Posted on 09/03/2004 8:23:26 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Thursday was a slightly better day for the Democrats in what has been another awful week for them. But of course that is not saying much.
The Democrats wheeled out a new offensive against President George W. Bush in battleground states on his weakest issue: job losses and the anemic economy.
But despite clear efforts to engage Bush on national-security issues and show their own credibility, they have yet to lay a hand on the president's standing as tough on terror after his surrogates have savaged their own standard-bearer, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Kerry's dilemma was clearly exposed when he spoke to the American Legion in Nashville Wednesday. In intellectual and policy terms, he gave clear, concise and even impressive critiques of Bush's policies on Iraq and made clear what and where he would do differently. But the audience of veterans responded only tepidly:
The weeks of massive GOP bombardment querying even Kerry's basic integrity as well as his documented heroism in Vietnam had done their work. And Kerry's now famous comments of more than 30 years ago comparing U.S. combat troops in Vietnam to Genghis Khan -- and unfavorably at that -- didn't help either.
Kerry at least made some progress with the chattering classes as most, though not all major newspapers gave his Iraq policy speech serious and respectful coverage. Sen. John Edwards, who has been doing yeoman work for Kerry in the face of the endless bombardments and personal attacks coming out of the Republican National Convention in New York, has done his bit this week as well by offering a new initiative that offers hopes of averting an all-out war with Iran over its drive to develop a nuclear program capable of making atomic weapons.
In serious policy terms the Kerry-Edwards proposal of offering Iran approval for nuclear power in return for a stringent regime of international inspections is the best that can realistically be achieved without recourse to another full-scale war that the United States lacks the resources to fight while it still has more than 140,000 combat troops bogged down in Iraq.
But in terms of the great national political chess match that is the presidential election campaign, it looks likely to play yet again into Republican hands.
By being thoughtful and nuanced, Kerry and Edwards can both be portrayed as naive and indecisive wimps while the president walks tall. Bush still has his trump card, the well more than 50 percent in repeated opinion polls who still trust him on conducting the war against terror while Kerry trails around 20 points behind in those approval ratings. And until the Kerry-Edwards campaign can eat into those approval figures, it doesn't matter what they say or do on the economy, Social Security or athletes' steroids.
Still failing to engage on that central issue, Kerry is seeking to regain lost ground in the battleground state of Ohio with a new ad campaign. A new television ad entitled "Economy-Ohio" will start running in the Buckeye State Friday, the Kerry campaign announced Thursday.
"While President Bush thinks the economy is just fine, the ad stresses that America and Ohio can do better than 230,000 Ohio jobs lost and spotlights the Kerry-Edwards plan to create and keep good-paying jobs here in America," the Kerry campaign said.
The ad is part of a massive $50 million advertising buy in battleground states that the Kerry-Edwards campaign announced Wednesday.
The Democrats are seeking to reverse the damage done by a month of attacks on the Massachusetts senator's Vietnam combat record mounted by a group of hostile Vietnam vets who support Bush.
Will it work? The trend in the campaign over the past month suggests that it will not.
It is also revealing that the Republicans are setting the national agenda with their orchestrated attacks coming out of the convention in Madison Square Garden, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is being forced to play defense to them instead of ever going on to the offensive itself.
Edwards was pressed into service again Thursday when he slammed his fellow Senate Democrat, at least in name, Zell Miller of Georgia. Miller, the embodiment of a "Yellow Dog" Democrat who runs with the Republican pack, went whole hog after Kerry in a ferocious speech to the Republican convention Wednesday night.
In an interview on the Fox News Channel, Edwards of North Carolina described Miller's speech endorsing President Bush as "way over the top. It was sad, actually."
Edwards said Miller's speech involved "a lot of anger, a lot of negative attacks." The "focus" of the Bush-Cheney '04 re-election campaign "is on personal attacks, smears about John Kerry," he said.
Miller, the senior senator from Georgia, has long supported the president, taking conservative positions on a wide range of issues in the Senate.
This Republican convention week has repeated and confirmed the grim pattern of the Dog Days of August for the Dems. They started this week with the hope of renewed momentum when Bush gave an embarrassing and potentially devastating flub on national networked morning television, admitting the war on terrorism as he himself had conceptualized it could not be won. The Sunday mass demonstrations against the Republicans in New York were orderly and impressive, too.
But just as Kerry and his team flubbed the decent bounce and momentum they got out of their own Democratic National Convention in Boston a month ago, they blew their good start to this week too.
Kerry stayed silent, as helpless as a deer caught in the headlights when Karl Rove's Republican attack machine savaged him shamelessly and mercilessly on his Vietnam combat record through August, and he appeared equally ineffectual in the face of the new round of ferocious personal attacks coming out of Madison Square Garden this week.
To twist the knife in the wound, Rove ensured that it was the supposedly soft and cuddly moderate Republicans whom Democrats love, led by Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani, who delivered the most punishing blows.
The Democrats did not try anything like this against Bush in Boston; Kerry's precious focus groups would not let them. The addition of Joe Lockhart, President Bill Clinton's former director of communications during the bruising 1998 impeachment battle, to the Kerry team offered some hope to the Democrats that Kerry might finally take the gloves off and come out swinging. But more likely, Lockhart's impact will just be diluted among the broad cacophony of voices Kerry likes to listen to.
No one wins a U.S. presidential election running things in such a manner. John Kerry still does not know that. But George W. Bush does.
MARTIN SIEFF is senior news analyst for UPI, a sister news agency of Insight.
Ah, that explains it.
This is devastating news for the "Anybody but Bush" crowd.
Mmmm. I scrolled to the bottom, too. I thought this was an unusually clueless article from Insight. (Yeah, letting the Iranians have "supervised" nuclear technology is a great idea).
Corrrection: President said to Matt Lauer, "War could not be won [in four years]." But don't let the facts get in your way.
"But the audience of veterans responded only tepidly"
What do these dummies think? That you can spit on a someone and call them a baby-killer and somehow, magically, 35-years later, it will all disappear - Kerry betrayed our soldiers, he degraded them in the most vile and repulsive ways. The fact that democrats, including this dingbat reporter, seem genuinely baffled about the veteran's response shows how truely unfit these liberals are to run the country or present news.
They lie, they lie, they lie!
"But the audience of veterans responded only tepidly"
What do these dummies think? That you can spit on a someone and call them a baby-killer and somehow, magically, 35-years later, it will all disappear - Kerry betrayed our soldiers, he degraded them in the most vile and repulsive ways. The fact that democrats, including this dingbat reporter, seem genuinely baffled about the veteran's response shows how truely unfit these liberals are to run the country or present news.
They lie, they lie, they lie!
"But the audience of veterans responded only tepidly"
What do these dummies think? That you can spit on a someone and call them a baby-killer and somehow, magically, 35-years later, it will all disappear - Kerry betrayed our soldiers, he degraded them in the most vile and repulsive ways. The fact that democrats, including this dingbat reporter, seem genuinely baffled about the veteran's response shows how truely unfit these liberals are to run the country or present news.
They lie, they lie, they lie!
"the Kerry-Edwards proposal of offering Iran approval for nuclear power in return for a stringent regime of international inspections is the best that can realistically be achieved."
Surely this will work, as it already has been so successful in North Korea.
...as well as his documented heroism in Vietnam...
...In intellectual and policy terms, he gave clear, concise and even impressive critiques of Bush's policies on Iraq...
...By being thoughtful and nuanced...
...when Karl Rove's Republican attack machine savaged him shamelessly and mercilessly on his Vietnam combat record through August...
Like I said, real howlers :) Sheesh.
The real reason John Kerry is losing ---- a bloated staff led by an incompetent leader.
And even after all that bias, Shiff STILL had no choice but to reach the conclusion that Kerry is doomed.
True! Poor baby.
Two problems here.
1. Rove was not behind the Swifties.
2. "Ferocious personal attacks" now appear to include the presentation of someone's voting record.
UPI doesn't get it.
comparing U.S. combat troops in Vietnam to Genghis Khan -- and unfavorably at that --
Can you be compared to Genghis Khan favorably??
.
I hear he was a good dancer and had unusual minty fresh breath.
BTW, my vote for the best line in the post convention monster FR thread last night is: "John Kerry's feminine side is John Edwards". 12 hours later, it still cracks me up.
Utterly clueless. Bush is gonna win big.
Actually, there have been job gains and the unemployment rate is going down.
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