By Michael Conlon
Seattle - John Kerry, stepping up his attack on American President George Bush after bad news about the economy, said on Saturday the country cannot afford another four years of lost jobs, slow growth and creeping poverty.
The Democratic presidential nominee sounded the theme as he wound up a week-long, cross-country trip that raised millions of dollars for his party's causes.
He planned to spend most of next week on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket while Republicans take the stage and media spotlight in New York for the convention that will nominate Bush to run for a second term.
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| 'There's a dark cloud hanging over Washington' |
"Forty-one years ago, Martin Luther King gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech," Kerry said in a statement released in advance of a rally in the Seattle area. "He told us his dream that one day, all Americans would have the chance to share in the promise of our great country.
"John Edwards (his running mate) and I have the same dream and together, we can make it a reality. Together, we can build an America that's stronger at home and respected in the world.
"I don't believe that four years of lost jobs, lower wages, higher health care costs, higher tuitions and tax cuts for the few are the best we can do," Kerry said.
"The fundamental choice we face is this: Do we want an economy that benefits the special interests or do we want an economy that works for middle-class families?"
Kerry sharpened and raised the volume of his criticism of Bush's record in the wake of back-to-back government economic reports.
The Commerce Department said on Friday the nation's gross domestic product, measuring a country's total output, expanded at a 2,8 percent annual rate in the second quarter, down from the three percent pace estimated last month and 4,5 percent in the first quarter of 2004.
That followed an annual Census Bureau report that said 1,3 million Americans slipped into poverty in 2003 as the ranks of the poor rose four percent to 35,9 million, the highest level since 1998, with the number of those without health insurance coverage rising to the highest level since 1999.
"There's a dark cloud hanging over Washington, DC and we need to get it out of there - blow it away," Kerry told a forum on the economy on Friday in Everett, a blue-collar town north of Seattle that is Boeing's manufacturing base.
He said that when Americans hear about America's "character" during the Republican convention, they should remember that the New York firefighters who died on September 11, 2001, were "members of organised labour", a movement facing attacks on overtime and other issues.
The only reason people have safe workplaces today, he said, is that others before them "went out to the picket lines and fought for it".
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