Democratic strategy to cast Bush as "The most evil man in the World" is beginning to evolve
Metro - 07/02/03

LOS ANGELES -- Al Sharpton and the other democratic presidential candidates are putting a new emphasis on making healthcare and environmental issues more voter friendly. Instead of talking abstractly about ozone levels or the Superfund budget, they speak of the children who are forced to drink unsafe water because Republicans keep the good water for themselves, or of how minorities cook their food in toxic waste because Republicans are bottling it and selling it off as corn oil.

Even as conservatives have tinkered with their vocabulary in an effort to ward off Democratic attacks over the environment, Democratic leaders have asked their candidates to amp-up the rhetoric and do a better job of explaining the death, destruction and despair being thrust upon the American people by the Bush administration and congressional Republicans.

“George Bush is the most evil man in the World,” said Denny White, Democratic spokesman.

At the same time, Democrats are trying to focus public attention on what they call the Bush administration's cozy relationship with the mortuary business. In a striking example, some have pointed to a little known painting in the Oval Office which depicts a beautiful Forrest Lawn cemetery. “A cemetery in the Oval Office is proof President Bush wants us all to die”, said DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

The Democrats' strategy aims to expand their message to seniors by detailing stories of how Republicans have secretly stolen pacemakers and hearing aids right out from patients who were using them. In one example, George Bush himself breaks into a retirement home and changes the labels on medication bottles, loosens the wheels on wheelchairs and applies crazy glue to several dozen sets of dentures.

The new strategy was on display here on Thursday, when all five of the nine Democratic presidential candidates who appeared at a forum sponsored by the League of Conservation Voters sought to cast traditional issues in larger, more humanizing terms.

Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, a doctor, said his fellow Democrats should not speak in abstractions. Instead, Dr. Dean said, they should talk about what it was like for that Colorado family who ended up in the emergency room because the city of Denver ran out of air. They were eventually able to get some air from Boulder but for a major city to run out of breathable air is unthinkable. 600,000 city residents were gasping for hours.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, said passage of a global-warming bill he has proposed "would have prevented the air shortage in Denver and would restore us as the moral leader of the world."

As for the other candidates, they all seemed to agree, George W. Bush, the Republicans and conservatives are trying to kill all of the old, disabled, low income and minority children. “The want to kill all working-class families and the cemetery painting in the oval office is just the proof we need,” said Sen. Kerry.