DEMOCRATIC DERANGEMENT CONTINUED

For Democrats Challenging Bush, Ashcroft Is Exhibit A (ADAM NAGOURNEY, 7/13/03, NY Times)

From Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina, the Democratic candidates for president these days are scrambling for issues: denouncing President Bush's tax cuts, bemoaning his deficit, decrying the chaos in Iraq. And all too often, those issues bring restrained applause from their crowds.

But there is one subject that has proved to be a surefire tonic for members of the somewhat dispirited party, and it is not the man they are trying to oust from the Oval Office.

"In my first five seconds as president, I would fire John Ashcroft as attorney general," Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri said the other day, bringing cheers from Hispanic leaders in Phoenix.

"We can not allow people like John Ashcroft to take away our rights and our freedoms," Senator John Edwards of North Carolina declared in a sweltering library in Concord, N.H., on Monday, drawing a nearly instantaneous standing ovation.

Or, as Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts put it in a speech on domestic security in Lowell, Mass., last month: "When I am president of the United States, there will be no John Ashcroft trampling on the Bill of Rights." [...]

"I think he might be the most loathed man in America," said Janos Marton, 20, a Dartmouth student who pressed Mr. Edwards on the subject of Mr. Ashcroft's civil liberties record at a town hall meeting the other night. "The way he is undermining civil liberties is disgraceful."

Meanwhile, here's how the rest of America views the matter:

"How do you rate the job Attorney General John Ashcroft is doing: excellent, pretty good, only fair, or poor?" (The Harris Poll, June 10-15, 2003):

Excellent/Pretty Good
54%

Only Fair/Poor
32%

If he's the "most loathed man in America", maybe Rodney King got his wish and "we all just get along" nowadays. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 13, 2003 6:18 AM