Kerry's strategy: ape Republicans

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry reacts to audience members at a campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Friday. PHOTO: AP

Willie Nelson sang about the promised land to the gentle wafting of hundreds of US flags, and in the crush of the convention center a sleek-suited economic adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry let out a sigh of pure satisfaction.

"Doesn't this look just like a Republican convention," he said.

The resemblance was entirely intentional. From Kerry's photogenic salute as he delivered his acceptance speech, to the roll-out of generals who support his candidacy and the impassioned speeches about God, country and family values, the Democratic convention unleashed a full-scale invasion of Republican emotional terrain.

The appropriation of such traditional themes might have been expected to raise hackles among Democratic activists, but this year they appeared to have adopted another Republican creed: discipline.

This week's convention was the most tightly scripted in recent memory. The handmade protest signs of earlier years were banished, ostensibly for security, and replaced by placards distributed on cue by Democratic marshals.

With the usual scuffles between the Democratic party constituencies set aside, the convention was seen as a runaway success.

"I think the Democratic party is more unified right now than at any time since I have been following national conventions, and that was in 1948," said George McGovern, who lost his own challenge for the presidency in 1972.

In the struggle for ownership of the symbols of the American heartland, the Democrats showed no mercy. Kerry appropriated US President George W. Bush's signature line on the Monica Lewinsky scandal from the 2000 election, and applied it to the Iraq war, saying that he would "restore trust and credibility to the White House."

The slogan "help is on the way" is also a direct lift from US Vice President Dick Cheney.

But it was the emotional reclamation of symbols seen as exclusive Republican territory since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that galvanized the crowd.

General Wesley Clark stabbed a finger at the red, white and blue lights above the podium, and thundered that he had as much claim to the US flag as any Republican. Senator Joe Biden, touted as a potential secretary of state in a Kerry administration, delivered a tirade against terrorism that blended religion and bluster.

"Just as Joshua's trumpets brought down the walls of Jericho -- just as American values brought down the Berlin Wall -- so will radical fundamentalism fall to the terrible, swift power of our ideas as well as our swords," he said.

There was only the most fleeting reference to abortion, by Kerry's daughter Alexandra, and gay rights were not mentioned at all.

For Democratic activists from the swing states, that was just as well. "Awesome, just awesome," said Chester Edwards, who supervises school construction in Columbia, Missouri. "The election is John Kerry's to lose."

Campaign gathered at a post-convention party saw the theft of traditional themes of patriotism as a master stroke.

"The Republicans have got nowhere to go," gloated one. "They have boxed themselves in."

The swing to the right, and Kerry's strong appeal for the support of independent and moderate voters, had its casualties.

Most of the 4,000 Democrats in the convention hall opposed the war on Iraq, unlike Kerry and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, who endorsed Bush's invasion. Democratic leaders said the divide between the party's leaders and its membership would not threaten the rare unity forged at the convention.