I think the best thing the Bush campaign can do is just step back and let Kerry dig his own grave. As the campaign heats up he is surely going to make more stupid, transparent statements that are going to alienate people. While President Bush has the advantage of never trying to be anything but who he is, take it or leave it. In the long run people tend to vote for who is real whether they like them or not. Bush is real. Kerry's a kreep.
What kind of an idiot is this guy? Obviously he needs to be taught a lesson in what is proper and what is not. I am amazed he has even said such a stupid thing. No, wait no I am not. I am pasting an article below that explains, at least in a little way, why Clinton was so popular with the Black voters. Besides being a Democrat the only thing Clinton and Kerry have in common is that they both have vowels in there name.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Clinton in the article that Jumper posted, was exactly that, and therefore connected him to the black community. Kerry is another silver spoon fed little baby, who only wishes he could be half the man Clinton was (minus the whole Lewisnky fiasco). Maybe now he will try to be the first Vietnamese president, you know, make up for all the innocents he killed and try to "reconnect" with that culture. He makes me sick.In the African American community Clinton is often characterized as smooth, ?ghetto tough,? and someone who is consistently vilified by the system. Maybe this qualifies him. In the 1996 Presidential Elections, African Americans supported the President with 84 percent of the vote. Today, African Americans continue to overwhelmingly support Clinton. After the Kenneth Starr Report was released, a CNN/USA Today Poll reported African Americans giving the President an approval rating of 90%. Only seven percent of African Americans polled favored impeachment for the President's improprieties.
On an episode of Bill Maher's ?Politically Incorrect,? the legendary music producer, Quincy Jones, stated that no other president in his lifetime has been able to connect and relate to the African American experience like Clinton. Perhaps this connection is best captured in the movie, ?Primary Colors,? starring John Travolta as a president clearly intended to parody Clinton. In this movie, the president is depicted as a person who grows up with African Americans in a small Southern town and becomes intimately connected to the black experience.
Why is President Clinton so popular among African Americans?
For one thing, blacks have concluded that his empathy is not just rhetoric. In his two administrations, he has appointed more African Americans to cabinet posts than all of the previous U.S. Presidents combined. Among them: Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan E. Rice. His only appointments for the position of Surgeon General have been African Americans (Jocelyn Elders and the current surgeon general, David Satcher). No president before Lyndon Johnson appointed any black to the Cabinet. Only four African Americans have served on Cabinets since Johnson and prior to Clinton's first election. Indeed, Clinton has surrounded himself with African Americans. His policy initiatives have been sensitive to this community. He still supports some form of affirmative action. Although he ultimately supported the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, he resisted dynamic changes in welfare policies and was uneasy about the passage of this bill. He was the first American president to initiate a national dialogue on race relations in America. He was also the first American president to tour Africa.
Administratively, he relies on his personal secretary Betty Currie. Socially, he considers Vernon Jordan to be his closest friend. Spiritually, he seeks guidance from, among others, African American ministers such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson. His comfort with African Americans is easily seen when he is in a black church clapping his hands and bobbing his head as he sings old Negro Spirituals by memory.
Perhaps the biggest reason African American support for Clinton is unwavering is that blacks can identify with what some deem as the perpetual mistreatment of the President. The African American community is known to rally around its own in a time of crisis. These days, this community seems to be once again rallying to support one of their own.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Teresa Heinz Kerry: I'm an 'African American'
First lady wannabe Teresa Heinz Kerry sometimes describes herself as an "African American," even though she grew up amidst segregated privilege in colonial Mozambique.
"My roots are African," she told a reporter in 1995. "The birds I remember, the fruits I ate, the trees I climbed, they're African."
Throughout the 1990s, Heinz Kerry referred to herself as "African American," the Baltimore Sun revealed on Tuesday. And when her use of the term set off a firestorm of controversy in 1993, she defended the claim.
"African-hyphen-American belongs to blacks," Heinz Kerry's spokesman told reporters, insisting that it was proper for his boss to call herself African American as long as no hyphen was used or intended.
The one-time Republican's depiction of herself as African rankles some who knew Heinz Kerry in the days when her father ran a medical clinic in Mozambique.
Some say the wealthy "African American" has snubbed blacks in her homeland, because she has done next to nothing with her vast Heinz Foods fortune to improve living conditions there.
"We are proud she is a daughter of the land," Neo Simbine, 75, a retired black nurse who worked with Heinz Kerry's father, told the Sun. "But you have to live what you say. If she really loves Mozambique and has lots of money, why doesn't she build us a hospital?"
Heinz Kerry's fortune is equal to nearly a quarter of Mozambique's annual Gross Domestic Product.
But aside from a contribution to her homeland's Save the Children Fund, the woman who repeatedly invokes her Mozambican roots has limited her generosity.
A spokeswoman for the Heinz Foundation said the prospective first lady would give more if she were more confident the money would be managed properly.
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