JOHN KERRY is betting much of his presidential campaign on voter anger over lost American manufacturing jobs in the industrial Midwest. Seldom does a day go by without a Kerry attack on lost jobs in battleground states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri, often wrapped up in hot rhetoric about American jobs being out-sourced to low-wage countries such as China, Mexico, and India.

Great Lakes industrial workers would be well advised, however, to carefully check Kerry’s Senate record. Few in Congress have worked as aggressively to hobble the most important industrial sector of the Great Lakes economy: the American auto industry.