Will the Real John Kerry Please Stand Up?
Cross-posted at Insults Unpunished.

You're probably asking yourself "What right-wing news outlet would print this filth?". Why, it's CommonDreams.Org, a well-established bunch of lefties. They point out -- correctly -- that Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, along with 98 other Senators, and that he's been responsible for The Big Dig, one of the most disastrous public works programs ever.

Bush is having some trouble with his base, but this is the first time I've seen any of the Democratic base organizations take a poke at Kerry. It's things like this that could make him vulnerable if Ralph Nader decides to run again, which he hasn't ruled out.

For the most part, Kerry has had a safe seat in the Senate. Politicians who have safe seats are the ones who are supposed to be the visionaries. They can afford to take chances as big thinkers and float the new ideas. Despite the opportunity to forward meaningful legislation and really affect people's lives in a positive way, Kerry hasn't done the job.

As he ramped up his road to the White House, Kerry could have started building his legislative resume, laying the foundation for the ideas to come. But instead, he coasted or even hurt his own cause, by ignoring political opportunities to shine in the gentlemen's club. In fact, his actions on legislation may come back to haunt him on a massive scale in the final stages of this campaign.

Take organized labor. [Please!!! Ed.]

Kerry has always had a bad relationship with the unions in Massachusetts. But lucky for him, most of these voters had nowhere else to turn. Anti-union zealots Jim Rappaport (1990), Bill Weld (1996) and Michael Cloud (2002), were Kerry's challengers. However, instead of making some inroads with the union folks, Kerry kicked the shins of the working class time and time again, by voting for NAFTA, GATT and the WTO, and PMFN trade status for China. [These are all pluses as I see it. Ed.]

Kerry has taken advantage of the fact that many voters had nowhere else to go in Massachusetts. Instead of standing up for workers, Kerry helped pass bad corporate and workers' legislation. His reaction to working folks has been a blasé toss of the hand, while reciting nonsensical globalist gobbledygook: If Americans can't compete with 10 cent labor in China, too bad. At an event in Manchester, N.H. back in August 2003, Kerry said precisely that to a handful of unionized Verizon workers complaining about outsourcing. They were all pretty shocked but those who have watched Kerry weren’t.

All across middle-America, working families are struggling to put food on the table because the factory jobs are gone. People have lost millions of good manufacturing jobs and now have to work two or three service slave jobs at a fraction of the wages they once earned. Kerry helped these people lose their economic advantages as Americans. He has been part of the problem, not the solution.

In fact, on a myriad of issues Kerry has been part of the problem in Washington, D.C. and so closely resembles President George W. Bush it is a wonder what the Democrats of 2004 are thinking.

Kerry voted for Bush’s war resolution but now attacks it. Kerry fell for what looks like a lie that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the definite falsehood that Saddam Hussein - contained between the 33rd and 36th parallel - was an imminent threat to the United States. Kerry assisted in President Bush's - and President Bill Clinton's - assault on the Constitution by voting for the PATRIOT Act and voting for the anti-terrorism bill in 1996. Kerry also voted for Bush's unfunded federal education mandate "No Child Left Behind," which he also now attacks. Kerry has supported wasteful government programs like foreign aid, hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare every year, IMF/World Bank’s enslavement of the Third World, etc. This morning, the Associated Press is reporting that Kerry worked to protect a $150 million loophole for a major insurance company working on The Big Dig - a $15 billion dollar construction boondoggle in Boston - which has been rife with corruption and political scandal, coming in 500 percent over budget.