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Jewish World Review June 21, 2000 / 18 Sivan, 5760
Chris Matthews
He went from blue to earth colors, from suits to polo
shirts, from shoes to boots. He's tried out new
personalities from alpha to beta. He's gone from barking
at rival George W. Bush to unleashing a pack of
surrogates to bark the same Gore serenade. His posse
has disseminated enough anti-Bush "talking points" to fill
the Manhattan phone book.
All this has reaped the vice president a fine, 8-point
deficit in the polls. Each point of that deficit represents a
different tried and discarded image. Ignorance is not to
blame. The candidacy is flagging not because voters
know too little of Al Gore but because they now know
too many Al Gores.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who likes the 2000
Democratic candidate far more than he did the 1992 and
1996 nominee, has a solution. What Gore needs is a
"defining thrust," a cause that separates him in a dramatic,
important way from his Republican rival. He needs to
stand for something there's no way Bush could support.
"You can't go around and say, 'It's all wonderful. I'm OK.
You're OK. So let's get elected.' There has to be a
defining difference. And the Democrats traditionally, since
the time of Roosevelt and Truman, have been for the
common man," he said.
Brown would like that "defining" cause to be a national commitment to a living
income for all Americans.
"Today, people who work hard and play by the rules even if they work 50
weeks out of the year are below the poverty line. This is unacceptable in an
America as prosperous as this with no deficit anymore," Brown said.
"Seventy percent of the workers of this country have had their real purchasing
power decline. You've got the wife working, the husband working, the kid
going out to work. You're borrowing, going into debt."
Brown thinks anyone who works a full work week ought to be able to provide
for himself or herselfand stay above the poverty line.
"That's real family values."
He has a powerful point. Consider the person who works in a restaurant job.
He or she gets $6 an hour. Figure 40 hours. That adds up to $240 a week,
$12,480 a year. Work 50 hours, and your gross before-taxes income rises to
$15,600.
A full week of sweating customers, standing on your feet, doing the work and
you end up after the tax bite with a poverty-level income.
"The Democrats have got to come front and center on the justice issue," Brown
argued. "I think the Democrats' missing opportunity is to lay out a plausible
agenda by which anybody who works full-time will not suffer the indignity of
being below the poverty line."
To avoid this, Brown would like to see a package of policy adjustments
earned income tax credit, minimum wage, child-care tax credits that raises
the worker's income to a living level.
It's the principle that matters. Instead of trying to out-point the Republicans on
issues where both generally agree, Brown believes Gore should champion a
cause that no conservative Republican would touch: a public commitment to
intervene in the labor market and a guarantee that everyone in this country who
sells his or her labor gets back a living income in return.
Such a campaign pledge would carry a bonus, Brown contends. It would
"excite that part of the electorate that is probably still on the sidelines." It will
give a reason to vote this year to tens of millions who right now don't have
06/19/00: Squishy logic for soft money
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