I drafted a long post and then thought better of it. Why kick a man when he’s down? Plenty of time during the next election cycle to analyze Kerry’s shortcomings as a candidate and to try to do better.
He ran fine. America doesn’t care. They had their choice, and they made it. In greater numbers than last time, with all the hindsight four years has given us.
The democrats are fine. America doesn’t want them. They lost the race for the presidency, they lost more of the senate and more of the house… and those last two aren’t Kerry’s fault.
Honestly guys, the Kerry campaign might have done some stuff differently, but Republicans won.
We can’t take an America that doesn’t want to be like us. We just can’t.
I share the same admiration for his atitude… and he certainly is all you said of him… but did he have to vote against the first Gulf War ? :smack: In the end I think he got the right tone… but it was alas too late to be effective.
Democrats lost in the South because the South went Republican during the period that most of the sitting Senators there were in office, and it’s harder to oust an incumbent than one might think, even with prevailing partisan winds at your back. That’s Lyndon Johnson’s fault, and has nothing really to do with the recent campaign.
The House Seats were lost solely because of Republican cheating in Texas, where they redrew the lines mid-decade. This is under judicial review as it was possibly illegal.
If Kerry had gone out and captured Osama bin Laden, it might have made a difference. Otherwise, I’m with** erislover**, Kerry was dead in the water simply because more people are happy with Bush.
To my probably everlasting amazement.
I can tell you exactly what went wrong with Kerry - Howard Dean.
A year ago, I was saying that Kerry looked to me like the best candidate the Democrats could field, and I felt that way because Kerry’s position was the most hawkish on the war. He was calling for Saddam’s ouster in 1998. He started the Democratic primary season as a war hawk, as did John Edwards. I remember both of them sitting with Chris Matthews on his college tour and adamantly refusing to criticise the war in Iraq. They both voted for it, and they both stuck to their guns.
Those two guys would have been formidable foes for Bush. But what happened next is that Howard Dean came out of the woodwork as an anti-war candidate, and he mobilized the Democratic base. He started getting all the money, and shot up in the polls. Suddenly Kerry was doing flips and twists to erase his previous positions. By the time the Democratic primary was over, he was seriously damaged goods. Then he had to try to scramble back to the center, and that got him the ‘flip-flopper’ label.
But it’s hard to blame Kerry in one sense - he couldn’t foresee that Dean would meltdown, so from his persepective, he had two options - damage himself in the primaries but win, or maintain his positions and lose.
So who’s fault was it really? The Democratic base. MoveOn.org. Michael Moore. George Soros. The Hollywood moonbats. The Democrats have a serious structural problem: The only Democrats that can win the primaries are not very palatable to mainstream America. Bill Clinton managed it, but he’s a brilliant politician - one of the best of our lifetimes. John Kerry is no Bill Clinton. Bill could shift right and left and make you believe he was sincere the whole time. Kerry couldn’t do it. In the end, no one believed much of what he had to say.
The Democrats need a wakeup call. If they can go back to being the party of Scoop Jackson, Patrick Moynihan, and John Kennedy, they can recover. If they keep this headlong rush to the left, linking up with the likes of MoveOn and Michael Moore, they’ll stay out of power for a generation.
Which way they’ll go will be evident soon - they’ve got to pick a minority leader. If they pick someone like Nancy Pelosi, it’ll be a sign that they haven’t learned a damned thing.
As a socially liberal hawk in the war against Islamofascist terror, I could not bring myself to vote for either. If I could have found reason to believe that Kerry was prepared to wage that war (and conduct our foreign policy elsewhere) effectively, I would have voted for him. Here’s three key beefs I had with the Dem ticket, all related to his foreign policy, and I apologize in advance for the length of my response:
- Kerry’s criticisms of Bush’s waging the war on terror, though largely valid, are also indicative of an almost pre-9-11 mindset. Kerry’s most pointed critiques were that Bush’s approach to terror was compromised from the start by his close and overly trusting relationship with the Saudi royals and Pakistan strongman Gen. Musharraf; that our war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan was waged with insufficient forces, resulting in Bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora; and that our war to take down Saddam Hussein and impose democracy on Iraq has turned world opinion against us, caused undue suffering and destruction in Iraq and turned it into a terrorist magnet, inflamed terrorist groups’ appeals throughout the Islamic world, and detracted from our efforts at nation-building and rooting out revenant Taliban, warlord, and terror elements in Afghanistan.
I concede some validity to all of those charges. I personally have no love or respect for the Saudis or Musharraf. [Pakistan’s nuclear program is particularly alarming: along with India in the late '90’s, they were punished with U.N.-imposed sanctions for their nuclear weapons tests. In 2003, Musharraf granted a pardon to a rogue nuclear scientist who had been exposed as a nuclear proliferator.] However, the policy to engage the Saudis and Pakistanis in our war on terror has been yielding some positive results recently, albeit in the wake of Al Qaeda’s attacks on Saudi soil and in other Islamic countries. More to the point, what immediate choices did we have? Even waging war against the Taliban in Afghanistan would’ve been impossible without at least a modicum of cooperation (and overflight rights) with at least one of its neighbors.
I read a while back that the Saudis claim to have re-educated, post-9-11, thousands of their clerics and teachers, and imposed new, less hateful pedagogical guidelines for Islamic studies both at home and in the madrassas they support abroad. Those reforms may well be only be partially fulfilled so far, or insincerely enforced, but it might also represent the best outcome we could have realistically hoped for, to date. (OTOH, the Saudi royals declared on October 11 that women would not be permitted to participate, either as candidates or as voters, in the upcoming local elections, and I don’t recall the Bush administration denouncing that decree…)
The Bush strategy of (imperfectly) converting S.A. and Pakistan into allies in our war against terrorism doesn’t preclude the possibility of our revoking the “trusted ally” status in the future, should conditions warrant it. And the neocons’ decision for regime change in Iraq had, I believe, the long-term strategic (if politically unacknowlegable) objective of restoring Iraq as a substantial and hopefully non-OPEC source of oil – and an absolutely crucial one should we ever decide that an embargo, cold war, or outright war against S.A. becomes necessary. (This long-term imperative also helps to explain why the Bush admin is as friendly as it is towards Russia’s President Putin and the miserable ring of ex-U.S.S.R. Muslim states ruled by atavistic strongmen; western oil companies are helping build pipelines to their oil.)
I would have more faith that a longterm goal of the administration is to render S.A. less relevant as a source of oil, had Bush taken measures to encourage Americans to conserve energy and fossil fuels. Kerry’s criticisms of Bush’s tax breaks (including presumably the SUV tax break) and Kerry’s call for energy conservation and development green technology was definitely the right idea. The will to wage a necessary war is ultimately predicated upon our fiscal ability to afford it. What neither candidate would acknowlege is the efficacy (and, post-9-11, the arguable desirability) of doing what the Europeans have been doing for years: imposing punishingly high gasoline taxes to raise revenue and encourage efficiency.
Kerry’s rhetoric, though, suggests a tunnel vision directed too narrowly on Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and Afghanistan, even though those actors are primarily significant now for their roles as figureheads and early instigators of Wahabbist terror, and are not now necessarily even the preeminent functioning organizations of that ideology today. More generally, Kerry’s approach (while superior in his emphasis on tightening air cargo and port security, both vital security concerns inexcusably neglected by Bush) is more narrowly concentrated on domestic policing and conducting police actions abroad (with U.N. approval), as if terrorism could be effectively dealt with as a criminal affair, and minimizable to “nuisance”-like levels.
Whereas Bush embarrasses the left and our European allies with his Old Testament rhetoric, in which the war on terrorism is a quintessentially Manicchean dichotomy for our times: of good vs. evil, of democracy and freedom vs. despotism, and of modernity vs. atavism. For Bush and his neocon advisors (although perhaps I should have reversed those terms), the war on terror is a broader, amorphous, and potentially decades-long war against Islamofascist ideology and the regimes that inculcate and sponsor terror, as well as the individual terrorists themselves.
It was a trope of leftist (and anti-American, as well) criticism of the U.S. in the wake of 9-11 that the terror, though inexcusable, was partly in response to the U.S.'s policies and presence in the Middle East, to our support of Israel and to our friendly, exculpatory relations with various despotic regimes there and elsewhere, in addition to being also an expression of rage and frustration at everything from the declension of the Islamic world and the rise of Western cultural influences, to the lack of democracy, basic freedoms, and economic hardships in those countries. The Bush administration’s hope for a democratic domino effect rippling through the Middle East and beyond is probably just wishful thinking, at least in the short run, but there’s no disputing that many of the “structural causes” for terrorism would be ameliorated in the long run by regime change, democratization, and liberalization.
2) Kerry’s hedging his assertion that his vote to go to war against Iraq was justifiable given the administration’s claims of the WMD threat (this part I have no problem with) with his criticism of Bush’s rushing to war w/o “waiting for” a U.N. mandate (albeit with a substantial coalition, nonetheless). Wait for a U.N. mandate for regime change in Iraq? You’d might as well wait for hell to freeze over. If you really believe (even if mistakenly) in a WMD threat that is best countered with a full-on war, then baby, you’d better not let yourself be swayed from that decision by a bunch of financially self-interested, morally corrupted, and increasingly anti-American erstwhile friends and allies – in this case France, Germany, and Russia – all key players in the corruption of the U.N.-administered Iraq oil-for-food program.
[That’s not to say that the inducements of the trade profits (both legit and under-the-table) involved definitely sealed the deal for their adamant refusal of U.N. approval for Gulf War II, but it certainly raises suspicions of “peace for graft/profits” – just as the exposure of personal connections and financial interests (Halliburton, Cheney, etc.) in the Bush administration raised similar suspicions by critics of the “rush” to go to war as “war for oil,” (or “war for defense contracts”).]
Kerry should have couched his idealistic defense of the U.S. conditioning its decisions to go to war pending U.N. approval with a Realpolitik’s understanding that in order for that to be politically feasible to the U.S., the U.N. itself would first have to change. Kerry should have distinguished himself as the U.S.'s most vocal advocate of reforming and restructuring***** the U.N., and beefing up its military power as a precondition to the U.S.'s preserving that body’s relevance and power in arbitrating international conflicts and waging justifiable police actions and wars. By cutting a neo-Wilsonian figure, Kerry could have politically defended his respect for U.N. primacy to domestic critics within the context of the U.N.'s meeting those preconditions, in order for it to function effectively as a primary tool against despotism, belligerency and terrorism worldwide.
Incidentally, Kerry also oversold his promise to internationalize the effort to rebuild Iraq, vis-a-vis bringing on board those Europeans who rebuffed us before (in spite of their protests that they would not send any troops to Iraq, regardless of who wins the election), and securing greater assistance from the U.N. Bush has had a real problem in securing the full measure of assistance promised by the community of nations, through the U.N. and otherwise, and coalition forces in Iraq failed to provide adequate security for aid organizations. The U.N. closed down all their relief efforts as soon as terrorists targeted their personnel and offices, and some other NGOs soon followed. When the Bush administration lobbied the Europeans for total or near-total relief for Iraq of Saddam Hussein-incurred debts, it was (initially, at least) largely rebuffed. (And Afganistan has still not received anywhere near the full measure of aid promised it by various nations after the fall of the Taliban.)
***** It’s high time we start discussions on redrawing the Security Council. Replacing France with, say, India or Brazil might not be possible, but expanding the council to perhaps seven or nine nations (while correspondingly increasing the necessary veto contingent to two or three votes) might be more feasible.
3) Kerry’s stated intent to reframe our approach to North Korea from the Bush-implemented multilateral approach (in which all negotiations are undertaken with China, South Korea, and Japan as partners and mutual guarantors) to the bilateral approach which Clinton had adopted and which ultimately failed. (Granted, we had largely reneged on our promised aid vis-a-vis providing a nuclear power plant, but the NKs violated terms in other respects, including misusing food donations and pursuing illegal arms dealings with at least one party in the Middle East.)
Unfortunately, there can be no assurance that the current approach will succeed either – it may be too little too late, as NK is believed to have assembled a number of nukes by now. But it’s my understanding that the multilateral approach has, in addition to the obvious potential military advantage in dealing with NK, one significant political advantage over its predecessor: at least it defuses regional resentments, suspicions, and anti-American sentiment amongst those allies, for the simple reason that it’s not all up to the Americans anymore. We are all in the same boat, agreeing on the details and sharing the responsibility for enforcing our agreements with Kim Jong-Il, and presenting a united front against his continuing belligerency.
I said in another thread that I thought we had enough people coming out to win Ohio. I was dead wrong. I hadn’t yet seen the numbers in Republican areas, which many people had assumed would do better but not THAT much better. In Ohio, we had historic highs in our key Democratic areas. But the Republicans brought out the vote like never before. I could complain about all the nastiness and screwed up things they did and will continue to do, but the fact is, this year they would have won even without it.
The Republicans have learned how to GOTV. 2002 was a warmup, and this was the big show. We never expected that they’d have this much room to grow, but they do. Their people less transitory, and they respond well to simple, punchy, stark messages like gays and abortion. Add that to them having weapons we don’t have (more cash for paid mail, the stomach to do incredibly nasty unsourced phone calls, which were very very big at the end in the key states) and probably won’t have, and they will be very hard to match from now on.
I don’t really think Kerry had much to do with it. The talking points crowd could have worked over the media no matter who we put up. At least now that Republicans can stop posturing about Kerry (oh, but we are REALLY outraged that he outed Mary! Oh, he voted for the war and then against it), I suspect we’ll get a more honest view of things from their side: Kerry was really not that bad of a candidate. He was a decent guy who got spun hard (their air war was just hands down better and more focused), and really pulled it out after several very down times.
The DNC, however, especially the state parties, dropped the ball big time: they were too timid with the new funding rules, badly organized on the national level, and and some of our state parties are just dead wood. And the RNC has demonstrated that it knows its base and can work them better than the Democrats. Those are the two really important realizations. Not the performance of the particular candidates.
Not surprisingly, I respectfully disagree with you, Sam. I think Kerry’s previous support for the Iraq war hurt him. Iraq was the one big issue that really could have brought Bush down, but Kerry had to temper his criticism in order to be consistent with the fact that he supported it. Had Kerry voted against invading Iraq, he could have really let Bush have it. But as it was, while his position was quite reasonable, I think a lot of people got lost in the relative subtlety of saying that he would have supported the war, but would have done things differently than Bush.
Kerry’s main fault is that he is too much a political animal. He’s been in the Senate for two decades, after all. Non-political animals don’t last that long there.
Take his all-too-soon concession. He still has two years to go in his current Senate term. He doesn’t want to face re-election with the stink of a petulant court battle on him. He’d rather the public remember him crying with gratitude.
The spin machine is trying to paint this election as some kind of conservative revolution. Bullshit. The Tories barely squeaked by.
Kerry just had the bad luck that the election was held this year and not next. By six months from today, Bush’s steadily plummeting approval rating would (and will) have caught up to him.
He fought the fight as best as his political instincts would allow him to, and he almost won. Kudos to him, I say.
That’s the problem…those plans should have been personally described by him verbally and on a frequent basis. Not every voter has internet access. I had pointed this out in our thread during the first or second debate. Constantly saying that “I have a plan for X”, just wears thin for most people, let alone those who can’t get it on the internet.
And besides, it’s one-sided. It allow for critical give-and-take as it would in a town hall type of setting, debate or press conference.
To me, it was just another way of his trying to avoid having to explain or account for his positions to any kind of substantive way. And why? Probably because he knew his real positions either wouldn’t fly with the public or withstand critical scrutiny.
As Rush once said (which I don’t really believe, but it does apply to Kerry): “To tell the truth is self-defeating…if you’re a liberal.”
:smack: …
I even previewed, too. Make that “It doesn’t allow…etc.”
So that explains Bush’s compulsive lying!
rjung, ol’ buddy…I’m beginning to suspect your good cheer of late has been chemically induced.
Are you saying Bush is a liberal? 
I think there is a lot of truth to this.
Kerry was pretty much a hawk, and Edwards in particular was running a very positive campaign in the primary, but Dean got all the attention with his extremely negative campaign.
I couldn’t believe anyone thought Dean was a serious candidate, but by the time everyone realized he wasn’t, the damage had been done. The chance of a positive campaign had ended.
Not that it would have worked anyway. It is still very likely Kerry or Edwards would have lost, since there are other ways to attack them (Edwards’ trial lawyer history would have been a much bigger deal if he had been the presidential candidate).
No, I’m saying he’s a perpetual liar, to make it all the easier to dupe gullible supporters like yourself. 
IMO, it’s much simpler than that.
This election was won by the 3 g’s = God, Guns, and Gays. Support for the first two, and fear of the last one, all driven by a religious core at the center of our country and ruthlessly capitalized on by the Republican Party.
To add to this, Kerry was the best Democratic candidate around, but not one who really drove passionate support. He is a politician, and gave political answers, which unfortunately were far enough left of center to get painted as ‘Liberal’ and be targeted by the operatives of the Religious Right and the Republican Party.
On the bright side, this election was going to be damn difficult to win, no matter what, and Kerry put up a hell of a fight. This will get noticed, especially after four more years of mismanagement and a Congress that rubber stamps the President. Their arrogance will be their undoing, in my opinion, and a strong candidate in 4 years will clean their bloody clocks.
Silenus was right, we really do need to buy you a beer.
Too bad I don’t drink… beer. 