July 27, 2004 NEWS ANALYSIS
By ROBIN TONER
BOSTON, July 26 - Franklin Roosevelt spoke of the "forgotten man," Bill Clinton of the "forgotten middle class." Now the Democratic Party of Senator John Kerry is reaching for that long - and politically successful - legacy with a promise to ease the "middle-class squeeze" and restore the booming economy of the Clinton years.
To that end, the Democratic National Convention on Monday night offered a simple message about the economy: It was better under the Democrats. The middle class had a brighter future. And Mr. Kerry has a plan to restore middle-class prosperity - to stem the loss of jobs overseas, to ease the burden of rising health, education and energy costs on families, to get the nation's fiscal house and economy in order.
Indeed, it was Bill Clinton himself who stood before a national television audience on Monday night and made the case, as he did so often in 1992, that the economic future need not be feared - and that the Democrats offered a better choice when it came to tax and budget policy. He scoffed at the Republicans' decision to give big tax cuts to wealthy Americans like himself while, he asserted, shortchanging critical national needs like education. He criticized the Republicans for turning a huge surplus into a deficit.
Again and again, he said voters faced a choice. If they liked the status quo, he said, stick with the Republicans. If not, he said,"take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats - we've got a very different economic policy.''
"Our way works better,'' he said.
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