Mistakes Were Made (...by Kerry!)

ABC News The Note ^ | March 18, 2004

[EllaMinnow]

As John Kerry begins his own (semi-)private Idaho vacation, here are the mistakes his campaign has made of late, allowing an aggressive Bush-Cheney operation to win a series of news cycles, during this (ALL TOGETHER NOW!!!) critical period in defining John Kerry for America:

1. The "Crooks," "'I actually did vote for the $87 billion," and "more leaders" quotes, and the handling of their aftermath.

2. Still failing to present a coherent, unified message.

3. The failure of his campaign to successfully tape the original "leaders" quote and nip the matter in the bud.

4. Believing his own "bring it on" rhetoric and getting drawn into an extended debate on national security, just as he is leaving for vacation.

5. Failing to take a page from the Dean campaign in the fall of 2003 by not staying ahead of the story.

6. Having Dean serve as a surrogate on a media conference call on national security (a bizarro choice even before the Spanish comment). Dean couldn't even stay on his OWN message; what made them think he could stay on Kerry's?

7. Failing to instantly repudiate Dean's remark.

8. Buying a jockstrap in front of the press corps. Just weird.

9. Not more aggressively checking his instinct to equivocate and parse (see mistake 1), even if that equivocation might have some degree of intellectual soundness.

10. Waiting too long to put out Holbrooke, Richardson, and others to push back on the "leaders" quote.

11. Going off on vacation. It's unavoidable, and goodness knows Kerry deserves a break and that some of his verbal errors were probably owing to fatigue, but now might not be the best time, with the Iraq stuff swirling out there … ..

12. Failure to go back in time in a time machine and quit the Senate to run for governor or work in a business in the late '80s - thereby limiting all this votes 'n' quotes exposure. (Granted, this one would have been tougher to pull off than some of the others … .)

13. Not fully affecting the look and feel and stature of an actual, full-fledged general election standard bearer.

14. By making all these mistakes, squandering the Post -nomination window of attention and frittering away the momentum he had built up. Not to mention -- to a large extent overshadowing Spanish deaths, more killed in Iraq, the Medicare controversies, and other Bush problems about which more donkey hay probably could have been made.

14. Not fully realizing that by making all these mistakes, the door was opened for the Bush-Cheney campaign to get some of its mojo back, allowing it to get a much-needed shot of confidence -- for themselves and those skittish Hill allies.

[OESY]

[Exeter]

"Buying a jockstrap in front of the press corps. Just weird."

For your information, it was a suprise birthday present for Teresa...

[EllaMinnow]

I'm sure she needs it more than he does.

[GailA]

Classic Ramirez...........

[JeeperFreeper]

Will wonders never cease? An alphabet news organization criticizing, even obliquely, Kerry.

[Clara Lou]

Great post. I like 8. Buying a jockstrap in front of the press corps. Just weird. "Just weird" says it all.

[Lady Jag]

Haha! That cartoon, they all look like Kerry with a beard.

[thegreatbeast]

As a MA resident I am astounded that kerry has secured the chance to be the Dems presidential candidate. I mean, the man is such a nothing. We never heard from him before the present business started. He' been completely unable to get out from the shadow cast by the senior senator; Kerry was always our backbencher. Money is,/i> important in American politics.

[Betaille]

Liberal Media is starting to cannibalize Kerry the way they did to Dean FINALLY! This is gonna be a long 7 months for the libs.

[cyncooper]

And maybe add that he might have lied--and lied recently and repetively via his own spokesmen--over attending a November 1971 meeting of the VVAW in Kansas City where it was seriously debated whether they would dispatch assassins to kill 7 sitting U.S. Senators, and one must conclude it's been a pretty crummy week for Ketchupboy.

It's pretty obvious the "vacation" is an emergency strategy session.

[EllaMinnow]

"The Note" is the most balanced (and funniest) part of ABC News. Petah probably never reads it.

[Inyokern]

3. The failure of his campaign to successfully tape the original "leaders" quote and nip the matter in the bud.

I still fail to see the difference between "more" leaders and "foreign" leaders. He was clearly talking about foreign leaders

[EllaMinnow]

I hafen't been following that story too closely, but I have the feeling that it will erupt loudly over the next few weeks.

[cyncooper]

I honestly think Kerry thought this would be a subtle statement about his manhood, as in "I really am one".

LOL

What a dorky jerky weirdo clymer.

[EllaMinnow]

I think he ate at Burger King and got confused.

[MrB]

It was either a plea of "yes, I do TOO have balls"

or pandering to the Native American vote: "tot'em pole"

[OESY]

Nicely developed list of Kerry's gaffes; however, it overlooks at least one that comes to mind. Dean's campaign in Iowa began to falter after he attacked (verbally) a Republican in the crowd at a town meeting just a few days prior to his "YYYEEEEAAAARRRGGGHHH!" rant. This had an unsettling effect on swing voters who saw a vicious personality emerge from this candidate who had been proclaiming himself on the side of the little guy, and Dean's poll numbers began to drop at that point.

With Kerry, I thought I was seeing deja vu all over again.

[EllaMinnow]

It's really weird that his daughter was with him on the jockstrap shopping trip. My son almost died of embarassment when I went on a jockstrap shopping trip with him. Of course, he was only 8, and I was the one with the checkbook.

[EllaMinnow]

All that was missing was the "sit down and shut up" remark, which I'm sure will come soon enough.