Won't take foes lightly
Wayne Woodlief By Wayne Woodlief
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Eat your heart out, Barack Obama. John Kerry won't be on the stump for you this fall. Gotta make some re-election house calls back home, where the junior senator may be at our doorstep or our union hall or our shopping mall anytime between now and Nov. 4. That's what competition does. And the challenges by Gloucester attorney Ed O'Reilly in the Democratic primary and Republican Jeff Beatty in November - though long shots - will keep the Democrats' 2004 nominee off the national trail for his buddy Barack. "I plan to be here in the state," Kerry told Herald editors and writers Monday. "I never take it (re-election) for granted. You have to explain what you do" and why you deserve "being re-upped," he said. "I'm fired up and focused . . . I know where the levers (of power) are and how to pull them."

But hey, what if Obama decides he needs a guy like Kerry, who's been around the circuit and has good contacts in swing states, as a running mate? "Not even a possibility," the senator said. "I'm not thinking about it, not looking for it, not asking for it." Still, if Obama said pretty please, wouldn't he have to think about it? "Not gonna happen." Kerry wouldn't go as far as the Shermanesque door-slamming Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio have done. But you get the idea Kerry may think that running for veep four years after he lost for leader of the free world by a few thousand votes in one critical state (Ohio) would be a comedown. Especially when the head of his ticket is up against a guy - John McCain - whom he tried to recruit as his veep in 2004.

See, Kerry has a high regard for his own abilities. (Surprise!) He cited a news story that Obama borrowed from Hillary Clinton's universal health-care plan from the primaries in rolling out a new plan. "Well, both of them borrowed from what we did" in '04, Kerry said, characterizing his proposal as "market-based . . . free choice" for health consumers. And he said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's moves for a quicker-paced American withdrawal is close to "my own proposals" in 2007.

O'Reilly, with his working-class roots, hopes to paint Kerry as some aloof rich guy. But he'll have to reckon with a senator busily transforming himself into a multimillionaire populist. "I hate class warfare. It's stupid," Kerry said when an editor asked if he wasn't waging just that with his plans to soak the rich by reversing the Bush tax cuts and penalizing businesses that save on taxes by launching offshore operations. Nope, said Kerry, he's just shooting for "fairness." It's unfair, he said, when businesses "use hideaways and havens" in places like the Cayman Islands to conceal their incomes, while middle-class Americans work hard to pay their tax bills. Too many businesses "beat their chests about patriotism but they take their money overseas," he snapped.

So whether it's class warfare (as it surely seems) or some kind of class-conscious maneuvers, Kerry seems determined not to let O'Reilly get too far to his left. And the four-term incumbent - accused of falling too much in love with his own voice in the past - has become a better listener. He spoke of two women whom he asked - on a swing through a middle-class neighborhood - how much they were paying in mortgage interest. One said 9.25 percent. "That's nothing," her neighbor snapped. "Mine is 13.25 percent." The "fired-up" senator is hearing folks like that and itching to get back to Capitol Hill to help them. His low numbers in a recent Suffolk University poll - only 51 percent said he deserved re-election - may encourage O'Reilly, but they're also motivating Kerry. That's what competition can do.