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Oct. 19, 2004 I’ve never said that John Kerry was a pauper. I’ve said that John Edwards started off as the son of a mill worker, but did quite well by anyone’s standards in the legal profession. Cheney and Bush also have been privileged enough to make wealth beyond their wildest dreams. This does not make any of them bad people, nor does it discredit their opinions in any way. It does, however, make this seem like a parlor game among the upper-crust. Alston, South Dakota, was deemed a fitting place for President Calvin Coolidge to visit in 1922. Franklin Roosevelt took a trip just south of Cuba, Kansas, population just under 300. Harry Truman visited the tiny rural towns of Missouri, where he often took daily morning walks. Bill Clinton, when he ran against George H.W. Bush in 1992, barnstormed the northwest with his folksy message. All I have heard so far from the campaigns of Bush and Kerry come from Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa and Michigan. An impressive list, I know, but one that leaves so much of the western United States off the map. Both Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, even little Cuba, Kansas, went for George W. Bush in 2000. It is for this reason, and few others, that John Kerry has spent most of his time in the states ripe with electoral votes, and essentially conceded the race to Bush in the western states. It’s a sad sight to see when the nominee of the party of the farmer, the city- councilman, the school teacher, could abandon its base. Those so called “Red States” can be won by Democrats. Bill Clinton won Missouri, Arizona, New Mexico, those one time Democratic and Populist bases, in 1996. In 1992, he had Wyoming and allowed George H.W. Bush the smallest of margins in Colorado. Even John Kennedy, a “Massachusetts Liberal,” carried New Mexico, Missouri and Arkansas. The West, however, is daunting. The best Democratic smash into the traditionally conservative area was in 1948, when Harry Truman broke into nearly all of the states west of the Mississippi except for the vertical bloc from North Dakota to Kansas. It’s a lot like campaigning in Indiana - the state has gone to Republicans for so long because, since 1960, no Democrat has bothered to campaign in Indiana. It is too late now to launch one of the Clintonesque barnstorming tours that Kerry has proven so unable to master. John Kerry seems resigned to not break into the West, except perhaps in Colorado, where he trails by less than six points, and nearly within the margin of error. However, we can begin planning for a grassroots Democratic resurgence in the West. Should John Kerry win this November, which is a prospect too close to call as of yet, it will prove that the New Conservatism of Ronald Reagan was not handed down to George W. Bush - that indeed he simply capitalized on a sex scandal and the phlegmatic tendencies of the Democrat. It would mean that, as Democrats have succeeded in drawing out the hidden liberals and moderates in Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Missouri, we can do this in the West as well. 2004’s Western Expansion is lost to the Conservatives, and with it 91 electoral votes, ranging from Montana to Arizona to little Cuba, Kansas, and its six electors - a huge break in a race that has been regarded by men on both sides as being extraordinarily close. We can, however, begin working on 2008, be it for the re- election of John Kerry or the candidacy of a new nominee. The West can be won again for the Democrats. ------------ About the author: Max Burns is a 17-year-old conservative Democrat, writer, pollster, pundit and aspiring Indiana politician. He currently is an intern (unpaid) with Indiana Democratic Party and writes for The Progressive Voice). Read the fantasy-fiction novel "Alcardia". Email: DeMBurns@gmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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