John Kerry--Man of the People

Howie Carr in today's NY Post provides informative "Kerry-tales":

[M]ost of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress. . .

[L]ongtime state Senate President William M. Bulger used to muse on St. Patrick's Day, ". . . He's only Irish every sixth year." And now it turns out that he's not Irish at all.

But in the parochial world of Bay State politics, he was never really seen as Irish, even when he was claiming to be (although now, of course, he says that any references to his alleged Hibernian heritage were mistakenly put into the Congressional Record by an aide who apparently didn't know that on his paternal side he is, in fact, part-Jewish).

Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. . . In 1993, . . . living on a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity. . .Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for years, until he decided to run for president.

At some point in the 1970s, Democrats became the party of elites and Republicans the party of ordinary people. When will perception catch up to reality?