Candidate Kerry
by Peter Herrick

Last Monday, the Fleet Center was draped in color. The seats in the middle were bright yellow, a hearty blue on the ends. Tied to the ceiling were huge nets containing 100,000 red, white and blue balloons to be released Thursday, the last day of the Democratic National Convention. The lights around the balcony were running frantic stars in white on flashing blue and red backgrounds. During a brief intermission, spotlights swept the floor in myriad colors and "Johnny Be Good" throbbed with the thumping intensity familiar to hockey games played on the ice beneath the red carpet. Thousands of people stood up and danced around, cheering excitedly when their image showed up on the massive monitor behind the stage, and hundreds of delegates were caught up in this passionate outpouring of energy and support for the two Johns, Kerry and Edwards. But was this love-in all it was cracked up to be? These were, after all, the die-hard fans and supporters, but where were the rest of voting Americans?

They weren't at the convention. In the midst of some of the tightest security this country has seen, the dissenters in closest proximity were outside, locked in a "free speech" pen, with fencing, netting and razor wire on the sides and overhead. The more distant dissenters are voting with their feet, which may be leading them away from President Bush but not necessarily toward Kerry. In a recent Mother Jones poll, some 62 percent of American voters think that things in this country "have gotten pretty seriously off track." But only 49 percent intend to vote for Kerry, leaving open the question: Will Kerry pull a Gore this year? Al Gore had the numbers in 2000 to beat Bush soundly, but he managed to squander his lead. This year, so many people are frustrated with Bush that Kerry should be able to clean up, but the numbers aren't coming through thus far.

So what is going on? Is the current orange terrorism alert politically motivated? Are third-party candidates siphoning off votes, or is it really that Kerry is not saying the things people want to hear? Maybe Kerry isn't the candidate people want to vote for. Maybe Kerry is too much like Bush. Maybe people simply don't know who Kerry is. For whatever reason, Kerry still hovers in a statistical split with Bush and so the question lingers: Is Kerry really the best candidate for the job, or is he simply the most electable alternative to Bush? This distinction may be academic to some of the die-hards in attendance at the convention, but it's a big question for swing voters nationwide.

At the left end of the party, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean are trying to have it both ways. In a speech to the Progressive Democrats of America on the final day of the convention, Dean spent time talking about how important it is to have someone in the White House who is opposed to the No Child Left Behind Act and who does not support the corporate domination of election funding. "The way to get elected is not to move to the middle and try to get swing votes," he bellowed to a wildly supportive crowd of 400 in the Roxbury Community College Gym. "The way to get elected is to show conviction!" But, of course, John Kerry explicitly supports No Child Left Behind and, although he does not accept lobbyists' money, he has been criticized for accepting much of the same corporate funding that President Bush has. Those comments notwithstanding, Dean still very vocally supports Kerry and is spending time shilling for the candidate. He even said "once we get back in power, we need to work together."

Kucinich also has his apparent struggles with Kerry, but he doesn't hesitate to show his full support, either. His speeches over the week (and he spoke at least 25 or 30 times) all were supportive of Kerry, even when that support was mixed with antiwar venom and vitriol. "What we really are presented with here is a choice between the kind of world we want to live in," he told 300 people at the Take Back America: Campaign for America's Future debate on the Iraq war. "Why is it that we have so much capacity to develop the arts of war, and yet will we lack such capacity to pursue the arts of peace?" Although Kerry has been part of the antiwar movement, Kucinich has, along with many others, criticized Kerry for his initial support of the war and his current stances that not only fall far short of a complete pullout, plan to add 40,000 troops to the armed forces. Even so, Kucinich is throwing his weight fully behind Kerry.

This contradictory support of Candidate Kerry pervaded the entire proceeding to make it a highly choreographed love-fest with an edgy underbelly. Most of the delegates were falling in line behind Kerry, especially after the publicized releases of Dean's and Kucinich's delegates to vote how they wish. But there is really no saying how much this support is because people feel Kerry is genuinely the best candidate or because he's perceived to be the most electable alternative to Bush. One thing was clear, the entire building — inside and out, delegates and protesters — were united in their dislike of President Bush and an overwhelming sense that something must change.

"No, he doesn't represent my perspective" said Tonya Wenger, from Philadelphia, in Boston with the international organization Global Women's Strike. She stood Thursday in Copley Square in a gathering crowd of protesters — the largest protest of the week. "But that doesn't mean we don't vote for him." This view was not shared by everyone in this crowd of more than 500, and many were wearing T-shirts that stated, "I will not vote for war," on the back and "John Kerry: Don't make me vote for Nader," on the front.

In an interview, Kucinich responded tersely to a question about whether Kerry will have to come out against the war to be elected. "OK, if you vote for Bush, you continue the war. No question. You can't change policy," he said, "If you vote for Ralph Nader, you know, there's a good chance Bush is going to win." Instead of voting your conscience, he advised that a gamble for gains under Kerry is preferable to blowing a vote on someone who doesn't stand a chance. "With Kerry, you've got a chance to make a new start, and nobody's going to tell me that we don't have a chance for progress under Kerry. But no one can tell me, likewise, that there is a chance for progress under Bush."

Alice Meyer, from Bath, Maine, was a delegate in the 1968 Democratic National Convention and voted for Dick Gregory, the African-American comedian and social activist who ran as a write-in candidate under the Freedom and Peace Party and garnered 1.5 million votes, giving, according to some, Nixon the election. "We made a lot of mistakes in '68," she sighed, of their nonconsensus vote. Although Meyer was not a delegate at this year's DNC, she went to Boston as a member of the Progressive Democratic Caucus, which seems largely to be split between supporting Kucinich and Dean. "I'm probably the only one in the room who's supported Kerry from the beginning," she said, meaning that although most of the people at the Take Back America rally did not support him when they had a choice, they all seem to have come around to supporting him as the only one left after the primaries.

Hillary Clinton may or may not have supported Kerry all along, but she came out strongly in support of getting Bush out of office in a speech at the Democratic Women's Caucus. "If they do four more years with no election at the end, no accountability, they will implement their agenda in a major way," she cried. "I think, literally, the progress made over decades of work is at stake!" While these are strong words, they are also more about finding an alternative to Bush than electing Kerry. Speaking after Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright echoed the same sentiments: "In the face of grave danger, we all must be united." Both women went on to talk about how well Kerry would do, but the sentiments remained that Bush's removal trumped Kerry's candidacy. "I was happy to support John Kerry once I dropped out of the race," Dean said at a Progressive Democrats of America event. "Because it is in the best interest of the United States of American to send George W. Bush back to Crawford, Texas."

While the Democrats were coalescing their support of Kerry, regardless of misgivings or differing opinions, how much support he will garner outside of those vaulted walls remains to be seen. Some see this as partly a struggle of understanding who Kerry is. "Because of the media coverage, anyone who has served in that office is well defined and understood," says former Sen. George Mitchell of the presidency. "One of Kerry's challenges this week is to show that he is a credible and capable alternative to Bush."

As the convention has faded, Kerry and Edwards are supposed to be riding a statistical bump in popularity as the American public finally gets a sense of who they are and what they stand for. But the White House is making even that difficult with a remarkably timed orange terrorism alert in parts of the Eastern Seaboard. Although some polls show a small bounce against Bush and Cheney, a CBS News Poll on Aug. 2 showed no bounce at all and that Kerry/Edwards went from 49 percent to Bush/Cheney's 43 percent before the DNC to 49 percent and 44 percent respectively now. (Most polls, however, do show Kerry posting larger gains in categories other than his numbers versus Bush. )

As Steven Rowe, Maine's attorney general as well as a super delegate, says, Kerry may be "a fine, fine candidate, and I don't know of anyone else in the country better qualified." Or, with a government we may no longer be able to trust issuing terror alerts based on years-old evidence (after dragging the country into war based on manipulated and false intelligence), maybe it's just that Kerry doesn't matter and turning out Bush is the most important thing. On Nov. 2, swing voters — estimated by some to be 10 percent of the electorate — will decide whether Bush should stay in or whether Kerry is the safer bet.

E-mail Peter Herrick at pbh at peterherrick dot com.