Judging by your own April 29, 2004 blog entry (see below), I'd say that we are in touch with _exactly_ the same reality. Since you say you are not going to respond to my posting, I'll get to have the last word on the matter. :-)
***** Tepid
The headline of a story on the second page of today's Financial Times reads: "Tepid Kerry strives for elusive 'voter rapport.'" Well, there's nothing like the business press to truly tell it like it is. It has been said that the Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country, and the New York Times is read by people who think they run the country. Truer words were never spoken. The Financial Times is the Wall Street Journal's British equivalent, minus the lupine editorial page, and together with The Economist these are the publications that are read by the people who rule the world. And in the case of the Financial Times at least, by me.
In any event, here are the key paragraphs from the "tepid Kerry" story:
"John Kerry was standing in front of stacks of stainless steel cookware, telling factory workers about his plans for America. The crowd was 50 or so strong, employees who had volunteered to come and listen to the Democratic presidential candidate.
"When it came to healthcare, Mr. Kerry called a worker up on stage. He would make the federal government responsible for catastrophic illnesses, he said, cap the liabilities of company health plans, thereby reducing employer premiums and cutting the amount employees pay for healthcare by $1,000 . . . .
"'Would you take that deal?' Mr. Kerry said expectantly. The man said he didn't negotiate the healthcare plan: it was up to a woman in the audience called Barb.
"Mr. Kerry turned to her. 'Would you like that, Barb?'
"She paused. 'It sounds interesting,' she said."
The story continues more or less in the same vein, with clueless political hacks like Chris Matthews of MSNBC talking about how they "don't get a sense of the guy," and other vague observations, while the obvious problem is not that Kerry is stiff or unable to find a "rapport" with voters, but that people are not terribly excited about Kerry because his program is not all that exciting. This despite the fact that Bush is unpopular, as the Financial Times acknowledges when it says that a "majority of Americans . . . think the Bush administration [sic] is on the 'wrong track.'"
The healthcare system in the US is an unmitigated disaster, truly an abomination of Old Testament proportions, the kind for which Jehovah used to destroy whole nations for their sinful collective iniquity. And here's John Kerry talking a lot of wonkish bullshit that no one in their right mind sees as equal to the enormity of the problem.
Somehow, we're going to have to win despite all of this.
<http://www.johnlacny.com/archives/000027.html> *****
>[lbo-talk] Just Do Something!
>Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com, Wed May 5 16:18:23 PDT 2004
<snip>
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>What I wanna know is if Christian Parenti considers voting for
>>Kerry to be an instance of hyper-pragmatism on the left. :-)
>Last I checked, which was about 30 secs ago (he was in my office on
>the way to a meeting with his New Press editor), he's gonna do it,
>while conceding that Kerry is truly awful.
>Doug
Exactly what I expected. Tell Christian, though, that one of his fans said that holding one's nose till November is likely to result in death by political suffocation. :-) -- Yoshie
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