Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: The New Republic salivates over the possibility of a Democratic nominee for President who might actually have positions on issues:

"But if Sunday's ABC interview is indicative, Kerry seems to have finally found a strong voice, at least on domestic policy. The Bush tax cut, Kerry said, has "taken ... money literally out of Social Security, out of Medicare, and given it to the wealthiest of Americans." Republicans, he continued, "have been content not even to continue unemployment compensation for working people, not to help them get health care." Earlier, Kerry had even linked the tax cut to law enforcement--traditionally a GOP strength. "We don't have enough police officers," Kerry told Stephanopoulos, "and this administration is cutting the COPS program. They're reducing the number of police officers that we struggled to put there."

Note the key emphasis here: Kerry isn't focusing on budget surpluses as some abstract accounting principle. He's talking about the real-life implications of running high deficits--namely, less money for spending on current programs and less money for the future, when the retirement of the baby-boomers will place ever-greater claims on Medicare and Social Security. This is the Democrats' best hope of attacking the Bush tax cut (and blocking new ones), because it presents the choices as they actually exist: Tax cuts for the wealthy or saving and funding programs for everybody else."