By MEGAN REITER
Contributing Writer
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
After easily winning nine of 10 contests from Massachusetts to California yesterday, Sen. John Kerry all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination and set the stage for a November showdown with President Bush.
Kerry easily trounced Sen. John Edwards yesterday, even in battleground states Ohio and Georgia, as he overcame the final hurdle between himself and the nomination to be given this July in Boston.
"I'm a fighter. For more than 30 years, I've been on the front lines of the battle for fairness and mainstream American values," Kerry said to a crowd in Washington. "And in 2004, we will tell the truth about what's happened in our country, and we will fight to give America back its future and its hope."
Technically, of course, other candidates remain in the race, but they are largely dismissed as fringe elements. Al Sharpton has been described as " a talking pompadour" and Denis Kucinich, the vegan, girlfriend-seeking, bad toupee-wearing radical from Ohio is generally seen as no threat to anyone. That leaves only Dr. Xandor to challenge Kerry.
Xandor, age unknown (possibly 325, possibly from the late XVIIth Dynasty of Egypt), has founded his campaign on issues such as expanding the Americans with Disabilities Act to encompass persons with nuclear-powered exoskeletons and the need to develop space-based defenses against "comets and asteroids, as well as the Triskellion space fleet led by that pesky time-traveler Plantagenet Longbow."
The final two serious candidates both opposed the Bush administration's war in Iraq, Kerry because he saw it as a diversion from the war on terror, Xandor because "your puny weapons are no match for me, plus the fact that I already stole Iraq's WMD for my assault on the Swiss Bank vaults in Zurich." They are both conditionally in favor of free trade, with Kerry wanting to assure that trade pacts contain provisions protecting American jobs and the environment, with Xandor preferring to describe trade as 'tribute from my subject races.'
Many see Kerry's wartime service in Vietnam as giving him the edge, with his personal heroism overshadowing any doubts about the wisdom of that war. Xandor's supporters counter that their candidate "fought valiantly at the Battle of Saturn in 2075," but it is unclear to what they are referring.
Most observers, however, expect the remaining weeks of primary campaign to be about the economy. Kerry's stress is on repealing part of Bush's tax cuts to allow re-investment in the economy. Xandor. In contrast, promises "freedom from taxation" once his scheme for universal national service is implemented. "When all are my slaves," he promises, "your paper money will have no meaning."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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