Village Voice • Vote Kerry (or Edwards, or Kucinich) [View All]

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Kerry for President
Yes, He Can

This wouldn't be such a plausible choice if the front-runner were someone like Joe Lieberman, whose sanctimony hid a host of sins. But nothing in Kerry's public life suggests that he would behave like a Republican. He represents something more subtly objectionable to progressives: Clintonism with a patrician face. Kerry walks and talks like a free-trade Democrat with a commitment to racial and sexual equality. Don't count on him to abrogate NAFTA, but he will act to ease its traumatic impact on American workers. He won't soak the rich, but he will pursue tax policies that strengthen the real backbone of our economy: people of modest means. He'll pursue a foreign policy based on security rather than profiteering or paranoia. He'll end the politics of coded racism and overt homophobia, preserve reproductive rights, stop schemes to despoil the environment, and end Bush's crusade to turn America into a theocratic, authoritarian society. Kerry will give us plenty to complain about, but if politics is the art of the possible, this year it's the art of the bearable—and he's a good deal better than that.

We're sick of hearing about Kerry's horse face or his somnambulant effect on the stump. A fiery speaker with good cheekbones does not a great leader make. We wish it weren't necessary for a presidential candidate to strut his macho stuff, but in the face of Karl Rove's dream machine, apparently it is. We're thankful that Kerry can carry that man thing off without looking like he's out to destroy the world.



More: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/primary.php
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Edwards the Performer
It's the Sex Appeal, Stupid

John Edwards is from the South and, unlike Al Gore, of the South, where trial lawyers are popular heroes. Like most courtroom stars, Edwards is an inspired performer, a quick-witted natural rapper with a Clinton-esque touch. Early on he made class his identity marker, and class is what the election will be about if our side wins. Republicans and, lately, independents have decisively preferred him to Kerry. He has kept his sights on Bush, not other Democrats—even now he's attacking Kerry only on NAFTA and electability itself. Give him more chance than Kerry in North Carolina, Tennessee, and conceivably Arkansas or Georgia as well as Florida, and at least an equal chance in the Midwest. He deserves the opportunity to duke it out with the front-runner on Super Tuesday. Should he win, he's the best candidate, and the party should nominate him, hopefully with minimal bloodshed. Because our eyes should stay on November. Kerry has proven much less of a stiff than he once appeared, and should his fighting style prevail March 2, Edwards should, and likely will, withdraw. If vice-presidential candidates mean anything, he'd make a dandy. Pray he despises Bush enough to put pride aside and give it a shot.



More: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/primary.php
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Kucinich Pulls Left
The Strategic Vote for Progressives

Kucinich is genuinely progressive. As a Congress member from Ohio, Kucinich opposed the war in Iraq and calls for a cabinet-level Department of Peace. He has sponsored legislation advancing rights for people with disabilities, stands up for gay marriage, demands a national living wage, and as he told the Voice in a phone interview last week, he's the only candidate who supports "universal health care, not universal health insurance." He proposes a WPA-like jobs program that would rebuild infrastructure and "whole new industries" in solar and wind-generated energy and he wants to expand funding for the arts—which, he said, waxing rapturous over Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, and Keats, "put us on the path of human evolution."



More: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/primary.php