Kerry Needs More Than Antipathy to Bush

By George Skelton

July 29, 2004 12 AM PT

Boston —

Chat with Californians attending the Democratic National Convention and repeatedly you will hear one word: visceral.

Delegates unsolicited will tell you of their visceral dislike of President Bush. Some even will call it hate.

Sen. John F. Kerry and his strategists may have ordered up a menu of positive convention speeches, keeping a lid on anti-Bush attacks, but Californians won’t hesitate to convey their own hostility in casual conversations and interviews.

“There’s a visceral fear of where this guy is taking the country,” says state Treasurer Phil Angelides. “I have not seen such fervor in my 30 years in politics.”

“It is hate Bush beyond belief,” says Roz Wyman, 73, of West L.A., attending her 13th national convention. She chaired the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco. “They hated [Richard] Nixon, but this is a little deeper. There’s a visceral feeling against Bush.”

“It’s visceral with a capital V,” asserts state Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres. “I’ve never seen people so angry over a guy. And I remember Nixon.”

Indeed, Nixon enjoyed a strong base in his native California. And he won reelection in 1972 before his popularity was destroyed by Watergate.

The key question this year is whether the anti-Bush fire is hot enough to generate a big Democratic turnout that helps the party’s down-ticket candidates, from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer to state legislators.

Nationally, it’s a tight race, but most analysts consider California’s 55 electoral votes -- 20% of those needed to win the presidency -- safely in the Kerry column. The state isn’t even in play, a fact that gives both major parties the jitters in California. Bush and Kerry are expected to spend few campaign days and little money in the state.

“My greatest fear is that [Kerry strategists] come to the conclusion we don’t have to worry about California,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein told reporters Wednesday before giving delegates a pep talk. “California is a tremendously volatile state. Look at the [Gray Davis] recall and you can see how volatile California is....

“You lose California, you lose the [presidential] election.”

But a recent statewide poll of likely voters by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California shows Kerry leading Bush by 49% to 38%, with independent Ralph Nader drawing 5%. More telling, 55% disapprove of Bush’s job performance.

As elsewhere across America, voters in California are polarized by party; 78% of Republicans approve of Bush and 80% of Democrats disapprove. But there are more Democratic voters than Republican -- roughly 43% to 35%. Moreover, 16% of voters are independents and 61% of them disapprove of Bush, according to the poll.

Only 3% of Democratic voters are undecided, the poll shows. At this stage in 2000, 15% of Democrats were wavering. That year, Bush lost to Vice President Al Gore in California by 12 percentage points.

You’ve got to assume that Bush’s actions in office haven’t won him many California converts.

Besides the national grievances -- the Iraq war, the economy, corporate coziness -- there is a catalog of Bush policies that specifically rankles California Democrats: reduced environmental protection, attacking abortion rights, siding with energy companies during the electricity crisis, and now not lifting a finger to help pass legislation to continue the assault weapons ban.

“There is an arrogance in language and in policy,” says Feinstein, sponsor of the threatened assault weapons ban.

Arrogance -- that’s another word you hear a lot from delegates.

“Mostly I dislike him for his arrogance,” says Thor Emblem, an Escondido trial lawyer.

But don’t the smirk and the swagger have a special appeal for beer-drinking working guys? “Not if it’s a swagger with a policy that endangers workers,” says Art Pulaski, head of the 2.1-million-member California Labor Federation. He blames Bush for not protecting American jobs and allowing them to be shipped overseas.

“Union members are fighting mad.”

There is no evidence of complacency among Californians at this convention.

“Bush is scary,” says Lorelai Kude of Long Beach, a cable TV account executive. “I don’t think he’s malevolent. I don’t think he’s smart enough to be malevolent.... I don’t like to be hateful or disrespectful, but he’s got to go. That’s why I’m here.”

Maureen Douglas of Rancho Cucamonga, a business agent for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also was a delegate to the 2000 convention in Los Angeles. Now a delegation whip, she says Democrats are “more energized because there’s a better recognition of the alternative.

“After eight years of Bill Clinton, we just took it all for granted. This time it’s all hands on deck.”

There’s a mother-son delegate team here from Oak Park in Ventura County: Judith Katzburg, a health services researcher, and Oren Gabriel, 18, about to enter UC Berkeley as a political science student.

Both are angry about Bush’s handling of the war. Speaking of himself and his friends, Gabriel says: “We’re going to be the ones on the front lines, not the politicians.”

So is this animosity deep and wide enough to affect down-ticket races?

“The fact that there is such a heavy dislike of Bush, if nothing else, helps us with voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts,” says consultant Gale Kaufman, who is coordinating the Democratic legislative campaigns. “That’s usually how we win in close races.

“But the anger has to turn into a desire for Kerry in order to attain the full motivation [to vote]. And I haven’t seen that yet. That’s the next step.”

That’s the step Kerry must take tonight in his nomination acceptance speech -- adding his own vision to the visceral dislike of Bush.

Today’s speakers

Scheduled selected speakers, in alphabetical order. The program begins at 1 p.m. and ends at 8 p.m. PDT. For an updated schedule of speaking times, go to latimes.com.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

Former secretary of State

JOSEPH R. BIDEN Jr.

U.S. senator from Delaware

WESLEY K. CLARK

Retired general, 2004

presidential candidate

MAX CLELAND

Former U.S. senator from

Georgia

JAMES E. CLYBURN

U.S. representative from