Kerry: I'm incredibly energized and optimistic

[ProSense]

Kerry says he's eager to begin 2008 Senate re-election bid

By ANDREW MIGA, The Associated Press
Jan 25, 2007 11:12 AM (29 mins ago)

WASHINGTON - With his 2008 presidential ambitions ended, Sen. John Kerry said Thursday he's eager to plunge into his Senate re-election bid and his push to end the war in Iraq.

"I'm incredibly energized and optimistic," Kerry said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. "This is not a sayonara. This is a new chapter, a new moment."

The senator said his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, fully supports his decision to focus on his Senate career and ending the war in Iraq.

"She wanted me to do what I wanted to do," he said. Kerry and his wife have co-authored a book about the environment called "This Moment on Earth" coming out in about six weeks.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, also said he met in recent days with his top fundraisers and the overwhelming majority of them were urging him to run.

"I'd say nine-tenths of them said, 'Run,'" Kerry said. "I felt it was just the wrong time."

more...

[TayTay]

1. Nice article.

This is about the 5th article today that I've read that lists the Senator's age as 64. He just turned 63. Why are they aging him a year. (Okay, it's a little nit, but it's annoying.)

[karynnj]

2. Must all be based on one wrong article

He also didn't look 63 in the SOTU picture. He sounds good here. But in advance, we know next Decemeber that we will still need him when he's 64.

It's actually a toss up of who looks younger for their age - between the Kerrys

[MH1]

5. The disadvantage of being born late in the year.

2007 - 1943 = 64.

That's about as much math as our news media can handle.

Similar in depth to their typical "fact-checking" efforts.

:banghead:

[Blaukraut]

3. Thanks, ProSense

It's nice to see positive articles that aren't filled with gloating and piling on. But I'm with Tay. The guy just turned 63, not 64. Sheesh!

[ProSense]

4. How hard is it

to look up someone's birth date? Geez!

[MarjorieG]

6. Today is about perspective.

Almost as much about wanting a Kerry presidency for decades, I wanted the campaign to right the wrongs, bring his message, and confirm the view of him we see. With the Democrats as bare-knuckle, and the press as unwilling to think beyond their other story-lines, none of them would have been fair, illuminating, and for a better view. Think an amplified McAuliffe.

I think Kerry's improving sense of political deftness is a newly acquired neccessity, not the wirings of the man. He doesn't live there. Free of those campaign shackles and mincing words might be just the freedom he and America neeed. The Kerry uncorked, I call him.

Unlike the ultimate politico, Bill Clinton, who can't let go, enough to try for a third and meddle the last time. When we'd rather have saved lives and ended a war.

Kerry's overwhelming need to serve during this world-wide crisis, an out of control Mideast, and to change all things neo-con, brings this sincere decision and turnaround, I believe. So many years in a political realm, he will live more productively, without his every word in a political context of a horse race. A campaign now is not what the country, or the Senator needs to do.

I predict this next campaign to have more mud flung than last, especially with Hillary's team (of lackluster support last time), out in force, rewriting everything.

I do not rule out a visibly successful, more listened to without negative filter, Kerry, better able to correct impressions as well as plant new ones, for a later run or maybe something else.

Time is a healer, and sometime later, evidence of the 2004 politics, successes and vote anomalies, will become clearer, and in less hurtful memory. He may run again, or find he'd rather be free of that long sought dream and those campaign compromises.

[ginnyinWI]

8. Yup

Just look at Gore, going out and giving those barn-burner speeches in 2004 as an example of a politician uncensored--and how the Left has come to love him for it. We don't expect Kerry to be exactly the same, but he'll find his way into their hearts by speaking truth to power. I think he's further to the left than Gore is.

He may look back at 2004 and decide he's been there, done that. On the other hand, I know he'd still love to be president. I wonder if anybody would choose him as a running mate, not this time but maybe in a future run?

[mloutre]

7. Finally time to let Kerry be Kerry.

He's not hamstrung by all the other crap now. He can really go kick ass in the Senate now instead.

And Goddess knows that we surely do need people who can kick ass in the Senate right now.

So go out there and give 'em hell, Johnny. We'll leave the light in the old North Church steeple on for ya.

[TayTay]

9. Roll Call Rankings or why not to worry in Mass in 08

From Roll Call newspaper. This lists which states now have the most clout in a Dem Congress.

6. Massachusetts

523 points

Previous rank: 10 (tie)

Population rank: 13

Residents of this blue state should be seeing more green in the 110th Congress, as the Democratic victories pushed the state up four slots in the clout rankings.

Leading the way are Sen. Edward Kennedy (D), who now chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and wields plenty of seniority, and Sen. John Kerry (D), who helms the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee and holds a seat on the Finance Committee.

On the House side, the Bay State's all-Democratic group includes Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D) and Rep. John Olver (D), an Appropriations cardinal.