Globe: Kerry a "Moderate"

The Boston Globe offers us this observation:

In the same speech, Kerry -- who is running as a political moderate and faces a challenge from the left by independent candidate Ralph Nader -- put aside his centrist rhetoric and zeroed in on traditional Democratic themes, winning nine standing ovations from his predominantly black audience at a meeting of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

Kerry pledged to raise the minimum wage, make health care a right for all Americans, and aggressively enforce civil rights laws. Seeking to energize his African-American voter base, he compared the Florida ballot-box debacle of 2000 with Jim Crow scare tactics to keep blacks away from the polls.

Kerry contended that many young people get in trouble with the law because adults have failed them. He said many girls and minorities need boosts in self-confidence to flourish in school; all-girls' schools would receive money from his proposed $300 million fund.

As the Globe notes Kerry may claim to be "running as a moderate" but he is talking like a socialist. Kerry goes on to advocate federal meddling setting college tuition costs:

The thrust would involve dividing up $10 billion to states that commit to holding tuition increases to a rate of inflation -- in essence giving money for public colleges that have lost funding from their own states and have been raising tuition and fees to replace it.

Now does anyone care to speculate how long it would take the feds to use that money as a club to dictate far more than tuition prices? Within nanoseconds, schools would be told who to admit, who to not admit, what to teach, how to teach it. In short, colleges will be treated just like the public schools are treated already. Indeed, the politicians admit their behaviors can be controlled by dangling a federal carrot in their face:

"If that pot of money was available, the Legislature would jump at the chance, and do whatever we had to do to take advantage of it," (Mass. State Senator) Panagiotakos said.

That's good, independent thinking there, My Big Fat Greek Senator. You be a good little aparatchik and do as you're told.

On the stump, meanwhile, Kerry hasn't been voicing much in the way of specifics, preferring to paint in broad strokes by promising to "strengthen" this or "protect" that. It is instructive that when specific policy proposals appear, they are traditional northeast liberal Democrat big-government "communism light" in nature.