HEWITT - John Kerry's going to Warren today, to Courthouse Square, one of the more picturesque of places in the historic seat of the Western Reserve, and a place where John Kennedy campaigned in 1960. I am pretty sure he won't be visiting my old school, because its Catholic faculty and student body remains very orthodox, and when I was back in the summer, there wasn't a lot of respect for the Democratic nominee among most of the Catholics I talked with. A few set aside their Church-guided beliefs on abortion and same-sex marriage to back Kerry, but the exit polls will show that Kerry got less than half the Catholic vote. I doubt very much that Kerry's Warren reception will be anything like the president's welcome in Columbus yesterday or in Vienna (six miles from Warren) earlier in the week. And I am betting Kerry won't be stopping by my dad's old American Legion post either, though it is right around the corner from his rally.
I wonder if any in the MSM will note that the irony that Kerry, following in JFK's 1960 footsteps, didn't visit the Catholic high school in the town built in 1963 and named for the martyred president.
I hope Kerry uses the opportunity to thank another Warren home-towner --FoxNews' Roger Ailes-- for keeping the national television news media fair and balanced. Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke, appearing on my radio show yesterday, agreed that the only bigger loser than Kerry is likely to be on Tuesday night will be MSM, stripped of its "objectivity" veil, and humbled by the CBS fraud and the New York Times' stumbles.
The political reality of Kerry's rushing back to traditionally Democratic Mahoning Valley is grim indeed for Democrats. Youngstown's Democratic mayor long ago endorsed Bush, and the GM plant in Lordstown is staffed by UAW men and women who know that though the union bigs are on board with Kerry, the CAFE standards Kerry backs are a menace to their plant (and these guys are still laughing about the goose hunt.) Shoring up the vote in a union town is not where Kerry wanted to be 72 hours before the voting begins. And these people, though solid Browns fans (with an occasional misguided Steeler fan tossed in) also know that it's Lambeau Field, not Lambert Field (though the memories, like "the sweep" are not happy ones.)
And they surely will not have liked Kerry's trashing of the troops all week, or he and Richard Holbrooke's politicization of the bin Laden tape. (David Brooks has a great piece on the impact of the tape's appearance, an impact not generated by the president, but by Kerry's many nuanced positions on the GWOT over the past year.)
Kerry in Warren on October 30. That is surely not how the Dems had planned it. |
