Kerry’s curtain raiser

The Democratic National Convention kicks off tomorrow in Boston, the heart of American political liberalism, to nominate two liberal soul mates — Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for president and a younger, less-experienced running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

The Democratic strategy behind the carefully orchestrated four-day convention will be to give the Kerry-Edwards ticket a sharper thematic message that senior party advisers say it lacks and to portray the candidates as political centrists to appeal to independent, swing voters who are uncomfortable with their leftist voting records on national security and domestic-spending issues.

The party gathering — which will cost an estimated $95 million and draw nearly 5,000 delegates and alternates, 15,000 elected officials and other VIPs and thousands of reporters to Boston’s FleetCenter — comes at a difficult time for the Democrats, who have been in political decline for the past decade, and when party advisers say Mr. Kerry remains a little-known political commodity, who has not made the case to the American people that he should replace President Bush in the White House.

The convention is being held under extraordinary security precautions in the face of heightened concerns about terrorist threats and anti-war protesters. Disputes between City Hall and police and fire unions have led workers to threaten picketing, although the police unions came to an agreement last week. As last-minute negotiations continued yesterday with the firefighters union, the picketing plans were not clear.

At least six state delegations have said they will avoid all picketed events at the convention.

That could lead to a potentially embarrassing situation, where Mr. Kerry could refuse to visit some delegations or convention events.

“I don’t cross picket lines. I never have,” he said last month when he refused to deliver a scheduled speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Boston because of picket lines around the conference hall.

Bashing Bush

Although the summer polls show the presidential race remains in a virtual dead heat, interviews with top Democratic officials and strategists say that the often-aloof Massachusetts senator still has some heavy lifting to do at the convention to turn himself into a warm, well-liked, competitive candidate that swing voters can trust to run the country. Many Democrats are advising Mr. Kerry to stop bashing Mr. Bush and start talking more about what he would do as president.

“Kerry has to give an extraordinarily good speech. A lot of what is propelling him is just anti-Bush sentiment but, in order to close the sale with the people, he needs to lay out where he wants to take the country,” said Democratic strategist Harold Ickes, who was a senior White House adviser to President Clinton. “The anti-Bush theme is not enough. It’s been a large part of his campaign. He’s been saying a lot of things, but it hasn’t come into a hard focus.

“There are a lot of uncommitted voters, but they don’t know nearly enough about Kerry for him to close the deal. He is not a national senator. He was not a national personage,” he said. “The bad news for the president is that traditional swing voters are open to an alternative. The good news for the president is that Kerry is not that well-known among people that they are prepared to say yes to him.”

Recent polls have underscored Mr. Kerry’s problem. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of the survey’s respondents said they knew a lot or a fair amount about the senator, but that was down significantly from the 68 percent who said that in March.

“I’d agree to the extent that he may not be as widely known to rank-and-file voters. But we’re confident that once the American electorate gets to know Kerry better than they do, they will be comfortable with him,” said T. J. Rooney, chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party — a pivotal battleground state where the two rivals are dead even.

“John Kerry needs a successful convention to reintroduce himself to the public,” added polling analyst Karlyn H. Bowman of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Story Continues →