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MICHIGAN: WHAT AN APPROPRIATE END TO THE 2004 DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN. [Henry Payne 11/02 08:57 AM]

John Kerry made his last whistle stop Monday evening in Detroit, Michigan — a city governed for three decades by the Democratic Party platform and that today defines urban failure.

How appropriate that Kerry was joined on the downtown Joe Louis stage by Al Sharpton, a vicious, anti-Semitic demagogue who has become fashionable in Democratic circles. In late 1995, Mr. Sharpton helped instigate the boycott and burning of a Jewish proprietor’s clothing store in Harlem with statements such as these on New York radio: “I want to make it clear to the radio audience and to you here that we will not stand by and allow . . . some white interloper to expand his business on 125th Street. I'm going to go down there and do what is necessary to let them know that we are not turning 125th Street back over to the outsiders that was done in the early part of this century.” (See The Jewish Post.)

How appropriate that this demagogue be feted by the party’s presidential nominee in a city that also ran out white and Jewish entrepreneurs over the last thirty years by a policy of violence, neglect, poor city services, and high taxes.

How appropriate that Kerry launched his 6:30 pm speech with anti-business demagoguery: “In Detroit you have the Big Three: GM, Ford, and Chrysler. But the Bush White House has a different Big Three: Halliburton, Enron, and the big drug companies.” The crowd roared its approval, oblivious apparently to how dependent their 401Ks are on pharmaceutical stocks that a Kerry
administration aims to strangle with regulation.

And how appropriate, finally, that the assembled media should find none of this newsworthy – ignorant to the last of the irony of a party celebrating in the midst of its public policy nightmare, Detroit.