The American Spectator

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House member Louise Slaughter (a name that Evelyn Waugh in all his glory couldn't have invented) told the crowd that in 2004, "Vote as if your life depends on it. Because it does." She told the crowd that if Bush was reelected, he had a plan to take Medicare and Social Security away from communities that support abortion, and that if stem cell research was not allowed to go forward America would become a "scientific backwater."

Pretty grim stuff, but the crowd was in ecstasy, cheering raucously as Slaughter implored the young idealists not to let conservatives fool them: The "religious community," she warned, was behind abortion with "great force."

JOHN KERRY'S SISTER Peggy was similarly shrill. She called 2004 "the most important election of all of our lives" and pledged that if elected, her brother would refund the United Nations population fund for all the cash it lost out on under George W., and appoint only pro-choice judges to both the Supreme Court and lower district courts.

That's not a litmus test. It's just common sense.

I tried to stick it out through Gloria Feldt's speech. I really did. But the first five minutes of it was a rambling story about some swimmer whose name she couldn't remember accidentally flashing a crowd at some competition. Someone had apparently quipped, "It's no big thing."

"Well, 2004 is a really, really, really big thing!" Feldt shouted, and the crowd went nuts. They were responding to her as if she were some cult leader or a motivational speaker. I walked through the door, dropping my "Choice on Earth" button in the trash can on the way out.

topics:
Social Security, Abortion, Books, Law, Supreme Court, United Nations, Medicare