Borosage’s article “Kerry: Fill in the Blanks” [this week’s “The Nation”] is precisely the kind of attitude that has bugged me over the years concerning presidential elections — ever since Adlai. The attitude is that pundits in general either reflect or engender the reactions of what they perceive as the street smarts of registered voters who seldom go beyond slogans and sound bites. As Jay Rockefeller criticized Bush on the Charlie Rose show recently: that the president is “liked” because of his resolve, and not a man of nuance, even though the world is nuance.

Borosage in trying to be a man of nuance, commits the same egregious fault of the electorate by failing to grasp Kerry’s nuances, by offering up the precise “fill in the blanks” that Kerry has been hammering away at since Iowa. In short, Borosage — as many other pundits who claim Kerry has failed to define himself — simply does not listen to what Kerry is saying.

Kerry has time and time again excoriated Bush for shortchanging NCLB and its unfunded mandate. In addition, he wants updated funds for Title 1, after school programs and Head Start.

Though not an enthusiast for single payer, he pledges to open up affordable health insurance equal to what he and other federal employees enjoy. As for the nuances of the prescription program, I trust it is under study, although already he has incessantly pointed out that it profitably favors pharmaceuticals.

To fill in the blanks, how many times does Kerry have to carp on “rolling back the tax cuts for those making $200K or more”? Over and over again, Kerry has stressed energy independence and its peripheral reward in creating new jobs as well as protecting the environment. He has pledged never again to put American troops in harm’s way for the sake of oil. And is he not already a “champion of American workers” by promising ten million new jobs, together with getting tough with the outsourcers?

Obviously Borosage is under the malaise of those who don’t listen or are incapable of following the nuances of Kerry’s campaign — even The Nation doesn’t bother to provide an embedded reporter to follow the campaign trail in order to fill in the blanks.