John Kerry only needed one more exorcism...

[kentuck]

and he would have been the best candidate to run against Bush. However, years of Senate double talk and fence-sitting made him wary of gambles. He had become a "safe" politician. But, in the process, he gave up the right to criticize effectively the coward called George W Bush. Because his Senatorial habits prohibited such truth-telling of his opponent, he was hindered in his run for the White House. He forfeited the only weapon that would have been effective. Is that possible??

I only say this in hindsight.

[Psephos]

1. Good ideas, good resume, good ethics...bad political talents

A good politician lives or dies by his or her EQ, not IQ. Kerry has a high IQ but an unenviable EQ. No amount of coaching, practice, or exorcism can change that.

Great politicians, like writers, musicians, and baseball players, are born, not made.

Peace.

[saracat]

3. Odd , other than the close presidential race, this was closer than Truman

and Dewey, Kerry has never lost an elective office. He is continually reelected, even beating a popular Governor, Bill Weld. "Bad political skills? We should all be so lucky! And even with Repukes counting the votes he got more votes than any Democrat in history. His political skills are just fine. It was listening to the DLC and the DNC that caused him a problem.

[kentuck]

5. "...listening to the DLC and the DNC that caused him a problem."

Otherwise known as "playing it safe" ??

[saracat]

10. No. He believed them. After all, they claim credit for the Clinton

victory! And this was his party, who had helped him before.

[Psephos]

17. Boosh was ripe for the picking...

...but Kerry couldn't quite get his hands around the apple.

Kerry's other talents helped compensate a lot, but the bottom line was, he failed to rouse much passion among supporters, struck his opponents as phony, and failed to connect on a visceral level with the Middle America voters he needed to wrap up the presidency.

Poll after poll showed that a lot of people considered him aloof, emotionally out of touch, not "one of us."

Clinton had this talent in vast quantities, Reagan had it in spades, JFK had it by the bushel. Bush 1 barely had some of it, Bush 2 has been judged to have more of it than Kerry and more of it than Gore.

If the topic interests you, let me recommend Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, as a good introduction. (It's apolitical, btw.) One thing you'll take away from that book is an understanding that leadership and success are not nearly as dependent on smarts as they are on people skills.

Peace.

[FreedomAngel82]

18. I agree

Kerry was fine. If the DLC let him attack Bush more and the SBV people things would've gone a lot better. Don't forget when that one group tore up democratic registration voter forms of first time voters and all types of irregularites. For all we know Kerry could've really won. Didn't he though lose the first time he ran for Senator and then did again and won and hadn't lost anything else again? Also if we had a fair media and Kerry was on more talk shows then MTV and BET then I think people would've known more about him. That was the excuse of republicans. "I don't know what his plans are!" Well DUH! He had a website, a book out and he did give talks and rally's on CSPAN. :eyes:
People just didn't want to listen unless it was a republican yappin.

[Dr Ron]

19. Bad Ass Politician

In other words, Kerry is a bad ass politician, as described by Esquire.

Copy of article here:
http://kerrylibrary.forumflash.com/index.php?showtopic=4&view=findpost&p=114

[Mass]

30. Kind of strange

Pew Poll has a poll that shows that Democratic voters liked Kerry as much as they liked Clinton in 92, and that he was in the perfect average of the Democratic candidates of the last 30 years.

The sad part is that the GOP smear of Kerry aloof and not likeable was carried by people on our side.

Interestingly, all events where Kerry has appeared since the election show an extraordinary answer to him, that contradict largely the idea that he is not liked.

[saracat]

2. Safe? Surely you jest?

Have you looked at his voting record? And BTW, if he really wanted to be safe, he would have changed his position on the war, and made all those people happy! But he voted the way he thought was best, and didn't back down. I didn't agree with his position, but I find it ironic that the fact that he didn't waffle, is what got him called a waffler! He also refused to play it safe as Clinton advised and come out for the marriage amendment . He stuck to his guns and refused to abandon gay rights, though he was told it was politicaly expedient to do so.
He told the truth about Bush. But his speeches were rarely covered, and no matter who the candidate was, The Republicans were going to "win". I use the term "win" loosely. I believe Kerry did win and one day we will find out. The truth is in those machines and that is why K?e wanted them impounded. One day we will know the truth.

[kentuck]

4. No. If he had told the "truth" about Bush....

Bush would be back in Waco today - making deals with Halliburton or some of his Daddy's buddies. But Kerry thought that was out of bounds for a Senator and anyone running for president. The same when they viciously attacked him with the Swift Boat ads.

[Pithy Cherub]

29. Interesting.

The strategy seems to have been that way since the convention when politicians were tasked with not being openly negative towards *. That set the tone for the remainder of the summer. The tone was determined by Kerry.

Even with that the common knowledge that the votes would be stolen amongst minority and poor communities, it was not addressed as aggressively as it should have been in light of 2000.

[bilgewaterbill]

6. Kerry needed to spend that $15mil he had leftover to win in Ohio.

How could he not have seen that coming? It was called THE battleground state from the outset. To have $15mil left boggles the mind.

[kentuck]

7. That's assuming money was the answer...

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

[saracat]

8. He couldn't spend it legally. It came in just around the time he

agreed to take the public funding. Remember when he thought about not accepting the nomination at the convention? That was because once he accepted the nomination, he was limited to the 75million dollars in public funding. That money started to come in right after the primaries, once we had a nominee. But it was too late to access most of it.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[politicasista]

11. STOP THAT SKULLS AND BONES S---T

:mad: :mad: :mad:

[saracat]

14. I am sorry for your loss, but John Kerry did not cause

this tragedy. Look to the fiend in the WH. And Bones men are not that important to one another.S and B , if you are really familiar with them are NOT what people say. But I am sure you will believe what you want.

[seabeyond]

12. this critique of kerry i agree with

many many of the bashing of kerry posts i havent been right on with, but this i think you nailed kentuck. i agree

[politicasista]

13. Can we please stop this hindsight s--t

Like the other candidates could have done better. We should try walking a mile in Kerry's shoes and getting our messages out through the repuke-controlled media.

[kentuck]

15. Yes...

And let's make the same mistakes the next time. I was a Kerry supporter - after Clark was defeated. I make no claim of any special knowledge. It's just my observation.

[saracat]

16. I agree. I think people who supported other primary

candidates need to get a grip. And to renounce their obsession with Kerry bashing. No other candidate could have done better. But they won't ever be proven wrong because their candidate didn't get the nomination. So, we will never know and they will continue to say what they want. Sigh.

[kentuck]

20. Don't get me wrong...

I think John Kerry is a very fine Senator.

[sandnsea]

21. Aw jeez Kentuck

And you were starting to make such sense on SS, I was really getting some hope for ya! Then you had to go blow it with this tripe.

tsk tsk tsk

If you would ignore what the right wing and the media say about Kerry, just the way you ignore what they say about SS, then you might be able to pull your head out of your hind and have some sight.

[kentuck]

23. Sorry about that...

But I have Kerry's career since he returned from Nam. And I supported him whole-heartedly. But there is something about many years in the Senate that makes a candidate very reserved and dignified with their comments, and that is not necessarily a bad thing, but against Bush and the present regime, it was a deadly character flaw. Why do you think he was so reserved in his responses and criticism of Bush?

[sandnsea]

26. I don't

I keep telling people the same thing, the exit polls said people thought Kerry attacked more than Bush did. I know it is hard to get into the mind of a Bush voter, but it's possible people either didn't believe what Bush had done or figured all politicians are alike or actually support the things that we find reprehensible.

There wasn't anything wrong with Kerry the candidate. Think about it, in the course of the campaign he made two mistakes that I can think of. The $87 billion remark and the GC remark. Which was nothing really, but when Democrats freak out about something more than Republicans do, help the distortion, that's when we have problems. Same with the Swift Boat Vets, our own people helped keep that alive as much as the Bushies did. While in August, we needed people to be pointing to the polls that had Kerry going up that the media wasn't reporting.

Considering the noise machine and the left and just the way Democrats are, I don't think any candidate would have had less to deal with from Republicans or could have made the case against Bush any better.

The sad thing to me is, people on the left still don't understand what they've lost. They're content to believe what the media or some blog says somebody says, instead of going to the source. Or line up behind Hillary when she's never been a liberal, but continue to spit on the most liberal Presidential candidate we've ever had.

It isn't Kerry that I have a problem with.

[kentuck]

27. Kerry is a liberal...but

he tried to conceal it. There was nothing to be ashamed of. He had a record to be proud of....(ending in prepositions) He need to be more aggressive in the couple of instances you pointed out and he needed to attack Bush more personally on his weaknesses, in my opinion. That said, the Democrats chose JK in the primary and we supported him...

[sandnsea]

28. Just wipe reality out of the way

Never mind that I just said exit polls showed people thought Kerry attacked Bush, they thought Kerry did MORE attacking than Bush did. Replace reality with your own opinion and pretend that bitching the entire way through the campaign was supporting the candidate.

That's what happened, whether you want to deal with it or not.

[bklyncowgirl]

22. I thnk that Kerry's biggest problem...

was that he, and the people who advised him, thought they were fighting under Marquis of Queensbury rules.

He got clobbered by the Swifties and failed to hit back hard. He relied on the mainstream media to smoke out the Swift Boat Liars. To some extent that happened with good articles in the NYT and WSJ but frankly, how many people read these publications.

He came back strong in the debates but events, some of them (the Russian school massacre) unforseeable and others (the Osama) video suspect as to timing worked against him.

Bush and Cheney told people that if they voted the wrong way they and their children would be killed in a terrorist attack. People saw dead children being hauled out of a Russian school and heard Osama Bin Laden on TV spouting what almost sounded like liberal talking points (I will always believe that this was a phony--probably Cheney and Bin Laden are in the White House basement now laughing their asses off). Kerry never strongly posed the question "Why is Bin Laden still alive and capable of making videos to taunt us." His response, compared to Bush's macho posturing was muted.

Kerry needed to win by a fairly large margin to overcome Repbulican vote rigging and dirty tricks. The Democrats never really wanted to delve into this sort of thing probably because on a much smaller scale, they were guilty also. He came close but close is not a win and now we are paying the consequences.

By the way, I don't think any other candidate would have done any better unless he or she realized that the rules of the game have changed. The new rule is that there are no rules.

[bobbieinok]

24. republican media control!!!!!!!!!! how can any democrat win if

--dem's speeches aren't televised???

--no/few democrats are on TV cable/Sunday/network shows????

--right wing talk shows are on at least 2 am radio stations 8+ hours M-F???????

DEMOCRATS and their views ARE DISAPPEARED FROM THE MEDIA

[TayTay]

25. That makes no sense at all

You are saying that Kerry had no right to criticize * because he had fought for programs in the Senate such as the Clinton Crime bill (Kerry wrote large portions of that) and to stop the drilling in ANWR. That makes no sense what so ever. Or are you saying that Kerry couldn't voice extreme displeasure with the * Admin because he had spoke out for reproductive choice and had a 100% NARAL voting record? (I don't see the connection.)

Kerry has been a reliably progressive voice for his entire 20 year career. He has one of the highest ADA voting records in the Senate. He is one of 11 Senators who voted against the Bankruptcy bill in both 2001 and in 2005. (Plus all the votes from this year that are down-the-line progressive.)

There is a problem with the Dems articulating a message to middle America. The stuff you are saying doesn't address that problem. Most of the liberals and progressive did vote for Kerry. (A tiny percentage voted for Nader, but it was negligible in the end.) Middle America will not come back to the Dems because one candidate is more liberally pure than another (or because one is a Governor and one a Senator or whatever other denial of the week is in vogue.) Middle America will come back when Dems start to vote pocket book issues that middle America cares about. Kerry has a good record on this.

[blm]

31. Baloney. Kerry has one of the BEST RECORDS in the Senate and few of

his battles over the last 20 years have been "safe" ones.

I swear, sometimes kentuck, it's as if you and others BELIEVE the media spin.

Name ONE national level Democrat who HASN'T been defined because of the GOP control over most of the broadcast media. Clinton couldn't even change public perception with a book and a popular publicity tour. Most people think he was negligent and to blame for 9-11 while they believe Bush is strong on terror.

WHY? The media has fostered that perception and even Clinton hasn't altered that perception one bit. The media won't let the truth be told, or allow it to be discussed when it does sneak out, like during the 9-11 hearings.

Repeat that media crap again, and I'll let you have it. It'll be clobbering time, kentuck. No mercy.