In Defense of John Kerry - Democratic Underground

liberalpragmatist

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Oct-22-08 06:45 PM
Original message

In Defense of John Kerry

I've always thought that John Kerry gets a bum rap from the media, from Republicans and from fellow Democrats.

Since '04, I've long felt that Kerry ran a much better race than people give him credit for. No, it wasn't a great campaign and it made several mistakes (public financing, not taking on the swift boat vets, not admitting his IWR vote was a mistake). But overall, they did a good job driving the media cycle, did a very good job unifying the Democratic Party and made a very plausible (and very accurate) critique of the Bush Administration. Not only did he crush Bush in all three debates, he came within 2.5 points (and one state) from defeating an incumbent wartime president with approval ratings around 50%.

For over 20 years, he's been on the right side of the issues. His foreign policy views are firmly in the mainstream -- progressive, internationalist, but realist. And they're largely the center-left consensus these days, including the Obama campaign. His view of terrorism as a mainly law-enforcement was heavily criticized in '04, even from some credible quarters (i.e. Greg Djerejian of the blog Belgravia Dispatch), yet is now the consensus and has proven accurate.

In the Senate, he has passed major legislation on environmental issues, health care and gay rights (sponsoring the lifting of the HIV travel ban this year). He has been a major proponent of full public financing (google "Kerry-Wellstone"). He voted against DOMA, denouncing it as "gay bashing in an election year." He lead major committees on the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua, BCCI and POW/MIA in Vietnam.

FINALLY -- if nothing else, give John Kerry credit for one thing: without him, we probably would not be on track to elect Barack Obama this year.

It was Kerry who, impressed by the young Senate candidate he appeared with in the spring of '04, specifically requested his staff to add Obama to the list of potential keynoters. When an aide predicted Obama would be "a future star," Kerry countered: "I want him to be a player right now." He promoted the idea of Obama as keynoter, and although accounts differ as to whether it was Kerry or Mary Beth Cahill who made the final call, without his intervention, Obama would probably not have given the '04 convention speech. Without that keynote, it's very hard to imagine Obama even running for president this year. Instead, he'd have been seen as a "rising star" and a decent surrogate who would have primarily been known as giving a spellbinder of a keynote speech this year to nominate Hillary Clinton.

And Kerry has been a FANTASTIC surrogate for Obama . Examples:

"There's a wholeheartedness to and a total lack of hesitancy and calculation that he always seems to have when he's speaking about himself," says one Democratic consultant. "A year ago, if you had asked David Axelrod and David Plouffe if they thought Kerry would be an important surrogate, they'd have laughed. But he's been fucking good." Kerry is even winning compliments from across the aisle. "If Kerry had conducted himself like this four years ago," says Republican strategist John Weaver, "he might have been elected president."

He endorsed Barack early on, at a difficult time for the campaign. Since then he's been one of Obama's closest confidantes, lobbied personally for Biden to be on the ticket, and gave one of the best speeches of the convention.

So how about a couple cheers for JK!