For months, I have been perplexed by John Kerry’s campaign strategy. His dogged determination to go into combat again over his record in Vietnam and continuously debating Bush about Iraq – a subject that most Americans have already formed an opinion about – seems to be setting Kerry up to be Bushwhacked on Nov. 2.

I keep asking myself: Is Kerry trying to lose to Bush?

If Kerry isn’t, he’s doing an excellent job of pretending. Every minute that Kerry spends answering pro-Bush veterans who never served with him in Vietnam is a minute not spent on addressing domestic issues that Bush doesn’t want to discuss. Bush has no viable domestic program to speak of; more than 1.6 million jobs have been lost on his watch and he has turned a $236 billion surplus into a deficit projected to be $422 billion in 2004, rising to $2.7 trillion in 10 years.

Moreover, Bush has run up massive deficits while simultaneously providing tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy. At the Republican National Convention in New York, he outlined new programs that would cost $3 billion. In the meantime, he has quietly put federal departments on notice to expect deep cuts in the budgets after the Nov. 2 election.

Yet, Kerry is not capitalizing on these weaknesses. He has allowed Bush to put him on the defensive and he keeps challenging Bush on Iraq from different angles, first questioning Bush’s go-it-along strategy and, more recently, talking about the wasteful spending in Iraq and questioning Bush’s leadership on foreign policy.

I feel like placing tape over Kerry’s mouth every time he mentions Iraq or Vietnam and reading him his rights. They should change his Web site from JohnKerry.com to MoveOn.com. At a meeting this summer with a half-dozen Black columnists, Kerry said despite what Bush says during the campaign, his retort will be “jobs, jobs, jobs.” But Kerry has been off message for some time.

Fortunately, there are some signs that the Kerry campaign is about to turn its attention to bread-and-butter issues. A radio commercial featuring former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, for example, takes Bush to task for his record job losses. In addition to saying that a record number of Americans are losing their jobs, the Herman commercial should point out that it’s time for Bush to lose his job. That’s the kind of zinger that would impress his core supporters. Kerry operatives need to dispense with those safe radio spots that motivate no one.

Give the Republicans credit: they’ve done a complete public makeover, projecting a softer public image, while, in fact, being more Reagan-like than Ronald Reagan. The makeover requires the so-called Christian Right to go underground while George W. Bush pretends to be something that he’s not. And the zealots on the right are willing to play along because they know that once the election is over, they will again be in the driver’s seat.

The Democrats are, well, Democrats. They invent new ways to create strife. Take the case of the 527 organizations, most of whom lean Democratic. Created to counter GOP fat cats, the largely-White groups are so arrogant that they think they can bypass Black grassroots groups and decide how best to turn out the Black vote. And they say it with a straight face.

Although he has earned straights As on the NAACP’s annual report cards – compared to straight Fs earned by Vice President Dick Cheney when he served in the House – Kerry has not connected with Black audiences. In his acceptance speech in Boston, for example, he did not once mention Blacks or African-Americans. And when he mentioned civil rights, it was in the context of women.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that this election isn’t about John Kerry. It’s about evicting George W. Bush from the White House. We must keep our eyes on the prize. As filmmaker Michael Moore says, “If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic they even lose the elections they win!”

Pathetic or not, there is no doubt that a John Kerry administration would be far more sensitive to the needs of Blacks than George W. Bush.

Republicans say Democrats take Blacks for granted. But it’s better to be taken for granted than to be taken for a ride.