Posted on 07/05/2004 8:53:27 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
|
|
ITTSBURGH, July 5 - John Kerry's advisers said Monday that he was planning to announce his running mate on Tuesday morning and that he was orchestrating an elaborate rollout of the Democratic ticket first on the Internet, then at a rally here and finally in a multistate tour beginning in Ohio and ending later this week in the vice-presidential candidate's hometown.
Mr. Kerry's most senior aides said he had not divulged his decision to them as of Monday evening, in keeping with what one adviser described as Mr. Kerry's "obsession" with ensuring that the rejected candidates hear it from him personally rather than from the news media, as Mr. Kerry did when Al Gore passed him over four years ago. Some aides said Mr. Kerry could still change the plan that had been put together but described that as unlikely.
Senior Democrats identified the top three contenders for the position as Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa. Mr. Kerry's aides reported that placards had been printed with at least three versions of the Democratic ticket: Kerry-Edwards, Kerry-Gephardt and Kerry-Vilsack, though they acknowledged that Mr. Kerry could still surprise even them with a different selection.
As a result, senior aides to the three main contenders were edgy as they traded gossip, anecdotes and even stories they heard from reporters over the holiday weekend.
"I'm a nervous wreck," an aide to one of the most talked-about candidates said.
Speculation increasingly centered on Mr. Edwards, Mr. Kerry's longest lasting serious rival in the Democratic primaries, because of a meeting held Thursday night between him and Mr. Kerry at the Georgetown home of Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state, Democratic officials said. Mr. Edwards interrupted a family vacation in Florida for the session. Mr. Edwards's advocates said they were increasingly hopeful on Monday. But aides to Mr. Kerry cautioned that too much should not be read into the late-night meeting, noting that the Democratic presidential contender had held similar unannounced sessions with Mr. Vilsack, Mr. Gephardt and other Democrats he has been considering over the last three months.
Mr. Kerry himself remained closed-mouthed on Monday afternoon.
"I've made no decision at this point in time, and I'm going to continue to keep it a private and personal process until I announce it publicly," he told a local television station at a picnic for about 500 supporters at his wife's 88-acre hilltop estate a few miles outside of Pittsburgh.
In a playful aside at the picnic rally, Mr. Kerry appeared to telegraph the event Tuesday when he said, "At 9 o'clock tomorrow, we're going to have some fun."
His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, said her husband's frame of mind about the choice "depends on the time of the day."
"You'll know pretty soon," Mrs. Heinz Kerry said. "You'll know pretty soon."
As of late Monday, plans for the running mate announcement, which Mr. Kerry's aides described as a critical moment in his campaign, were taking shape in considerable detail. A Kerry adviser said, "He's signed off on the concept of the plan."
Mr. Kerry, said one associate familiar with the plan, intended to begin calling the major candidates in contention around 7 a.m. Tuesday to give them the news of his choice
The first public word of Mr. Kerry's selection is to be conveyed after the phone calls in an e-mail message to supporters who signed up on the Web site johnkerry.com, aides said. More than 150,000 people have enrolled on the site since Friday, when Mr. Kerry first promised to release his decision this way, his spokesman, David Wade, said.
If all goes according to plan, Mr. Kerry will appear at a big morning rally in Market Square in downtown Pittsburgh and announce his choice at about 9 a.m. Tuesday, aides said, before flying to Indianapolis to address a convention of the A.M.E. Church. He will then return to his wife's farmhouse in Fox Chapel, Pa., in the critical electoral turf of Allegheny County, to await the arrival of his new No. 2 for an overnight visit.
At some point Tuesday afternoon Mr. Kerry and his running mate are to appear for a wave to the cameras, which would provide, in time for the evening news, the first post-selection images of the two men together.
A few aides cautioned that given Mr. Kerry's penchant for secrecy, he could still delay the announcement in reaction to news accounts of his deliberations.
Mr. Kerry's aides said they would try to present his selection process as a metaphor for how he would govern as president. Four years ago, George Bush, then the governor of Texas, chose Dick Cheney, who had been running his vice presidential selection process, to show that he was willing to take on a more experienced partner to offset his own lack of experience on the national stage.
Al Gore's selection of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut allowed him to distance himself somewhat from President Bill Clinton because Mr. Lieberman had been the first prominent Democrat to criticize the president for his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.
Mr. Kerry and his running mate will fly together Wednesday morning to Cleveland for an outdoor rally opposite City Hall, and then to a park in Dayton for another rally with, it is hoped, thousands of supporters. Both Mr. Kerry and President Bush view Ohio as one of a handful of must-win states this fall.
The campaign's public schedule still called for Mr. Kerry to speak in Washington on Tuesday to a convention of the National Education Association, which endorsed him on Monday. But aides said that appearance could be scrapped.
Although Mr. Edwards, Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Vilsack continue to be listed as the top contenders for the job, Democrats near Mr. Kerry held out the possibility that he would spring a surprise, in keeping with the history of vice presidential picks.
Among the most-mentioned other candidates are Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Bob Graham of Florida; Gen. Wesley K. Clark; and former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. So intense was the media interest that Mr. Biden found reporters waiting outside his home. He rolled down a car window and told them they were in the wrong place.
Some Democrats said they continued to hope that Mr. Kerry would, after three weeks of attention being focused on Mr. Edwards, Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Vilsack, pick a surprise running mate to shake up a race that had been in a deadlock for weeks.
As Mr. Kerry kept his own counsel, his entire campaign was on high alert over the holiday weekend, preparing a precision operation that was being secretly planned down to the last press release and camera angle. Teams of aides were waiting to swoop into action to proclaim, promote, defend, prepare, inform, support, transport, care for and feed whomever Mr. Kerry selects - all on a moment's notice.
One aide said that signs designed for the losing candidates "are going to be worth a lot on eBay one day."
Scripts have even been written, officials say, for Kerry aides to use in explaining his choice to members of Congress, other influential Democrats, donors, supporters and the news media - and to explain why Mr. Kerry rejected the also-rans.
Other aides have contacted television networks, meanwhile, inquiring about the possibility of getting large blocks of prime-time coverage for interviews with the presumptive nominee and his running mate in the coming days.
A running mate's staff was largely in place, with no clue as to its boss but with a jet ready to pick up the new candidate and family members, and brief them on the many ways in which their lives have instantly changed.
The vice presidential candidate's chief of staff is to be Peter L. Scher, who was chief of staff to Mickey Kantor when Mr. Kantor was the United States trade representative and then commerce secretary.
Aides confirmed that the running mate's political director would be Linda L. Moore, who was President Bill Clinton's deputy political director and then Senator Bayh's deputy chief of staff. She was a field director at the Democratic Leadership Council in the early 1990's.
The running mate will also inherit a press team that includes Mark Kornblau, who was Mr. Kerry's New Hampshire press secretary in the primaries and has since handled press in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio and West Virginia.
With Mr. Kerry keeping his thoughts to himself and his circle of advisers to a handful, even senior campaign officials were coming up with their own contingency plans for quick and unexpected travel.
Aides to past vice presidential candidates said this was something of a tradition, given that of all the rituals of campaigns, the announcement of a running mate was the one that still retains the most suspense.
"We didn't know where we were flying to the next morning," said Kiki McLean, who went to bed one night in August 2000 as a member of Al Gore's running-mate "ghost team."
She said she woke up the next day and boarded a plane to Connecticut to knock on Mr. Lieberman's door in what she and other operatives likened to a sweepstakes "prize patrol."
David M. Halbfinger reported from Pittsburgh for this article and Adam Nagourney from Washington. Robin Toner contributed reporting from Pittsburgh.
Any guesses on who it is? Most of the suspect domain names are registered by Michael or Adrienne Deutsche from Guttenberg, New Jersey. They appear to be cyberquatters, but who knows?
Hmmmph. Shouldn't that be 'whomever?'
The indefinite pronoun is, after all, the object of the sentence.
Generally speaking, I go with the slogan I once saw on a lapel button: "I FAVOR WHOM'S DOOM". I think "whom" is a relic, and the sooner we get rid of it, the better. "Who" is the natural pronoun in almost all circumstances, as Steven Pinker points out in The Language Instinct. However, I was educated by old-school prescriptive grammarians, and still say "whom" sometimes from sheer habit, or when I know for sure that an editor will change a "who" to a "whom" anyway. Remember the old vaudeville favorite: "Who Were You With Last Night?"--John Derbyshire
...the first post-selection images of the two men together...
oooopps. Did they "mean" that???
That might be, but such a move would only serve to "dumb down" the English language.
Although most of us informally say "It is him," the technically correct sentence is "It is he." Therefore, "whoever."
After all, you wouldn't say, "Whom is it?"
Citation?
Well, well, well.
This is sort of humorous in spots.
You picked out the same sentences I did -- I cracked up laughing when I read the one from Teresa and then the photo-op. You couldn't make this stuff up it is so far out there. First his wife would give all her money back to have Sen Heinz back (what does that say about Kerry?) and now she comes right out and says he cannot make up his mind! Priceless!
It will be Kerry/Gore
You heard it here first.
Almost everyone forgets that Kerry
IS the DEFAULT candidate.
Dean and Clark fizzled.
Edwards didn't have enough experience/gravitas.
This nomination fell to Kerry,
a LIBERAL RAT from Massachusetts.
JMJ.
He's a difficult sell,
to all voters except the Bush haters.
Most speakers of English tend to put nominative case pronouns at the left-hand side of the clause, in “subjective” territory before the verb, and objective case pronouns at the right-hand side of the clause, in “objective” territory after it. Apparently the pressure of this habit is so great that it overwhelms the Standard Formal pattern for the special class of verbs called linking or copulative verbs, wherein It is she is required, at least by rule, rather than It’s her, or where This is he is needed, not This is him. The primary use of the objective case pronoun after linking verbs is in the first person: It’s us, It’s me. With third person, singular and plural, many Standard speakers will retain the nominative, even at lower levels of speech and in Informal uses. (And of course with second person you, the nominative and objective are indistinguishable.) But It’s me and It’s us are both Standard in all Conversational and most Informal uses, perhaps in part because they occur almost exclusively in speech anyway. Consider the way you answer the phone if the caller asks for you. To a stranger you’ll respond (if you’re a Standard speaker), This is she [he], not This is me, or you’ll dodge the issue entirely and say Speaking. If you know the caller well, though, It’s me will serve. In Oratorical speech and Formal writing, however, Standard English demands the nominative: It is we who must shoulder the burden. It is us just won’t do in that sort of context.
For some reason the link didn't post.
http://www.bartleby.com/68/53/3453.html
Hey! Didn't you just predict Kerry/Landrieu? What's your next guess? Kerry/Feinstein? Kerry/Boxer? Kerry/Kerry? Kerry/Gorelick?
Kerry/Lautenberg
Kerry/Nation
Kerry/Water
Kerry/Atune
Kerry/Coals
Kerry/On
I agree with you 100% and the media has been touting a default candidate. Even his wife thinks he is #2!
Aesthetically, however, I'm right.
Actually, I was right. "Who"/"whoever" is the predicate nominative.
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000021.htm
http://www.jimloy.com/language/whom.htm
http://www.andover.edu/english/jgould/alistair/nominal3.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.