Posted on 08/03/2004 5:49:20 AM PDT by OESY
As usual, the polls don't all agree, but the consensus seems to be shaping up that John Kerry either had no bounce at all from his convention or a very slight upward tick of only one to four points. It was one of the least successful conventions in recent history.
What happened?
Going in to the convention, Kerry had a critical policy choice to make: Use the four nights of his conclave to stress the domestic issues on which he has significant leads in the polls (health care, drug prices, wages, Social Security, Medicare, environment, the deficit and education), or try to strengthen his posture on the war-related issues on which Bush has an edge — terror, defense, homeland security and Iraq.
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Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards made ....
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In that one night, Kerry gave all of the gains of the previous three days back to the Republicans. (Rasmussen's daily tracking poll actually has Kerry dropping two points in the aftermath of his Thursday speech).
Kerry compounded the problem by venturing no information about his public career in the Senate for the past two decades. He did nothing to refute three months of negative ads labeling him as an ultra-liberal, big spender. He did not tell us what the Kerry Bill was or the Kerry Amendment or the Kerry hearings. As far as we know, there wasn't any.
Voters don't want a lieutenant for president. They want a commander-in-chief. After all, why did Cleland lose despite his heroism? Why did draft dodger Clinton beat war hero Bob Kerrey in 1992 primaries? Why didn't Bob Dole win in 1996?
Voters want a president with brains, not just guts, and all they saw was a warrior telling his old tales on Thursday night. And it wasn't enough.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
In his words: On April 8, 1968, I volunteered for one last mission. The helicopter moved in low. The troops jumped out with M16 rifles in hand as we crouched low to the ground to avoid the helicopter blades. Then I saw the grenade. It was where the chopper had lifted off. It must be mine, I thought. Grenades had fallen off my web gear before. Shifting the M16 to my left hand and holding it behind me, I bent down to pick up the grenade. A blinding explosion threw me backwards.
Clinton got elected 1st time around because of Perot, he convinced 6 out of 10 people that he was not fit for office. Once there however, economy being good, Oklahoma City Bombing being perceived to have its ties with the right, he was a shoe in. Add to that that Dole, while a most admirable, honorable and distinguished Parlaimentarian, was a horrible, horrible candidate.
Clinton and Edwards talked about nothing too. None of them are fundamentally serious men, they might not even really be men. That's what their problem is.
It doesn't help that he comes off as a pompous blowhard, and that he doesn't explain how he's better than or different from GWB.
The Islamist threat is real, and people are concerned about their country and their families. Perhaps people are even fearful. But the Rats address this legitimate sense of fear and uncertainty in wartime as either a false political construction erected by Republicans, or (e.g. Deaniacs) something from which one must run as fast as possible (with a misdirected sense of "outrage" toward GWB, when they actually are terrified by the terrorists and even more so by confronting the threat).
Kerry plays to both the paranoid conspiracists and to the cowardly (but "outraged") Deaniacs, giving both a sense that "I will stop the pain."
But he doesn't explain how he'll get cooperation from the terrorists in this endeavor, and I think most people realize he never will.
Come November, I think people will finally admit to themselves in the privacy of the voting booth, that while Kerry offers some vague and appealing sort of relief from the terrorist threat, that GWB's approach is the only one that will actually work over the long term. They will not want to change horses midstream.
Americans have quite clearly expressed that by denying Kerry his "bump."
The entire Democratic campaign to date is an object lesson in cognotive dissonance and projection.
I don't think Coulter has this right.
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Max_Cleland
True, it was an accident but, if I'm not mistaken, he lost two legs and an arm.
Slack he gets for telling the truth. He was defeated because he was too liberal. He voted against allowing the Cub Scouts to use a school room for after school meetings.
I think Kerry likes the idea of forming a team instead of making decision , that way he ahs someone else to blame if something goes wrong, Its worked for him for the last 20 years.
Problem is at 2 in the morning with a crisis looming we cant wake the President and wait for a team to answer, we need a man who can make decisions.
Compare Kerry's shameless pimping of his war record to an anecdote I heard about Bush Sr. When an interviewer brought up the word "hero" in connection with his WWII service, Bush reportedly became testy and said he was "just an airman" and that the men on the ground he flew support missions for were the real heroes (as if being an airman in WWII was not a dangerous job!). That's class and humility.
I think you're right. Look at how quickly Dean's "overwhelming" lead disappeared when it actually came time to vote in the primaries.
Bookmark.
I thought I was lowballing when I called a 4% bounce. Apparently, that's the high end of the range.
His injuries were caused by his own grenade.
The more people see of Kerry, the less they like him.
Leave it to Dick Morris to confuse public relations emphasis with policy choice.
Morris likes to write self-fullfilling/prophesizing articles, but this is the part I think that hurt John Kerry alot. Its the buzz words that I hear from the people who watched the speech and many independents and swing voters.
I would also disagree with Morris on the national security gap because despite the democrats wanting a return to 911, we live in a world with real threats and they are going to have to address reality if they want to win.
I only found out about my grandfather's WWI heroics after he died when I read his obituary. Things like his pulling a Naval airman from a burning plane that had crashed. When I asked him about WWII when he was alive, he just told me about working on planes, and his time at Pensacola and San Diego and Honolulu with the Navy.
Shouldn't that be spelled "French-Urine"?
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