BOSTON (PAI) – Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry included a wide range of pro-worker and pro-middle class themes in his July 29 speech accepting his party’s nomination.

His speech reached both convention delegates – including more than 800 union members – in Boston, but was also aimed at the national television audience.

It also featured the Massachusetts senator’s pledge to “bring back a time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to.”

Kerry’s speech centered around returning the U.S. to values that improve the country, creating a new foreign policy where the U.S. works with allies – but is not dictated to by them – to win the war on terrorism, and on helping families.

And when it comes to terrorism, “I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war,” he declared, referring to his service as a wounded, decorated Vietnam veteran.

“Before you go into battle, you have to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: ‘I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm’s way, but we had no choice,” Kerry said.

It was middle-class and worker families, on whom the economic slump has fallen and whose children are serving, that Kerry focused, including a promise that “we won’t raise taxes on the middle class” and another to “not privatize Social Security.”

“Here at home, wages are falling, health care costs are rising, and our great middle class is shrinking,” he said in an implicit critique of the economy under present GOP President George W. Bush. “People are working weekends – two jobs, three jobs – and they’re still not getting ahead.

“We’re told that outsourcing jobs is good for America,” he said, citing Bush’s chief economic adviser, though not by name. “We’re told that jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best that we can do. They (the GOP) say this is the best economy that we’ve ever had. And they say anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist.

“Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can’t do better. We can do better and we will.”

Kerry promised that “help is on the way” for people such as Ohio Steel Worker Dave McCune, who “saw his job sent overseas and the equipment in his factory was literally unbolted, crated up and shipped thousands of miles away, along with his job.”

In a line that pleased unionists, the aid for McCune and thousands of other USWA members who lost their jobs to subsidized foreign imports would be from trade “on a fair playing field,” Kerry declared. Give that to U.S. workers, he said, “and there’s no one in the world the American worker can’t compete against.”

Trade treaties signed by Bush and former President Clinton lack enforceable labor rights and that fair playing field. Kerry has pledged to review those pacts – and not sign new treaties that lack such rights.

And he pleased union delegates by promoting “new incentives to revitalize manufacturing, and investment in technology and innovation that will create the good-paying jobs of the future.”

Kerry also took aim at corporations that evade taxes, again pledging to close loopholes for those that create jobs overseas, but adding tax incentives for those that create jobs in the U.S.

“We value an America that exports products, not jobs. And we believe American workers should never have to subsidize the loss of their own jobs,” he said.

He said he saw the alternative on the campaign trail: “What does it mean when workers I’ve met have had to train their foreign replacements?” he asked. That refers to the issue of outsourcing – and the Bush aide’s comments in favor of it.

The speech drew positive reaction from the delegates and also from AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney. He predicted Kerry will “be a great president for working families,” who will “reverse the policies and direction” of Bush and “put policies and programs in place that will help working families more than those of any administration in recent history.”

By Mark Gruenberg
Press Associates Staff Writer