Democratic Ticket’s Challenge

* As Jewish Americans whose parents escaped the Holocaust, it was difficult for my wife and me to hold back our emotions as we listened to Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s acceptance speech (Aug. 17).

Lieberman may or may not be the next vice president. I do not intend to vote for him just because he is Jewish, just as I hope other Americans will not vote against him because he is. Perhaps more important than which candidates win this presidential election, for they are all good men, is how Americans respond to this challenge.

Joe Lieberman’s burden is to show that, no matter how broad our nation’s diversification, people of every background have something to offer. If in the long term we overcome our prejudgments, then Lieberman’s nomination will be a long-remembered tipping point. That is the path gentle Joe must hoe in victory or defeat.

MICHAEL ARNOLD GLUECK

Newport Beach

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* I was disappointed but not surprised by Lieberman’s address. Disappointed because he either went back on his long-held beliefs about vouchers, privatization of Social Security, preferences and the moral conduct in the White House, or he had to succumb to the DNC party line, be a good soldier and advocate the Clinton/Gore type of political shenanigans. So much for integrity.

Last Sunday on many talk shows Lieberman didn’t waver about his positions. All that seemed to change Wednesday night as he became just one more faithful party-line follower.

ROBERT B. WOLCOTT JR.

Corona del Mar

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* Isn’t it great that in this year 2000, it’s OK for the presidential and vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party to pray together and talk about it, and the media reports it? Wonder how it would be reported if Dick Cheney and Gov. George W. Bush tried the same thing. Radical religious right?

JANE MORRIS

El Cajon

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* Re “Protests Are Just a TV Show for Delegates,” Aug. 16: This article did a wonderful job of capturing why so many activists have become turned off from the political process. The delegates spending the week inside Staples Center at the DNC have much in common with the activists on the other side of the fence. Both groups are motivated, concerned and passionate. Both care about poverty, human rights, the environment.

And yet, the delegates have made virtually no effort to communicate with the protesters outside. The fences keep the protesters from going into Staples but there is nothing stopping the delegates from venturing out to talk with the protesters.

TIM CARMICHAEL

Santa Monica

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* Note to Robert Scheer (“Gore Is the Lesser Evil, but Not by Very Much,” Commentary, Aug. 15): Al Gore picked a freedom rider for his running mate. Bush picked a guy who voted against letting Nelson Mandela out of prison. Any questions?

MARK A.R. KLEIMAN

Los Angeles

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* Scheer’s premise that Bush would not put a pro-life nominee on the Supreme Court, because he naively believes the Republican candidate’s statement that he would not give a “litmus test” to a qualified candidate or that he wouldn’t dare cause the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, is pure rubbish. Bush has said that his favorite justices are Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. We can take him at his word that if elected he will pick nominees who mirror them. Be assured, if Bush is elected a woman’s right to choose will end with his first Supreme Court appointment.

A vote for an unqualified Ralph Nader is a vote to put one or more Scalias or Thomases on the Supreme Court bench, so, Bob, snap out of it!

GEORGE MAGIT

Northridge

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* Thank you for “And Over Here, the Real World,” part of your convention 2000 coverage (special section, Aug. 14). It’s an uncomfortable exercise to look beyond political platitudes, yet it’s the only way to say anything meaningful about the human condition in America. This piece gets to the heart of my personal frustration with politics (I’m a registered Democrat and will vote for Gore/Lieberman in November), and it is an important reminder that our country is made up of a wonderfully diverse group of people, whose personal struggles cannot be summed up by the rhetoric of the day. Politicians’ insistence on communicating with the American people with a steady stream of generalizations and sound bites is totally inadequate and off-putting.

HOLLY HUNT

Long Beach

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* In his address to the opening session of the Democratic convention, President Clinton accused Republicans of wanting to “spend every dime” of the budget surplus on “big tax cuts.” Clinton’s idiom reveals the fundamental distinction between the two political parties. Only a liberal Democrat would categorize the return of money to the taxpayers as “spending.”

GRANT W. OSTAPECK

Temecula

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* Clinton’s speech at the Democratic convention proved to me (and should to Gore) that Gore needs Clinton’s help to get elected rather than distancing himself from him. Clinton, better than anyone else in the country, can convince the majority of the American people that this country will be better off with a Democratic president.

Let’s face it, if Clinton were running against Bush (or any other Republican) he would be reelected in a landslide.

BOB MURTHA

Santa Maria

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* I believe the Democratic Party is taking the African American vote for granted. Sometimes I honestly wonder if they don’t want “us” out of their party. I can’t believe that after all the work many, many African Americans have done, not one was on Gore’s short list. Are you telling me Jesse Jackson, a staunch Democratic supporter, couldn’t make Gore’s short list? I personally think Jackson would be a better president than either Gore or Bush. We need to make the Democratic Party more accountable for “our” 85% Democratic vote.

JAMES O. CLEMENT

Long Beach

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* Does it ever occur to those Democrats consumed by racial and ethnic politics that it is abjectly condescending and dehumanizing when they denounce the Republican convention as an “illusion of inclusion” or call conservative minorities “pawns of the GOP”? Is it not possible for minorities to have opinions other than those at Staples Center?

The fraud of “diversity,” hailed by contemporary liberals, is glaringly evident when minorities embrace disparate beliefs, particularly ones straying from the monolith of the left. The notion that all minorities must think alike sounds ominously like the old racial slur that all minorities look alike.

BURNIE THOMPSON

Fullerton

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* By maneuvering around his previously expounded positions on affirmative action, school vouchers and other issues, Lieberman may have “cleared the air” for Rep. Maxine Waters and her black caucus (Aug. 16) but he certainly “muddied the waters” for many others like myself who had previously respected his integrity.

WILLIAM H. SMITH

Palm Desert

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* It’s not surprising that Bush leads Gore in public opinion surveys, even though the same public believes him to be the less qualified candidate (Aug. 15). Until the Democrats can piece together just how Bush beat Ann Richards for governor of Texas in 1994, when Richards had a 60% approval rating, Bush’s secret recipe will be poison to their polls.

MARK RING

Irvine