Kerry launches a counteroffensive

[Clinton Crusader]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5916073/site/newsweek

Sept. 13 issue - John Kerry wanted to hit back.
It had been a miserable August as he took incoming
fire about his military service from a gang of
hostile Vietnam vets. But no, campaign manager
Mary Beth Cahill and other staffers argued, the
Swift Boat ads would blow over. Finally, Kerry
had had enough. For three or four days, as he
campaigned across the country, Kerry ripped into
Cahill, furious that the mostly baseless attacks
on his valor were driving his numbers down.
"He was very angry," one old friend says. "The
calculation had been made that this wasn't going
to hurt him." Kerry's solution was to reach for an
old ally. "Get Vallely," he screamed.

Thomas Vallely is the leader of the pack of vets that
Kerry calls his dog-hunters, a group that has beaten
back the attacks on his Vietnam record since his first
Senate race 20 years ago. "He knows that I know the
other players," Vallely says of Kerry's Mayday call.
"He knows that I also like this stuff."

The return of the old warriors marked a turning point
in the Swift Boat controversy, and a rare moment when
Kerry stamped his authority on a drifting campaign.
"OK, time to break out the fatigues. We've been there,
done that. Time to do it again," says David Thorne,
Kerry's close friend, of the mood among the senator's
inner circle. And so, even as the balloons were
falling at the Republicans' party in Madison Square
Garden, Kerry's motorcade pulled into Clark County,
Ohio, where Al Gore beat George W. Bush by just 324
votes. There, Kerry finally struck hard at his
opponents' record during Vietnam. "I will not have
my commitment to defend this country questioned by
those who refused to serve when they could have, and
who misled America into Iraq," Kerry told a crowd of
several thousand supporters at a midnight rally in
Springfield. The Bush team, as usual, responded rapidly
to Kerry's decidedly unrapid response. Karen Hughes,
the president's longtime message maven, accused Kerry of
being "consumed" by Vietnam, saying he had "diminished
himself" with the attack.

Kerry's counteroffensive seems to fit a well-worn
pattern. After a period of complacency, the senator
blew his slender lead in the polls and slid into
frustration and inertia, before emerging with a new
fighting spirit. It happened in the Democratic primaries,
when Kerry's campaign was written off well before the
first votes were cast in Iowa. Could it happen again
in the general election? "There is nobody, nobody, who
is a better finisher than John Kerry," says one close
adviser and former staffer. Thorne promises there's more
lashing to come, but even some of Kerry's most trusted
friends can't be sure when the gloves will really come
off. "I hope we don't get to the near-death experience
again," says one senior aide. "I think he's a lot better
when he's behind, but I hope we don't get too far behind."
<more>
:kick:

[liveoaktx]

1. Bush is *consumed* by 911 and diminishes himself with that association

[roseBudd]

7. w e should help diminish him with the Aug. 6, 2001 PDB

create an issue that brings the media to us using guerilla & viral marketing techniques.

please help me get the word out:

most people have not read the 8/6/2001 PDB. I created a postcard size version.



Please print and distribute the image above. High res version for printing available below. Put them on car windows. Hand them out on street corners. We don't need TV buys to get some attention on this issue. We have to undermine Bush's perceived strength. We all are potential disseminators of printed media. We do not need a newspapers permission or lots of money for TV commercials. We need viral grass roots marketing. We need to create a buzz. If we create a buzz with massive distribution of printed ads we will get media coverage. If these start miraculously appearing and no one knows where they are coming from it will start to get media attention. Now someone create a Condi ad and an Ashcroft. I think a whole series of True/False juxtapositions. We must utilize mockery to appeal to the limbic brain.

There word is UNFIT ours should be INCOMPETENCE

high resolution version for printing here:
http://somnamblst.tripod.com /

[POAS]

10. The high res version

Of this image does NOT contain the thought bubble.

Can you fix it?

[roseBudd]

15. The Bush quote is at the bottom.

I think the thought bubble was more childish. I don't want people to think he thought it, I want them to know he said it.

[POAS]

16. Good Point

Not trying to be critical but I have a suggestions.

In looking at the Hi-res version again I don't think the Quote stands out enough from the rest of the text. It gets lost and seems part of the PDB.

Perhaps you could go back to a bubble but make it a "speech" bubble or change the color, type face or size of the quote.

I like it alot and we have a labor day parade tomorrow, I may print them and hand them out, At least I'll try to get them onto our literature table at our local headquarters.

[roseBudd]

18. Incompetent version 2.0 high res postcard image uploaded

http://somnamblst.tripod.com/

[clydefrand]

2. Hip, hip, hooray!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't wait until he burns bush's ass for good!

[Spiffarino]

3. Time to get mad

I thought Cahill was a better campaigner than that. How could she think the Swift Boat Lie would simply blow over? Nuts.

I'm glad Kerry finally got a snootful and decided on his own to go to work on this. I just hope he'll call in Carville. Kerry needs people with street smarts who can put the campaign back on the offensive.

[SheilaT]

4. What I don't understand

is why the Kerry people don't, every time his Vietnam service is brought up, point out that nearly no one in the Bush administration served at all. That should be hammered home time after time. Bush's no-show status in Alabama should be front and center with the Kerry campaign.

The 527's should be tacitly encouraged to attack all they want. The Bush in 30 seconds ads should be all over the airwaves. But nope. Mr. Nice Guy is supposed to win.

At least Howard Dean never hesitated to criticize the "President". How I miss him!

[michigandem2]

14. the key ingredient that needs to be delviered each time a talking

head on our side is on the air...is repeat the same jargon OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER again...the repukes are great at attacking OLD debunked points and lies at every turn...just repeatt he truth..hammer it home each time we are given an opportunity!

that is what I thnk we are missing..we are all over the place...but we need to stay focused and attack these losers for what they are cowards AND liars

[wildeyed]

5. Go team!

Do what you have to do. Go out and win.

[Pirate Smile]

6. I was wondering where the hell Kerry's vets where, this explains that:

"Early last month Kerry's vets were told to hold off as Cahill and others fretted about pushing the story onto the network news. This time around, it's a free-fire zone. Vallely, who is now the director of the Vietnam Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, has built his own mini war room with former senator and Vietnam vet Bob Kerrey, among others. Kerrey says he wants the candidate to take pride in his antiwar protests. "It took courage to do what he did in '71," says the former senator. "John Kerry was trying to end a war so Karl Rove didn't have to go." Other old hands say the revival of the vets could galvanize the entire campaign. "The Kerry campaign is not on the skids, it's just stopped," says a source familiar with Kerry's inner circle. "Getting vets in might be a new direction.""

I want to see what Vallely and the dog hunters can do. "A mini war room" - thank God, finally.

[Slit Skirt]

8. I just recenty emailed the campaign

...maybe he should hear from all of us

if you want this vet to help....give Kerry this message

Kerry better come out punching..........forget the "feel good campaign".....fight fire with fire.....they backed you in a corner, put your back up against a wall....right now democrats are pissed. Either you start fighting as dirty as they do or you will lose this election.....and if you think dems are mad now...if you lose there will be no mercy.....
Senator Kerry
when you first started down this path I said I would support you if you fought hard...none of this weak democratic crap.......these guys are protecting criminal activity.....and they will do ANYTHING to win...they have no shame....and it amazes me how we underestimate our opponent at every move
QUIT BEING SO FREAKIN NICE
start throwing mud...there is plenty of it to throw.............

see below

CAMPAIGN

Lies move Democrats to dig up dirt

SUSAN ESTRICH


My Democratic friends are mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it any more.

They are worried, having watched as another August smear campaign, full of lies and half-truths, takes its toll in the polls.

They are frustrated, mostly at the Kerry campaign, for naively believing that just because all the newspapers and news organizations that investigated the charges of the Swift Boat assassins found them to be full of lies and half-truths, they wouldn't take their toll. The word on the street is that Kerry was ready to fire back the day the story broke, but that his campaign, believing the charges would blow over if they ignored them, counseled restraint.

But most of all, activist Democrats are angry. As one who lived through an August like this, 16 years ago - replete with rumors that were lies, which the Bush campaign claimed they had nothing to do with and later admitted they had planted - I'm angry, too. I've been to this movie. Lies move numbers.

Remember the one about Dukakis suffering from depression after he lost the governorship? We lost six points over that lie, planted by George W.'s close friend and colleague in the 1988 campaign, Lee Atwater. Or how about the one about Kitty Dukakis burning a flag at an anti-war demonstration, another out-and-out lie, which the Bush campaign denied having anything to do with, except that it turned out to have come from a United States senator via the Republican National Committee? Atwater later apologized to me for that, too, on his deathbed. Did I mention that Lee's wife is connected to the woman running the Swift Boat campaign?

What do you do, Democrats keep asking each other.

The answer is not pretty, but everyone knows what it is.

The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough. Too much is at stake to play by Dukakis' rules and lose again. That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.

Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up?

After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment.

What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?

Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard.

Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.

Or could it be George Bush's Former Female Friends for Truth. A forthcoming book by Kitty Kelley raises questions about whether the president has practiced what he preaches on abortion. As Larry Flynt discovered, a million dollars loosens lips. Are there others to be loosened?

Are you shocked? Remember Dukakis? Now he teaches at Northeastern University. John Kerry has been very fair in dealing with the Swift Boat charges. That's why so many of my Democrat friends have decided to stop talking to the campaign, and start putting money together independently.

The arrogant little Republican boys who strutted around New York this week, claiming that they have this one won, would do well to take a step back. It could be a long and ugly road to November.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Estrich, former campaign manager for Dukakis for President in 1988, at 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

[WI_DEM]

9. Well it appears that Kerry was just as frustrated as many DUers

But he has begun to turn it around and that is the main thing. If he continues as he did in his Springfield rally he will be fine.

[jean]

11. yesterday someone here said when some attacks Kerry to your face don't

defend him - rather turn it around and attack bush. An easy one (from Al Franken) - anyone dissing Kerry's military service - wait a few seconds and say, well at least he WENT!

This does seem to be a common repub tactic - attack us. We spend a ton of time and money reiterating our stance but make very few blows against bush.

[Dr Fate]

20. Say: "Bush is lying about Kerry to cover his own Sorry-ASS record"

It defends Kerry while tutning the tables...

[TexasSissy]

12. I'm not seeing any counterattacks here in Texas. Neither are my

relatives in Louisiana. He must be doing it locally, in swing states maybe.

I rarely hear or see Kerry on TV. I ONLY hear or see snippets of speeches by him, and I MAINLY hear about his views through pundits and Repubs. That may be why Kerry's numbers aren't better (although they're pretty good for right after a Repub convention).

[Doosh]

13. a counteroffensive is not as effective

when the opponent knows it's coming, Rove caught us by surprise in August, and now he's ready for us in September. The element of surprise and innovation is completely lost on Mary Beth.

[MrBenchley]

17. "says one senior aide."

Didn't mention which side that aide was on, did it?

Anybody who's pretending the Kerry campaign is a "near death experience" is either a Republican or Zell Miller.

[blondeatlast]

19. I always enjoy your posts, Mr. B.

This thread has added enormously to my enjoyment of the DU features, too!