THE BATTLE LINES BECOME DISTINCT

The election will be a final battle which will determine if the old elites will regain their power. Lined up against the GOP and Bush are: all the unions, all the entertainment mega millions and power, all the newspapers and TV networks other than FOX, all of academia, teachers, blacks, and the Left business elites on Park Avenue and Beverly Hills.

The news media is a potent force, a force than can determine what the public may see as issues by where they place their stories or what stories they run at all. The New York Times and LA Times blacking out trousergate as one example. The Hollywood Left makes DNC movies like the Manchurian Candidate (a box office loser) that hide the message within a story. They make TV shows which more and more contain Bush Bashing within their dialogue. And the money. The money.

This election is truly a battle between what people on the Right consider the "old tired Left" and the "New Conservatism." The old tired Left is composed of philosophical socialists and communists who are determined to "level the playing field" by taxing the rich out of all money earned over a certain pre-determined figure (to be actually determined after they win) and nearly exempting all others from paying tax at all. The Conservatives want to allow markets to determine winners and losers and by definition there are always more relative losers than winners. The winners are always resented by most of the losers, so by inference if you can rally the country's losers you can win an election. Nothing can calm the endless rage of a burning envy; keep them hating and you can win. I once played in Julius Caesar and I've always remembered the line,

"Such men as he be never at heart's ease while they behold a greater (man) than themselves, and therefore are they very dangerous."

Old Shakespeare had them spotted, knowing that once rallied into a mob the envious have heads but no brains and are easily led. The French Revolution with the attendant Terror and Guillotine can attest to that.

Edwards is very able to make life's losers feel there is no way to become a winner. The task facing Kerry/Edwards in this regard is to convince a majority that there is no hope for success, that the deck has been stacked against them by the successful in a game they are required by citizenship to play, a tactic he used in court to make hundreds of millions of dollars. He will proclaim to the less successful that they are pre-ordained to forever to play a losing hand against a bunch of crooks out to steal their money. These victims are required by circumstance to furnish their labor to the winners in exchange for the lowest possible wage, sure in the knowledge that they will be rewarded with not so much as a single moment in the sunshine of success for their entire lives. No nice clothes, no nice cars, no homes, no health care, only a forever in shitty apartments living paycheck to paycheck, their kids in horrible schools, with not so much as the right to a doctor. The solution to their bleak future is to somehow get money from the rich. Government can do that through taxation and entitlement programs. No need for the losers to feel guilty because they are entitled to the money stolen from them by the successful people. The Democrats will boil the pot of voter discontent til the scum within gathers to the top so they can harvest the votes necessary to win an election. He and Kerry will quietly spread the doctrine that democracy guarantees the equality of conditions, not equality of opportunity. Blacks, many Hispanics, all the Indians, handicapped, gay and lesbian, plus feminists will unite as usual under this sacred banner of the professional loser, the only question being how much company they will have.

Bush's task is to rally the troops to patriotism; that life offers plenty of opportunity for success for everyone willing to work for it. That we have the greatest country on the face of the earth with the only Constitution guaranteeing them the absolute right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No other country on the face of the earth has as a part of their constitution the absolute right to pursue happiness; no government can make rules as to what happiness is, can be, or should be. The Happiness we are guaranteed the right to pursue is entirely up to us. He has to convince us that he is fair, that his vision is for fairness and not special interests. He is going to be challenged by the pension looting that has taken place on his watch without him lifting a finger to stop it, about medical care and the maldistribution of its benefits, and if Kerry is smart he will be attacked for his failure until late in the game to staff the SEC with people who cared about criminal activity in the business community. He has allowed high paying jobs to go overseas only to be replaced by lower paying jobs and Bush is going to have to show something different if he hopes to win.

The war in Iraq is where this election will be won or lost. The reactionary mob has already formed, welded together by their white hot hatred of the Vietnam era and now recalling their hate some fifty years later. Not only do they hate Bush and everything he represents (Christians, business, the military, and so on). They want out and they want out right now. They do not want to recognize that Democracy is on trial as never before. Europe isn't worried and Europe is where civilization is real and honest. Nothing is worth fighting for "away from home." Wait til the enemy has penetrated the gates and when that happens it is soon enough to fight. The fact that the enemy has already penetrated the gates on 9/11 is old news, a secret Jewish conspiracy, a plan co- sponsored by Bush, or something to be handled by local police. There is no threat right now. It is in this debate that Kerry has a peculiar edge. An edge because everyone on the Left believes he will get out of Iraq on the double quick if elected. It makes no difference what he says. It's what he really means that counts and he means he will get us out of Iraq. This makes him free to argue any case because "what he really means" he cannot say to a bunch of fundamentalist Christians and radical Right Wingers and hope to win. It will be Bush's task to "explain the war" something he has failed miserably to do. Bush will have to go to the wall and tell everyone about French and German mendacity lying so they could hang on to oil contracts inside one of the most vicious regimes of the 20th century. He will have to convince us that what was happening in Iraq was our business and had to be handled. The Claudia Rosett story in the Weekly Standard about oil for food links to Osama bin Laden may be true and if it is Bush can roast Kerry on that grill til he's charred black. .