote for me cuz I’m not Stalin”. This is pretty much what I see the Kerry campaign as according to you loyal, friendly, Dopers.
now taking bets on the number of cars involved in this train wreck
GIVE US REASONS TO VOTE FOR KERRY!

8

I see no good reason that this election should not be a referendum on the Bush Presidency. If you think, as I do think, that President Bush has performed inadequately, that we are up to our arm pits in an unnecessary war and an unnecessary occupation, that the tax cuts the President ran through a friendly Congress in conjunction with an unnecessary war will result in an economic burden that will persist for decades, that the President’s policies have damaged the nation’s international credibility, that the President’s school improvement plan is window dressing for gutting the free public education system, that the obsession with Iraq is a significant diversion from the critical task of breaking up terrorist networks, then “Anybody but Bush” is a valid shorthand slogan for my position in that referendum.

Given a referendum all Senator Kerry has to do is be an acceptable candidate for office. He certainly is that and he surely has all the equipment to do an adequate job of presiding over the executive department. If you are looking for a man on a horse you are going to be disappointed. My experience is that men or horses tend to be phonies and charlatans – note our present cowboy President.

9

Kerry will not cut taxes (mainly for the rich), and increase spending like a hyperactive teenager with 5 credit cards. Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible President in recent history. Now, Kerry may not get us to a balanced budget, but I expect better fiscal responsibilty.

Second, Kerry will at least attempt global diplomacy. Seriously, Bush didn’t make even a credible attempt at diplomacy.

Y’all can keep going, but there’s two pretty obvious ones

10

but duffer, can’t you see that Bush is eeeeeeevil? :stuck_out_tongue:

I can’t give a big list as I have to get the kid off to school in a minute, but here are the reasons that I am voting for Kerry.

  1. Economically, I can’t stand Bush and his administrations deficit spending. At least Kerry has stated he’ll raise taxes to pay for things. I’m suprised Bush hasn’t promised us another tax cut if he’s reelected.

  2. To be honest, I’m still pissed off at the stem cell decision. While non-embryonic stem cell research has shown promise, why restrict the studies? If this has even half the promise of the hype then we should be trying everything. Also, Bush’s decision was based at least partially on not offending the religious right. I don’t have a problem with a president being religious, but I don’t want him governing based upon it. Kerry has promised to reverse the stem cell decision and invest more in research in new technology. Works for me.

  3. Bush has done so much to alienate the rest of the globe that I can’t imagine Kerry doing much worse. It seems as if Bush wants to fight the war on global terror in an “every country for him/herself” method. That won’t work. This is really the one area in which I will take Kerry in an “anybody but Bush” way, though I do like the idea of a more sensitive war on terror.

  4. Speaking of the war on terror, the only thing Bush has done right imho was invade Afghanistan. Everything afterward has been a mess and a half. Funding for anti terror programs is in short supply. The war in Iraq and subsequent abu gharib prison scandal is giving those wacky hateful muslims more proof that we are the evil empire. Perchance if we had more allies going in it would have seemed more like a just cause than a personal beef.

That’s all for now. Can’t take the kid to school in my pjs. I’ll post more after work if I feel like it. :slight_smile:

11

Since Bush yesterday trotted out the tired “tax and spend” attack on Kerry, may I humbly suggest the succinct “borrow and spend” tag for George Bush. That is, we have not reduced spending, and are having to borrow significant amounts from Asian banks. Our deficit and debt are at historically high levels.

“Borrow and spend” conservatives.

Duffer, when did Kerry “vote” that force shouldn’t be used? Kerry has never wavered in his position on Iraq. Please see this site:

I ask any opponent of Kerry to demonstrate how he has changed his position on Iraq.

duffer, please provide a cite for Kerry saying that the troops should be brought home ASAP.

You also alluded to the $87 billion vote, if I read you right. Keep in mind that Kerry voted for the bill that would have required the tax cut be used to pay the costs. Since it did not pass, many Senators first voted against the $87 billion before they voted for it. Flip floppers. Kerry, however, as a man of principle, did not change his position in favor of the first bill, and voted against the second. He did this, assuredly, knowing that it would be used against him by partisan Republicans. Hardly a flip flopper.

Further, don’t forget, Bush threatened to veto the money.

Also don’t forget that some $8 billion of Iraq reconstruction money was simply lost.

12

I’m glad you brought up Hitler. If it were Hitler vs Bush, i would vote Bush.

duffer, since you have put forth the concept that you must justify your vote by the positives of the candidate for which you are voting, if Hitler were running against Kerry, who would you vote for, and what positives would you attribute to the candidate which you choose?

13

This thread seems rather pointless since it is obvious from the OP that you aren’t open to being convinced (“Dummmycrats”) but for the sake of other less close-minded folks…

A few random things Kerry will do:

(1) As a general summary, he will base his decisions on fact, evidence, and science rather than basing them solely on ideology (and gifts to the powerful special interests supporting him) and then twisting and cherry-picking the facts to support his position. For example, with Kerry:

(a) We will not have someone who cherry-picks the intelligence on Iraq and then refuses to revise his opinion when Hans Blix tells him the U.S. intelligence isn’t panning out.

(b) He will base decisions on environmental issues, such as global warming, on what the science says and will not try to stack scientific committees to get the answers that he wants or to suppress scientific findings that he doesn’t like.

© We will actually have somthing resembling intelligent political discourse on topics instead of propaganda more fitting of North Korea or Iran than of the United States. For example, he won’t sell his policies with (and maybe even base his policies on) semantic abuse such as the two-valued orientation. (“You are either with us or with the terrorists,” “I had the choice between trusting a madman and defending the United States”.)

(d) We won’t have someone who constantly sells the same snake-oil just in new bottles. E.g., we won’t have a plan to cut taxes for his rich friends first sold as a plan to give the excess surplus back to the people but then resold as a stimulus plan when the economy tanks and the surplusses disappear. (Somewhere in there, I think that there was even a brief attempt to sell it as a deficit-reduction package, a la supply side voodoo.)

Now on to a few specific issues…

(2) Taxes: Kerry will support a more balanced approach to taxes that recognizes that over the last 20 years (1979-2000), the top 1% has already seen after-tax incomes increase by >200% in real terms while those in the middle quintile saw an increase of only 15%. (These numbers were even before the Bush tax cuts.) So, he will recognize that the solution to this is not to make the tax policy favor the top 1% even more.

(3) Fiscal responsibility: He’ll have a little. He won’t drive the country from record projected surplusses to record projected deficits in just a few years.

(4) Spending on programs: When he enacts new spending programs, like a Medicare drug benefit, these programs will actually be designed to help people rather than to be welfare and payback to the pharmaceutical industry.

(5) The environment: He will enforce existing environmental laws, strengthen them where necessary, support bipartisan bills (like the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act) to start limiting greenhouse gases, and support real investments in renewable energy. He won’t try to weaken the Clean Air Act and use forest fires as a cynical excuse to open the forests up, including old-growth areas, for more logging.

(6) War on terrorism: He won’t waste tens of billions of dollars deploying a missile defense system that doesn’t work. He won’t waste hundreds of billions of dollars toppling regimes that have less relation to al Qaeda than ones who will support. He will take stronger steps to actually track down al Qaeda and to protect our ports, borders, etc.

That’s just a few off the top of my head. I am sure others can add more.

14

Firstly, duffer, vote for whomever you want. If you truly believe that a Bush White House truly better represents your interests, go for it.

Here are the some of the principal reasons I’m voting Kerry:

  1. I believe the invasion of Iraq was made under false pretences, and that while it may not be possible to prosecute members of the Bush administration for the colossal waste of lives and resourses that it entailed, I’ll be damned if I’ll give them a free ride for another four years of such mischief.

  2. The Bush White House appears to have little or no concern for those who make less than several hundred thousand dollars per year. I am not one of that group.

  3. Despite what many Republicans claim, recent Democratic administrations seem to have been far more fiscally responsible than Republican ones.

  4. I believe the Bush White House pays insufficient attention to the need for subtlety in international diplomacy.

  5. I believe that, despite the frantic efforts of the RNC to instill the meme in heads like yours that Kerry is a “flip-flopper”, Kerry is a relatively principled person for a career politician and that the principles he supports are more like my own than those of Bush.

  6. Kerry apparently does not support such complete idiocies as a constitutional amendment banning marriage between gays.

  7. Kerry, unlike his opponent, can actually utter coherent sentences when speaking in public. Not the most important thing, maybe, but hey.

Does this answer your question?

BTW, if you actually want to debate in good faith, starting off by calling anyone who might make the effort to answer you “dummycrats”, and angrily shouting at them when they do answer, is probably not the best way to do it.

15

He’s not Bush.

16

How about Bush’s stem cell research policy?

17

And in support of this, see Republican Congressman Nick Smith’s opening remarks to the Committee on International Relations…

Funny, that’s what Kerry has been saying all along, and what Republicans are intentionally twisting into “he voted for the war, then he said he was against it” flip-flop nonsense.

18

Unfortunately most here are anti-Bush… not necessarily pro-Kerry. Still compared to Bush having flopped all his oil companies and only gotten a football team working… he should have stayed in sports.

 I've seen many mentions of the investigations Kerry has participated. From MIA in Vietnam to the BCCI thingy. Kerry certainly seems more likely to analyze information before going to war for example. He would be a leader instead of a figure head too. 

 Kerry understands the need for global cooperation and diplomacy.
19

Duffer, I hope you’re still with this thread. I can’t directly answer your question (why you should vote for Kerry) because I don’t know you personally. I can tell you why I’m voting for him, and why I believe he’s better than Bush for the United States and me, personally.

It all boils down to education. By August 2005, I will be a public school teacher. Starting in January 2005, I’ll be a student-teacher, aka intern. President Bush supports the ridiculous No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which is horribly under-funded. It is seen by many of my colleagues as the first step in privatizing education entirely. In my city (Kalamazoo, MI), public school teachers start off around $30k/year, while private educators make about $18-23k/year. I can make $23k/year at Target, where I currently work. I see it as a slap in my face to pay me that little for such an important job.

Senator Kerry wants to improve my situation. He wants to pay me more, and he wants to keep me public. He does support one part of NCLB that I actually like: legislation that enables schools to get rid of ineffective teachers. He also supports giving more assistance to young men and women who want to go to college. At Monday’s Rally, Senator Edwards said that they would like to enact legislation that would give young men and women four years of college tuition for two years of public service at the state or national level. That would make it much easier for me to tell my students that yes, they too can go to college. If I’m teaching here, Lansing, or Detroit, my students may not believe they have the opportunity to further their education. I believe that the Kerry/Edwards plan can help me to help them change that perception.

20

Okay…

John Kerry is the smarter candidate.
John Kerry is the wiser candidate.
John Kerry is the more articulate candidate.
John Kerry is the more trustworthy candidate.
John Kerry is the candidate more likely to carefully weigh his decisions.
John Kerry is the candidate more likely to build alliances instead of tearing them down.
John Kerry is the candidate less likely to jump into war on a whim.
John Kerry is the candidate less likely to kowtow to oil, gas, and energy interests.
John Kerry is the candidate less likely to sit in a classroom for seven minutes while the nation is under attack.

There! Not a single b-word among them!