I live in Middle America and no way is his involvement with Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark going to play well out here -- they hate both of them. And they still hate both of them! A lot of us know people on The Wall and the fact he threw someone else's medals across the White House fence doesn't play well with any of us. Why don't you ask the Veterans that turned their back on Kerry at The Wall. If you researched, you would find that a lot of the people in this country still have no use for the peace demonstrators, hippies, or whatever else you want to call them!
Don't know what part of Middle America you are from but here in OK/TX Kerry will not play well at all not to mention he is very liberal and from MA which they hate around here.
Sometimes I wonder if it isn't the fact that he's liberal, but the fact that he's from MA that Texans resent. Well, no matter. I know plenty of folks around here who have a senseless anti-Texan bias.
Personally, I'm from the upper midwest and as the local news would have it, people in MN, NoDak, SoDak, Iowa and Wisconsin like Kerry's history. I know that MN is pretty well hopeless, but we might have a chance in the others.