The usual Democrat campaign to "Scare the Vote" is in full swing, and they're pushing it harder than ever. Unable to convince voters to elect John Kerry any other way, the entire Left has erupted in a frantic flurry of rhetoric designed to convince every single voter in America that George W. Bush wants to personally attack him or her in some way. Hate and fear are all the Democrats have to offer voters, it seems.

Scare the Elderly: "Republicans will steal your Social Security and your Medicare!" This is an old standby. Democrats want you to forget that it was they who voted to raise taxes on Social Security in 1993, with Al Gore casting the deciding vote. (Senator Kerry voted Yes on that bill, HR 2264.) President Bush's idea of protecting Social Security while allowing those still working to save money in accounts of their own choosing would rob Democrats of their main "scare the vote" issue as the "baby boomer" generation retires in the coming years. Why not allow people to choose how their money is saved?

Scare the Sick: "Republicans won't give you free health care!" There's no such thing as "free" anything -- someone has to pay for it, and someone has to run it. How customer-driven and efficient is any government-run agency? Democrats have been trying to push socialised medicine for ages, and never seem to notice that the national health care system is failing miserably in Canada and Great Britain. Recently, a woman in Wales who had been a long-time critic of declining medical standards died of an iron overdose because the doctor "found the instructions difficult to decipher and... had only read half of them." President Bush's idea is to allow small businesses -- the real job creators in this country -- to offer their employees health plans at the same rates large corporations get. As the number of unemployed continues to drop and small businesses continue to grow, competition for workers to fill available jobs will increase. Better health care plans will be yet another job incentive in a competitive environment, like higher wages. Speaking of jobs...

Scare the Unemployed: "Republicans won't give you good jobs!" Aren't those supposed to be earned by those who are qualified and capable? As companies -- small and large -- continue to expand, there will be fewer talented people available to fill the more complex jobs, leading to competition for the most qualified employees and an initiative among workers to train for better jobs. According to a study by the Kauffman Foundation, "70 percent of new startups already employ at least one person, 80 percent plan to hire at least one more employee in the next year, and 20 percent plan to add at least 19 new employees in the next few years." Overtaxing small business owners, as Kerry would do by raising taxes on those making over $200,000 a year, would hamper expansion and kill job creation. But it would keep a nice Democrat voter base handy, dependent on entitlements, ready to be scared during future elections.

Scare the Employed: "Republicans will send all the jobs overseas!" As for jobs being "sent overseas," foreign companies send just as many jobs here as we export. (I wonder whether foreign governments use that to scare their voters?) Bush's plan is to help displaced workers retrain for open jobs, instead of forcing companies to lose money -- and forcing taxpayers to subsidise failing companies -- by keeping jobs here that can be performed better or cheaper elsewhere. The old example of buggy whips is particularly apt -- what happened to buggy whip manufacturers when cars became popular? Did the government pay them to keep people employed making whips that no one bought, until they simply went bankrupt? No... buggy whips manufacturers moved or opened in places that had no cars, and other industries sprang up in their place here, employing the unemployed buggy-whip workers. We call that "capitalism" with side orders of "competition" and "progress."

Scare the Minorities: "Republicans won't count your votes!" That's a personal message from John Kerry, who claims that Republicans have a Secret Plan to throw away black votes. Perhaps they'll drop votes marked "Negro" behind the couch where they'll never be found. Oh, wait... we don't have a place for "race" on the ballots, do we? When Democrats claim that minority votes weren't counted in Florida in the 2000 election (without having yet produced a single shred of evidence), I just have to ask why the allegations were almost exclusively made in counties where Democrats ran the election boards (24 of the 25 counties with the highest ballot spoilage rates). Those rascally Republicans! 

Scare the Immigrants: "Republicans will put you all in internment camps!" Scare the Women: "Republicans will force you to have babies!" Scare the Parents: "Republicans will send your children to die in wars!" While they're at it, Democrats also Scare the Kids: "Republicans will draft you!" John Kerry himself claims that Bush has, yes, a Secret Plan to reinstate the draft, despite the facts that few reputable commanders would actually want a military comprised of people who didn't want to serve, and only Democrats are sponsoring bills to start a draft, like Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC). An email hoax circulating around the internet since February 2004 has been fueling rumors that President Bush will reinstate the draft, but conveniently declines to mention the actual sponsors of the bills. 

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) is even getting into the act with his attempt to Scare Everybody: "The Republicans will cause a nuclear war!" At the same time, Kennedy and other Democrats accuse Vice President Dick Cheney of scare tactics for claiming that if John Kerry is elected, America will suffer another terrorist attack. The so-called mainstream media reported Cheney's statement as, "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from Wednesday, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," with headlines like "Cheney says 'wrong choice' on Election Day would risk terrorist attack." This bit of misreporting sent Democrats into a paroxysm of vitriolic anger. House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for example, immediately rushed out a press release to say, "It is completely inappropriate, and dangerous, for the Vice President to in effect threaten the American people, to be part of instilling fear into our country." The Democrats and their supporters in the "mainstream" media deliberately omitted the rest of Cheney's statement, which was a warning that the danger is "...we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us." (emphasis added) Since John Kerry has stated that he sees the war on terrorism as "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation," Cheney's remark was a simple and accurate statement of fact.

Does the Democrat fearmongering never end? Is no interest group safe? John Kerry can't even resist the temptation to Scare Dairy Farmers: "The Republicans will hurt milk production!" Kerry recently told Wisconsin voters that Bush has -- you guessed it! -- a Secret Plan to hurt milk producers after the election.

On the other hand, maybe he was actually trying to Scare the Cows.

UPDATE: It turns out that the only person running for President that ever planned to bring back the draft is... John Kerry! On their website, on a page no longer accessible but which can be found in the archives, the Kerry-Edwards team called for "a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students and four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of national service." Now that's scary.