Workingforchange.com, not exactly a right-wing source, notes how John Kerry’s positions on CAFE and Kyoto can’t help him in Michigan. Not that they killed Al Gore there (Gore won the state by 5.1%, and that was with Bush getting big support from the state’s substantial Muslim population, which is sure to swing behind Kerry), but it won’t help. I’ve long thought that his continuing embrace of Kyoto (despite having voted for the anti-Kyoto resolution, of course) could blunt one of Kerry’s major themes, which is outsourcing; pushing for an agreement that handed a huge competitive advantage in manufacturing to India and China is not the act of a man obsessed with the loss of jobs from America to those countries.
In other campaign notes – OpinionJournal’s Political Diary (subscription only) noted that, while the Heinz Corporation has (wisely) noted that it takes no position on the campaign (they don’t want to be Kerry’s Halliburton, and red-staters buy ketchup too), Kerry’s wife and her children control a block of Heinz stock worth some $520 million. Also, this seems like a pretty effective Bush ad on the economy, while this “report” from a group called the American Shareholders Association (link opens PDF file) attack’s Kerry’s record on economic issues. Meanwhile, I continue to be amused by the implication that Josh Marshall, in the item I linked to yesterday, persists in the delusion that the Dems’ big weakness is the failure to call Bush a liar often enough.