Reply #28: But in FALL of last year, Bush was still liked by too many people [View All]

[karynnj]

The press he got was great -even in the NYT, Bumiller who covered Bush always tried to show him in a good light. I know people who are not to the right of the spectrum who really reacted negatively to Michael Moore.

I think the Kerry campaign made mistakes, but I think the Clinton people were far too quick to criticize when the campaign was on. They had not supported Kerry in the primaries, but their egos were such that they obviously felt they should run the general election campaign. Part of the problem of the Kerry campaign was there were too many people pushing in different directions.

Part of this was Kerry's fault; he should have had more control. But part of the problem was that Clinton people such as Carvelle and Begala after Kerry did not chose to have them run the campaign, publicly ridiculed the people running the campaign and gave Kerry very little support, although they blasted Bush. Their advice was not necessarily right - they argued for emphasizing the domestic agenda, but Kerry's numbers went up when he talked about Iraq and terror. Lockwood with his Clinton ethics was a negative. McCurry was one of the rare Clinton positives.

In fact of all the people who were running the campaign, the ones who most consistently appeared to give Kerry the best advice were people like his brother, David Thorne and other people who knew Kerry and loved him. The Kennedy people seemed to have designed a campaign that would fit a "Ted Kennedy clone" while the Clinton people argued for a "Clinton" campaign - with an economy, stupid platform, poll driven ideas, and even last minute advice for blatant political reasons to endorse nasty anti-gay propositions worse than DOMA - an act that would also be startlingly out of line with Kerry's 20 year record. Kerry's biggest problem may have been that he allowed the DNC to convince him that his own people's lack of national experience was more important than how well they "fit" the candidate.

I think the times needed a candidate like Kerry, but he really is an extremely atypical candidate. His intelligence, creativity, diplomacy and pragmatic approaches to problems were standard qualities. But Kerry has the moral compass, the willingness to take on tough issues even if it meant fighting the entire government and the idealism that were also needed to pull the country back to what we always thought America was. I think as Kerry's numbers were close, the campaign was unwilling to take the risk needed to really explain how Kerry has fought to keep America true to its own laws and values. There was a hugh risk as some of what Kerry did exposed a very seedy side of both parties. Rather than believe it, some people would reject the messenger. (I think these thoughts are, for me, why the loss was hardest - Hillary winning in 2008, was not the same except having 4 more years of destruction. This is something I never felt about any other winning or losing candidate.)