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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Virginia might seem redder than red, but the Democratic front-runner hopes his military service will give him a beachhead in states like this, where Bush's support suddenly seems shaky.
Feb 10, 2004 | To understand John Kerry's Southern strategy, you just had to check out Table 17 at the Virginia Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner here over the weekend: There was Norm White, B-17 navigator and World War II hero from the 8th Air Force in Europe; Rick O'Dell, a Vietnam Army vet with the 11th armored cavalry; and Del Sandusky, a gunner from one of Kerry's swift boats in Vietnam.
This impressive veterans' brigade, like those appearing on Kerry's flank on the trail, personifies how the front-runner hopes to avoid the same doom as every Democratic presidential contender in Virginia since 1964, should he become the party's nominee. By playing up his own history as a decorated veteran, Kerry is building a case that he is the true military man in this race. Kerry hopes his war hero status will inoculate him against a Republican talking point, one that could play well in the conservative South -- that Kerry's just a liberal senator from Massachusetts who can't be trusted to protect a vulnerable nation from harm.
This tension between the dueling public perceptions of Kerry -- war hero vs. liberal lawmaker -- has been readily apparent in the primary season so far, as Kerry has won every contest except those in the most conservative states, South Carolina and Oklahoma. Now, after rising to a wide lead in the polls in Virginia, and receiving an important endorsement from Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, Kerry is now in good position to pull off the symbolically important achievement of winning two Southern contests on Tuesday, here and in Tennessee, where he also leads in the polls.
But even if Kerry does win on Tuesday, prevailing over charismatic, populist Sen. John Edwards from North Carolina and retired four-star Gen. Wesley Clark from Arkansas, the questions about Kerry's popularity here likely will remain. Would a Kerry win represent a real breakthrough into what has been an impenetrable Republican stronghold, or merely the mop-up operation on a nomination that's already his to lose?
Kerry's supporters, at least, see themselves making inroads into typically solid GOP voting blocs like Southern whites and veterans. "It's a major change we're seeing here in Virginia," said O'Dell, chair of Virginia Veterans for Kerry. "It's being driven partly by Kerry's record, but also by just a sense of betrayal by George Bush. I've just been amazed, calling up this list I have of veterans here. These are people who predominantly are uninterested or who say that they're Republicans, but I'd say 50 percent of the people I'm reaching now are for Kerry."
Many veterans are upset that Bush hasn't done more to protect or promote their benefits, and many are unhappy with his handling of the war in Iraq, O'Dell says. "They just think Bush is overtaxing the military, and that he's made cuts in Veteran's Administration healthcare. A lot also don't like it when his side starts damning Kerry, who they look at as a fellow veteran. I think Bush is becoming to veterans what Bill Clinton was to Republicans."
The general election groundwork has already been laid here for whoever the Democratic nominee is, say some observers, because of growing unease with President George Bush among his onetime supporters. It helps that there's not one, but two military men in the Democratic race who are forcefully opposing the administration's foreign and domestic policies.
The other Democratic veteran in the running is, of course, Wesley Clark. At Virginia Wesleyan College in the military town of Norfolk, where a Clark campaign organized a rally over the weekend, the Clark event was staffed largely by soldiers -- ones who served under the general in Europe and Panama and at least one active-duty officer just home from Iraq.
Taking a break from hanging signs, Clark's national veterans coordinator Larry Weatherford said, "I see an opportunity for a significant change in how these people look at the candidates. I think what Clark has done is going to make a difference ... I think he's helped change the perspective of the race by making it OK to talk about Bush's handling of Iraq without it being any reflection of patriotism or support of the troops. And I think a lot of swing voters are taking a second look at the Democrats because of the military records of Clark and Kerry."
John Edwards, who's also been running strong in Virginia, is not a veteran, but he is a drawling Southerner from a small rural town. Edwards has been working the state intensely, especially the rural and economically depressed regions in the south and west where Kerry has spent little time. Edwards, like his opponents, has thrilled Democrats here and elsewhere by his tough-sounding challenges to Bush in one of his areas of electoral strength. "The South is not George Bush's backyard," he told audiences throughout Virginia. "It's my backyard. And I will beat George Bush in my backyard."
Kerry's campaign is certainly taking advantage of his military experience, appealing to voters here by making a campaign premised on his personal war stories even more muscular. In addition to his now-standard lines about "knowing something about aircraft carriers for real" and invitations to Bush to "bring -- it -- on," Kerry has now issued a more direct challenge than ever around the idea that he, and not the "extremist" president, represents mainstream American values.
Kerry uses his military experience, too, to rebut GOP attacks that he's too liberal. "I have news for George Bush, Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie and the rest of their gang," he said at a rally in Richmond on Saturday. "I have fought for my country my whole life, and I'm not going to back down now. This is one Democrat who's going to fight back."
At the least, Kerry may be having success already in insulating himself from the stereotype that he's a wimpy Northern elitist. Conservative pundit and morality maven Bill Bennett told Fox News over the weekend that simply trying to stick him with a Boston liberal label won't work. "You can't do to Kerry what you did to Dukakis," he said.
That's all fine. But any progress Democrats feel now in breaking out of their Southern slump may not play out come November. A little history: The last time Virginia voted Democratic in a presidential election was for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. (By most estimates, that also happens to be the last election in which the Democrats scored any respectable percentage of the military vote nationally.) Twelve years later, Virginia became the only Southern state to vote for Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. Michael Dukakis, the last New England Democrat to run for president, lost here by more than 20 points. And the all-Southern Bubba-Bubba ticket of Clinton and Gore went down to defeat here twice.
