Democrats 2004 - Worst Campaign in Presidential race history
Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 1:24 pm
You'd think the democratic challenger would have had an easy time this year vs. the 2000 election. We have a president who lost the popular vote but was still elected who has lost a net 1 million jobs (whether you think it was his fault or not, it hurts a candidate) while cutting taxes for the rich. He fought what now the majority of american people think is an unjust war. You'd think getting up on the stump and rallying the troops against him wouldn't be so difficult. It's almost an amazing feat of a blunder that Kerry isn't in the lead.
This is somewhat of a take-off from Herc's last post in the Thurlow thread, but it has gotten me thinking overall about Kerry's campaign.
Herc said:
"But, it is a FACT that the majority of Americans THINK that liberals are weaker on defense issues than conservatives. To counter that, the Kerry campaign strategically put forth his Viet Nam service as THE reason that the common perception should NOT apply to HIM. "
I think this is true, but it is a blunder. He ended up anti-Vietnam, which I knew before he even won the nomination was going to be used as a political tool against him. In an era of knee-jerk patriotism, putting a former anti war spokesman up for candidacy is political suicide, especially in a time where Bush's best numbers coincide with strong defense.
And like Drakona said in another thread, why didn't Kerry substanitively respond to Zell Miller's attack? I think everyone was struck by Miller's impassioned half truths, and it deserved a quick measured rebuttal; an instant counter press release and attack on Miller and Bush.
What's sad is that I think almost anyone else could beat Bush. Even though Dean is as close to a liberal whack job as the dems can get, I think even he would be doing better than Kerry (well, before the yelling incident). Take Gephardt, take anyone and I think they'd be doing better than Kerry.
Why not show an ad where bush publically reveals he doesn't understand what the word Sovereignty means?
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... /10/149259
The democrats campaign is outright pathetic. Kerry has to go on the attack. There's so much to attack bush on! I'd be shooting fish in a barrel. It would be very easy to find embarrassing quote after quote after tv clip. He needs to see F9-11, even though he claims he hasn't he already has taken a page from it in some of his speeches. Not the conspiritorial portions of it, but rather the clips about bush going on vacation way to much, bush reading my pet goat (well he's talked about it, but how about a TV attack ad), how about running the sovereignty clip, etc. I think he needs to take that genre of attack much further. There are so many extremely embarrassing Bush things to mention. Bush has already pulled out all the stops with SBV (I think it's clear that moveon.org is a lackey to Kerry, and SBV is a lackey to Rove/Bush) so it's Kerry's turn to fight back. At their convention they tried to mostly stray from focusing on attacking bush, which i think was the wrong thing to do. Most people that hate bush aren't a big Kerry fan, but are "voting for the douchebag anyway" I don't think that's going to change and Kerry needs to deal with the reality of that. Kerry needs to paint bush as a war-happy president that's going to get us into bad situations, much as the famous nuke commerical that defeated Barry Goldwater.
A majority of the public already believes the Iraq war was a mistake. Kerry screwed up big time when he said "knowing what we know now, I would have gone anyway." WTF?? He had his chance to distinguish himself and grab that base of people who really started to hate Bush because of the Iraq war. He's pushing away the independant voters like myself who were against the Iraq war. When Nader dissappeared off the ticket in my state, I gave Kerry a serious shot. He had his chance to say it was wrong and blame bush for the intelligence and captialize on "the buck stops here" and laud himself as the one to clean up the mess and get us out. Now many of the independents I think are going to vote third party, rather than for Kerry. His war policy is a shade of Bush's. He doesn't have the balls really to take a unique stance, and I think that's the defining charactaristic that is most lacking.
My mother doesn't pay attention to politics. She's mostly voted republican, but since she is a kindergarten teacher she sometimes votes democratic when she feels like the democrats are going to be better on education. She and my father both voted for Bush in 2000 (my dad has voted repub minus one perot vote since the 70s and already made up his mind against bush because he didn't think bush had an exit strategy for Iraq, or a good plan) but this year both are casting votes for Kerry--not that it'll matter in CA which Kerry will Carry anyway ;p
Anyway, point is that F911 is the best liberal anti bush thing that's affected people's perception of bush whether you think it's propaganda or gospel or somewhere in between, it worked. Bush's campaign has been filled with plenty of half truths and bad connect-the-dot games ala some of F911's, but it has been far more effective than anything the Kerry campaign has done. After seeing F911 my mom (who was anti Iraq war but pro gulf war but undecided about the election) said she couldn't vote for bush after seeing that, even if she didn't know how much of the movie was fact or fiction. The visual imagery worked.
Kerry appointed some new staff recently, so hopefully this will shake things up.
This is somewhat of a take-off from Herc's last post in the Thurlow thread, but it has gotten me thinking overall about Kerry's campaign.
Herc said:
"But, it is a FACT that the majority of Americans THINK that liberals are weaker on defense issues than conservatives. To counter that, the Kerry campaign strategically put forth his Viet Nam service as THE reason that the common perception should NOT apply to HIM. "
I think this is true, but it is a blunder. He ended up anti-Vietnam, which I knew before he even won the nomination was going to be used as a political tool against him. In an era of knee-jerk patriotism, putting a former anti war spokesman up for candidacy is political suicide, especially in a time where Bush's best numbers coincide with strong defense.
And like Drakona said in another thread, why didn't Kerry substanitively respond to Zell Miller's attack? I think everyone was struck by Miller's impassioned half truths, and it deserved a quick measured rebuttal; an instant counter press release and attack on Miller and Bush.
What's sad is that I think almost anyone else could beat Bush. Even though Dean is as close to a liberal whack job as the dems can get, I think even he would be doing better than Kerry (well, before the yelling incident). Take Gephardt, take anyone and I think they'd be doing better than Kerry.
Why not show an ad where bush publically reveals he doesn't understand what the word Sovereignty means?
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... /10/149259
The democrats campaign is outright pathetic. Kerry has to go on the attack. There's so much to attack bush on! I'd be shooting fish in a barrel. It would be very easy to find embarrassing quote after quote after tv clip. He needs to see F9-11, even though he claims he hasn't he already has taken a page from it in some of his speeches. Not the conspiritorial portions of it, but rather the clips about bush going on vacation way to much, bush reading my pet goat (well he's talked about it, but how about a TV attack ad), how about running the sovereignty clip, etc. I think he needs to take that genre of attack much further. There are so many extremely embarrassing Bush things to mention. Bush has already pulled out all the stops with SBV (I think it's clear that moveon.org is a lackey to Kerry, and SBV is a lackey to Rove/Bush) so it's Kerry's turn to fight back. At their convention they tried to mostly stray from focusing on attacking bush, which i think was the wrong thing to do. Most people that hate bush aren't a big Kerry fan, but are "voting for the douchebag anyway" I don't think that's going to change and Kerry needs to deal with the reality of that. Kerry needs to paint bush as a war-happy president that's going to get us into bad situations, much as the famous nuke commerical that defeated Barry Goldwater.
A majority of the public already believes the Iraq war was a mistake. Kerry screwed up big time when he said "knowing what we know now, I would have gone anyway." WTF?? He had his chance to distinguish himself and grab that base of people who really started to hate Bush because of the Iraq war. He's pushing away the independant voters like myself who were against the Iraq war. When Nader dissappeared off the ticket in my state, I gave Kerry a serious shot. He had his chance to say it was wrong and blame bush for the intelligence and captialize on "the buck stops here" and laud himself as the one to clean up the mess and get us out. Now many of the independents I think are going to vote third party, rather than for Kerry. His war policy is a shade of Bush's. He doesn't have the balls really to take a unique stance, and I think that's the defining charactaristic that is most lacking.
My mother doesn't pay attention to politics. She's mostly voted republican, but since she is a kindergarten teacher she sometimes votes democratic when she feels like the democrats are going to be better on education. She and my father both voted for Bush in 2000 (my dad has voted repub minus one perot vote since the 70s and already made up his mind against bush because he didn't think bush had an exit strategy for Iraq, or a good plan) but this year both are casting votes for Kerry--not that it'll matter in CA which Kerry will Carry anyway ;p
Anyway, point is that F911 is the best liberal anti bush thing that's affected people's perception of bush whether you think it's propaganda or gospel or somewhere in between, it worked. Bush's campaign has been filled with plenty of half truths and bad connect-the-dot games ala some of F911's, but it has been far more effective than anything the Kerry campaign has done. After seeing F911 my mom (who was anti Iraq war but pro gulf war but undecided about the election) said she couldn't vote for bush after seeing that, even if she didn't know how much of the movie was fact or fiction. The visual imagery worked.
Kerry appointed some new staff recently, so hopefully this will shake things up.