Democratic Party’s slogans and principles

So Rosa Brooks has joined the bandwagon in deciding the reason Americans got stuck with President Bush for a second term is because the dastardly Democratic Party and, specifically, Sen. John Kerry, didn’t come up with a sufficiently catchy slogan (Opinion, March 10).

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Kerry as a presidential candidate in terms of a message, diplomatic skills, fiscal responsibility, understanding issues or military credentials. The only reason we’re stuck with Bush today is because there were just enough Americans who wanted to follow Bush down the path he has taken us.

Much as we may now wish for world history to go easy on us by understanding how the “other guy” just didn’t have the right slogan, history is not going to blame Kerry or the Democratic Party for what we have done to ourselves and the rest of the world. It’s going to blame the American people -- as it should.

DAVID BANTLY

Pasadena

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Brooks is wrong to say that Democrats do not stand for anything. They stand unapologetically for an unrestrained right to abortion -- including the barbaric partial-birth abortion procedure -- at any time for anyone. They stand solidly against the war on terror and as advocates for the rights of any American citizen to engage in a tete-a-tete with an Al Qaeda member free from government eavesdropping. They stand like a rock against judicial candidates who believe that the Constitution should be the law’s final arbiter.

These core principles reverberate throughout most of the party activists louder than a Howard Dean scream.

STEVEN FANTINA

Phillipsburg, N.J.