I have raised more questions than I have answered probably but here are some musings for Dems about Kerry vs. Bush.
John Kerry has a very liberal voting record. That thought cheers liberal Dems who dislike him for other reasons and disheartens conservative Dems who want rid of Bush but want to keep their guns, be strong on crime, and not hear much from gays or abortion activists. The challenge for all Dems is to find a way to unite behind Kerry without compromising on things they don't want to compromise on.
What has been perceived as a weakness for John Kerry can be turned into a strength. That is, he has held more than one position on many issues. Republicans want to play this up and insist that he blows with the wind so much as to be unprincipled. To turn this into a strength Kerry must show that he has amassed a voting record that represents the values of his liberal constituency in MA without being so inflexible as to insist that the rest of the world hold the same exact values.
George W. Bush, on the other hand, is a simple man in a complex world. He usually refuses to recognize the legitimacy of views that differ from his own or those fed to him by his advisors. He seems to think that the world is a simple place and that every issue can be reduced to simple black and white. The resulting inflexibility is one of the main reasons that Bush is so divisive as a president. Unfortunately, some democrats are as simple-minded and inflexible as George W. Bush even though they differ in their monolithic perspective.
John Kerry is a liberal Dem but he recognizes the complexity of the real world. He will not govern from the far left in the way that George Bush has governed from the far right. He has been a senator from a liberal state and has voted accordingly but as president he will govern from the center because that is where most of his new constituency will be.