He's not a pessimist; he's a realist.

John Kerry in the Boston Globe:

What will not go away as an issue, no matter how many jobs we create in the next four months, is the reality of day-to-day life for most Americans, who are having trouble paying their health-care bills, paying the gasoline bills, paying their tuitions, all of which have gone up while wages have gone down.

What will not go away is the reversal of the environmental policies of our country. What will not go away is the absence of any plan for health care for Americans.

Dubya couldn't begin to understand problems like these; they're totally foreign to his experience. John Kerry, on the other hand, knows what it's like to struggle with income vs. expenses -- contrary to popular belief, his family was not wealthy. His prep-school classmates may have spent their summers in Europe, but Kerry sold encyclopedias door-to-door and unloaded trucks.