Kerry's Painful 2004 Leason: Ignore the Pundits - Huffington Post

[Mass]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/kerrys-painful-2004-leas_b_18891.html

Kerry's Painful 2004 Leason: Ignore the Pundits (5 comments )
READ MORE: Tom DeLay, CBS, Tim Russert, NBC

It's interesting that when pressed over the weekend by NBC's Tim Russert to note the key misstep from his 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry singled out his decision to accept federal campaign funds, in part because the funds came with some stringent strings attached. Kerry now says those strings hindered his ability to battle the Republican attack machine.
Specifically, Kerry noted that by having their convention so much earlier than Republicans, Democrats were forced to wage a longer campaign with fewer dollars. Back in 2004 the Kerry camp floated an unorthodox option to get around that problem but when the Beltway punditocracy got wind of the plan it went bat shit, ridiculing the Democrat relentlessly. Within days, Kerry, no doubt responding to the wildly hostile MSM reaction, quietly shelved the idea. It now sounds like he wished he had not.

You might recall that in May 2004, the Kerry camp suggested delaying, by a few weeks, officially accepting the Democratic nomination until after the party's July convention because once that nomination was received, federal law limited how much money Kerry could spend between the time of the nomination and the time of the general election. ($75 million.) The hitch was that the GOP, likely trying to play up the Sept. 11 themes of terrorism, had scheduled its New York City convention later than ever--into the first week of September--which meant that in terms of dollars and cents, the Democrats had to make their $75 million last 13 weeks while the Republicans had to stretch their $75 million over just 8 weeks; advantage Republicans.

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[Mass]

1. It seems the wolves are out today.

My thread on GD is full of them.

[TayTay]

2. Yeah, but there were a lot of defenders.

It wasn't all bad. And there was another thread that was sarcastic and very negative in tone and people (not even from this group) responded and called bullshit on the OP.

There is a lot of reason to hope. I mean even The Nation said something sort of nice about JK. WOW!

[paulk]

3. what's really interesting is that the MSM chose the one area

of Kerry's interview that he could be attacked on, or at least criticized, and here's Arriana following suite.

There was so much more in that interview that should be talked about than this.

[Mass]

4. I dont see this as a critcism of Kerry, on the contrary.

Kerry said as much during MTP and he was right. They got stuck in their defense of the SVBT because the Convention was so early on.

It was the one time they tried something unconventionnal during the campaign and the pundits and the Democratic bigwigs went crazy and they had to back off.

It is good to see that Kerry is aware of that, and that, if he runs again, he will not make twice the same type of error and will lead his own campaign. This is good news.

[karynnj]

8. I agree - it actually strongly backs Kerry

His analysis of the situation and his solution of not accepting the nomination was both 100% correct and creative. The only obvious solution would have been to reject federal funds. This was dangerous for two reasons. For Kerry as one of the sponsors of Kerry/Wellstone to reject the funding first would open a REAL flip flop question - as opposed to the false one needed no backup.

It would have required Kerry to explain that the need to offically accept later was because of an unintended consequense of the campaign finance law. I wonder if part of the problem was that the convention was in Boston. For Kerry, coming to Boston to accept his party's nomination must have been an incredible dream come true. To have to add some artificial question (when their was NO doubt) of accepting would have been tough - especially as it was in his town.

The article by printing the snarky, nasty comments of all of these pundits - none of whom were on Kerry's side anyway also emphasizes that he was dealing with a vicious press - this idea did not deserve that level of ridicule. I also read nothing that suggested that this provision which will always hurt the party out of power be changed. (Even in 2008, the natural momentum coming out of the convention will hit a brick wall when the Republicans start their convention days later.) A change to something like only general election funds can be used after Labor Day would be much better and fairer.

[paulk]

9. maybe not an attack per se

but with so much in Kerry's interview worth focusing on - why did the MSM choose this? Watching the interview, this, at the time, seemed the most inconsequential part - especially when everything else Kerry talked about had to do with current situations. And so much of it was so very critical of Bush. Why did the MSM choose to talk about the 2004 election? Yesteday's news?

I do think that the Kerry campaign should have ignored the pundits - but, that's not what I'm getting at here. What I'm talking about is how the media obfuscates and otherwise obscures important statements from our political leaders. They chose to highlight the one part of Kerry's interview that really had no effect on current events. It's a distraction - and it's a perfect example of how the media works for the Republicans.

And Arraina, who I have zero respect for, follows the script.

[TayTay]

12. The press always goes for the 'horse race' aspect

This is what they pay their stable of writers to write about. It's cheap and it lends itself to endless speculation and no one actually has to be right about it. (Have you ever heard of a pundit being fired because their mindless speculation was wrong? Did any of the punditry lose their jobs when they all predicted a Dean win in late '03 and Kerry actually won the nomination in early '04? No? Didn't think so.)

[karynnj]

15. I'd rather this than the IWR vote

and it also is forward looking as it addresses the question of Kerry 08. I think a more valid critisism of Ariana here is that the game of politics interests her far more than froeign policy fine points.

Also, in a way, this article does show the media problem. The framers of the campaign law created a very bad unitentional consequense of having the first convention. This will always hurt the out of power party, which has the choice of having a 2004 like situation of more weeks to ration ge funds over or to pick such a late date that there will be little time between the conventions which will hurt momentum - while when the second party ends they continue onto the road. Rather than dicuss this new problem and its inherent unfairness, every pundit there including some that (non- LW) people thought were neutral (Broder and Scheifer) ridiculed Kerry for trying to find a viable solution.

[paulk]

19. I guess it's just me, but I see the media looking forward to 2008

as a distraction. It bugs me when Kerry gets asked that. Or when Hilary gets asked that. There are so many more important questions that should be asked.

And what really bugged me is that the first AP headline that came across my earthlink news ticker relating to Kerry's MTP appearance was this story. Nothing about his Iraq plan. Nothing about his criticism's of Bush.

[karynnj]

27. I agree with you

I hadn't realized that - and obviously Senator Kerry was there to get the Iraq war stuff in public.

[wisteria]

5. Bringing up 2004 scratches open old wounds. Mentioning

the failings causes angry. This is why they do this. I can only hope that the angry will get less and less with time. Personally, I think it is.

[Mass]

6. I dont know - I dont see this article as hostile.

If anything, I agree with the idea that the campaign was too conventionnal.

Each time I was beginning to be really excited by the campaign because it was showing who Kerry was really, it seemed as if somebody decided to go back to the 1992 campaign. That really drove me crazy .

[fedupinBushcountry]

10. What is that saying

To many hands in the pot spoil the broth. There were a lot of times when we over at the Kerry blog would say, yes he should do that and it should be blogged. But then someone would comeback from inside the campaign and say no, and it wasn't JK. In fact Dick Bell ran a terrifrc blog and when the campaign grew, even he was not in control anymore, that to me was a mistake.

One example,on Teresa's birthday in '04, we wanted to celebrate with a blog piece on it, you know the campaign came back and said no, seemed harmless to us, I still don't get why they wouldn't let us do that.

[TayTay]

14. Interesting comments. That's what has to change.

Remember, in '04 the internet was for fundraising. Period. End of sentence.

There are people trying to change that. Trying very, very hard.

[fedupinBushcountry]

25. Yes that's true

but the blog, was also for getting the truth out about Kerry. I myself happened upon the blog, not even knowing what a blog was, and I lurked for a good month before I ever posted. The average number of posts for a thread at that time was about 30-50, and other was only a couple of threads put up a day. Of those posts we were being hit left and right by trolls. We kept on hammering back the facts and truth, and they would come in small groups, sound familiar, both from the right and the left.

As the campaign grew so did the posters, and we got them coming at every level as the other candidates dropped out. The tone of each of those supporters of other candidates were different. Just by the tone you could tell which poster jumped on another candidate's bandwagon. Talk about to many hands in the pot, one group and not all of them came on and started telling us how to run the blog and we should have this and that and how it wasn't as good as their candidate's blog,at that time they had no other choice but to get on the Kerry bandwagon, but they wanted to take control, right then. The little squabbling took over, when we wanted to do one thing talk about Kerry and get as much info as possible out.

I had never worked for a campaign before in my life, so it was all new to me, just a mom wanting the best for my kid's future and to me that was John Kerry. I lived on that blog for 14 months, I learned so much about the blogosphere and the people on it, and a lot of those people are :crazy: . I would do it all over in a heartbeat, because it did make a difference and to have a voice which I thought most Americans had lost because of Bush telling us to shut up, felt so good.

By the end of that 14 months we were getting thousands of post a day. You are right it will be much bigger in the next election.

[Mass]

16. Great comments.

[karynnj]

28. That would have been so cool and sweet

I do remember that there was a post that Kerry had a surprise party or something for her.

[wisteria]

11. It doesn't have to be hostile to do what it is intended to do.

It may be constructive criticism, but what is the point of ignoring all the other more important things he has been out front on recently and focusing on only this?

[ProSense]

26. Exactly!

How many articles have these pundits written about the things Kerry did right and continues to do right? They ignore the facts, including that this election happened in an atmosphere of complete media bias, Republican corruption, lies and fraud. Given all the indictments and recent news about elections in 2002 and 2004, why is there no analysis focusing on the impact of these events? Where are the investigative journalists? They report and that's it. I guess the articles about people like DeLay and Abramoff being indicted or convicted are to be taken as the media doing its job.

[sandnsea]

21. I agree with that

I didn't think he should delay accepting the nomination at the time, I figured the Olympics would take the air out of anything in August anyway. Nobody could have predicted the pundits would run with the swift boaters, maybe that's what they knew they were going to do early on, who knows. If they hadn't done that, there wouldn't have been any swift boating need for that money.

But I do agree that whoever kept dragging us back to 1992 was dreadful. We all knew we supported him because we knew terrorism was going to be key in 2004. Somebody seemed to keep wanting to run "the economy stupid". They also didn't seem to understand the image aspect of running for President and that going duck hunting just doesn't get it. Or the necessity of attempting to heal Vietnam in order for him to be able to talk about the lessons as a benefit to dealing with Iraq, without opening a can of worms, etc. So yeah, I agree with some of your points on the campaign, but they aren't the ones people usually make when pointing to the mistakes.

[TayTay]

7. Better that all gets aired now

than in 2007 or 2008. Reset the bones properly and then let them heal properly and fully.

[wisteria]

13. Agree. n/t

[karynnj]

17. I see what you mean - but this actually

shows what Kerry was up against between the campaign finance rule inequity and the press. Kerry can be seen as creative in coming up with a solution. The negative is the implication that he moved away from the idea because he listened to the pundits.

The nastiness of the pundits when it was suggested show the price he would have paid if he did it. So, the idea that he shouldn't have listened to them is questionable - as these comments would have been the tip of the iceberg if he did it. The comments on "fraud", "cheating", "illegal" and the fact that they would argue he didn't believe in campaign financing were likely worse than gambling on spending little in August.

[TayTay]

18. Hmm, Boston Globe Editorial 5/25/04

TOO UNCONVENTIONAL
Boston Globe, THIRD, Sec. Editorial, p A14 05-25-2004

WE'RE HAPPY to see that John Kerry is playing to win. But his latest proposed gambit - postponing official acceptance of his party's nomination in order to maximize access to campaign cash - smacks too much of gamesmanship to be worth the strategic gain. Kerry ought to stick to the script and accept his party's nomination at the Democratic National Convention in late July.

Kerry is considering a deferred acceptance to avoid a Federal Election Commission rule that would force him to switch from primary campaign fund-raising to the more restrictive general election fund-raising once he is the official nominee. Republicans, who will not nominate President Bush for reelection until early September, can continue raising and spending money for five extra weeks without having to tap the $75 million in federal matching funds provided to each campaign.

The Federal Election Commission needs to change the regulation and give each party access to the federal funds on the same day, and it should move fast enough to affect this campaign cycle. The rule gives unfair edge to the incumbent party, Democrat or Republican, which by tradition holds its convention later.

Still, the Democrats knew the field wouldn't be level when they chose their convention date. They had already received one break from the FEC when it decided not to challenge the so-called 527 committees that have rushed to fill the vacuum created by the McCain-Feingold soft money ban, raising cash that is now off-limits to the political parties. So far, the 527 groups have tended to favor Democrats.

Also, even though everyone knows that conventions have become staged events with little real drama, the nominee usually gets a lift in standing from a week of being bathed in favorable publicity. That may be worth more to Kerry than gold, and he could forfeit it if the convention is seen as an empty gesture.

Boston has a special interest in whether Kerry's nomination party is fair or faux. The migraine of inconvenience residents will endure deserves some payoff. A convention about nothing is a Seinfeld episode, not the launch of a winning presidential campaign.

[TayTay]

20. And then it got nasty. And from the most Democratic state in the union

Theater of the absurd
Providence Journal Bulletin (RI), p B.05 06-02-2004
By Philip Terzian

WASHINGTON - EVERYONE'S NERVES were properly shattered by John Kerry's suggestion that he might not accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Boston. He would accept the nomination, to be sure, just not at the Democratic National Convention. Instead, he would deliver a "culmination" address at the Fleet Center, followed by a month of nationwide moneygrubbing before officially "accepting" the nomination -- and federal campaign matching funds, limiting fundraising from individuals.

To listen to the various reactions in the press, you would have thought Kerry had insulted the Founding Fathers. The idea of holding a convention and withholding an acceptance speech was so outrageous, such a startling departure from tradition and protocol, that one TV network threatened to withhold coverage, as well. That was something Kerry and his staff had not anticipated, and so the senator, characteristically, changed his mind.

To my regret, I should add. I had welcomed Kerry's idea because, in the age of caucuses and primaries, national conventions have long ceased to be significant. They are now largely meetings of journalists, not politicians. The last time there was any semblance of drama or uncertainty was in 1976, when Ronald Reagan tried to spoil Gerald Ford's coronation. Vice-presidential candidates are often announced weeks, if not months, in advance, and the conventions are carefully choreographed infomercials. The networks have been steadily scaling back coverage for decades.

Nor, for that matter, is tradition so venerable. Until 1932, presidential nominees traditionally stayed away from the conventions, and were apprised of their selection, sometimes weeks later, by a "notification committee" descending on their residence. This charming relic of the pre-telegraph era was exploded by Franklin Roosevelt, who flew to the Democratic Convention in Chicago (another shocking innovation) and grasped the prize in person.

"I have started out on the tasks that lie ahead," he told the delegates, "by breaking the absurd tradition that the candidate should remain in professed ignorance of what has happened for weeks until he is formally notified of that event many weeks later. . . . You have nominated me, and I know it, and I am here to thank you for the honor!"

But the real story here is not John Kerry's lost "culmination" speech, or the wisdom and caprice of political traditions. The real story is campaign-finance "reform."

The Democrats had deliberately chosen to hold their convention in July so their nominee could accept federal matching funds a full month before President Bush, whose convention takes place around Labor Day. The thinking was that the primary battles would exhaust Democratic resources, and federal funds would arrive in the nick of time. But Kerry has raised more money from individuals than expected, and by putting off accepting the nod at the convention, had sought an extra month to fatten the coffers.

This is precisely the sort of cynical maneuvering that campaign- finance reform was intended to abolish, and the style of hypocrisy its proponents routinely practice. As The Wall Street Journal points out, "Mr. Kerry embraced the rules when they helped him but now wants to ignore them when they don't."

Is anyone surprised? Legislative supporters of the McCain- Feingold Act were singularly adept at deploring the corrupting influence of money in politics -- almost as adept, it would seem, as exploiting the inevitable loopholes in McCain-Feingold. The same Democrats who were shocked by Republican success at grass-roots fundraising now welcome the existence of "527s" -- such as MoveOn.org, etc. -- which are exclusively aimed at defeating George W. Bush, and subsidized by right-thinking billionaires like George Soros.

Instead of complaining about the 527s, of course, Republicans ought to be founding their own. For the truth is that, in a free society, money and politics are indivisible, and to pretend otherwise is irrational. In the marketplace of ideas, it requires cash to transmit a message, or counteract the influence of other peoples' messages. There is nothing inherently wrong with this: A democracy where the government regulates discourse, or the media is the arbiter of political ideas, is no democracy in practice.

Citizens have a right to say what they think, to support or oppose particular candidates and parties, and efforts to limit these rights historically fail. McCain-Feingold "solved" the problems of the post-Watergate reforms, and some future legislation will "solve" the problems of McCain-Feingold. By which time, perhaps, Americans may be free to spend their money as they please. And presidential candidates may accept their nominations any way, anywhere and anytime they choose.

Philip Terzian, The Journal's associate editor, writes a column from Washington.

Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin Jun 2, 2004

[wisteria]

22. Well, it appears he was between,excuse the pun, a rock and a hard

place. Personally, I could not fault him for making the decision the way he did.

[wisteria]

23. I understand your POV.

I just see no major benefit or reason for the media to continue going over the 2004 campaign. By the time we elect a new President (hopefully it's Kerry) the 2004 campaign will have been analyzed and dissected more that any campaign in the last fifty years.
I suppose I also question The origin of the post. They (she) is consistently negative when it concerns Senator Kerry.

[ProSense]

24. Agree.

It is also a positive turn as others have stated. Get it all out in the open now.

First the pundits pretend they had no clue about this when it mentioned often during the campaign. And as that article TayTay posted there was a lot of strategic thinking going on to try to get around this. You bet if Kerry had gone the route of accepting the nomination later to try to raise more money and we ended up in the same place, the cries would be that he shouldn't have been greedy.

Here is the explanation of the funding aspect:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/07/29/politics1444EDT0625.DTL


Second, this is not the first time Kerry is saying this about the funding window. This is the only thing they can pick up on in this recent interview. So be it. That is how these things come to the forefront of the discussion.

[karynnj]

29. They FINALLY posted my 2 responses to other posters

Only hours later - they're on the second page - while as Ron said there are tons of nasty ones that get in first.