Posted on 09/06/2004 5:24:14 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Accelerating free fall pretty well describes the current Presidential campaign status of DNC candidate John Kerry’s 2004 bid for the White House. Having been spanked like the red headed step child of Saddam Hussein for weeks now, by everyone from his fellow Vietnam Vets and POW’s, to his fellow Democrat Senator Zell Miller, he sends out a distress signal and calls the Clinton cavalry in an attempt to save his sinking ship.
From his hospital bed awaiting open heart surgery, Clinton gives the beleaguered candidate his best professional campaign advice, “Stop talking about Vietnam”, advice that would have been more useful before the DNC convention.
Former President Clinton advised Kerry to begin talking about jobs, the economy, and health care, to shift the focus off of what he did or didn’t do in Vietnam 35 years ago, and on to what he wants to do in the next four years. Seems like sound advice to me, if it were any other candidate besides John Kerry, that is.
John Kerry’s biggest problem is he’s got nowhere to run, and nothing to run on!
What started out as 254 fellow Vets with an ax to grind, has become a full scale Navy investigation into Kerry’s medals, and it isn’t going away. Trying to shift the focus off of this story is a great idea, though probably not possible at this stage.
In order to shift the focus, there has to be something to shift the focus to, and that in itself presents a bit of a problem for candidate Kerry. Shift the focus to what, jobs?
Bush is running a 5.4% unemployment rate at present, which has steadily dropped for the last 14 months and is now below the Clinton 5.5% unemployment rate when he was running for re-election in “96”. In addition, small business start-ups and job opportunities have sky rocketed during the last 4 years, and these numbers are not reflected in the standard employment figures at all, making the picture even brighter than reported.
Can he shift to the economy? Maybe, but it’s pretty hard to sell in a time when America is experiencing the best economic expansion numbers in more than 30 years, with home ownership at an all time high, and interest rates near an all time low.
He can’t shift the debate to the war on terrorism, or national security, because both are a clear winner for Bush and Co., and John Kerry and his running mate have two of the worst voting records on both, which is why they chose to run on his four months in Vietnam to begin with.
That leaves the topic of heath care. This too is a problem for Kerry, having been in the Senate for 20 years without having made a single effort to address the issue. Being a member of the Party responsible for destroying health care in America with the invention of the HMO, not to mention their support of ambulance chasing and liberal judges that have lead to the sky rocketing heath care costs won’t help either.
What’s left to run on? John Kerry’s only hope of getting back in this race is to successfully demonize his opponents.
So, they return to the old tricks of attacking Bush’s service as a so-called “champagne soldier” in the Guard, which of course discredits all those “champagne soldiers” now dying on the battlefield in a National Guard uniform.
They will bring back the “Bush was AWOL in Alabama” charge. But the problem here is that nobody besides Terry McAuliffe has ever made such a charge. Unlike Kerry’s situation, there are no 254 fellow service men that came forward to make the charge, or even 1, then or now, just one crusty old DNC warhorse without a viable candidate of his own.
They will beat the Halliburton/Cheney drum some more, but it’s hard to make a case that anyone is getting rich from a government contract when the government is late paying the contract. It’s even harder to prove any impropriety when Halliburton is the world leader in their industry, with lots of experience in such missions, and the only one with the financial stability to do the work required while waiting to get paid.
They will continue to accuse Bush of running negative attack ads, but so far, Bush has not run any. They will continue to suggest that the Swift Vets are a Bush front, but they aren’t, and Bush has no real control over them, or any other 527.
They will bring out the “Bush lied” hammer. But most people are now aware that Kerry and Edwards, along with the Clinton administration, 75% of congress and most of the free world made the exact same case for removing Hussein from power, and the bi-partisan 911 Commission concluded that all of them were right.
It appears to me that John Kerry’s 15 minutes may have already come and gone. I’m no campaign expert, but I don’t see anywhere else for Kerry to run, or even hide.
Even the old right wing conspiracy thing won’t fly, as if it really ever did.
The RNC Convention showcased Republican Party moderates. However, none of their messages were the least bit moderate, proving that if there is indeed a conspiracy under way, it isn’t coming from the right wing extremists, but rather from the Party centrists, moderates who pulled no punches calling Kerry unfit for the office of commander in Chief, not on the basis of what he did 35 years ago, or said 30 years ago, but on the basis of what he has done, or not done since.
It’s not over until it’s over, but I can sure hear the fat lady warming up…
Kerry has a problem, and not one he can solve by firing campaign staff, or hiring Clinton hatchet men. His problem is, he has no campaign and he never did.
Trying to invent a campaign where one doesn’t exist has proven to not only be difficult, but costly, both in terms of record soft money spending, and in terms of personal credibility.
In the end, Kerry will have only accomplished the same thing Al Gore did in 2000, making Clinton look good!
One of the most unique things about Kerry's campaign staff is that it's almost entirely composed of hand-me-downs from the Clintons, Kennedy, and the DNC. He doesn't seem ever to have acquired a cadre of personal loyalists who'll stick with him through thick and thin.
This starkly contrasts with most other successful presidential candidates who sometimes borrowed people from other campaigns but had their own hard core of personal followers. Clinton had his hard core, Ronaldus Magnus had his, FDR had his, and W certainly has his.
All of this bodes ill for Kerry and well for America.
Wow! This pretty much nails it.
Both Lieberman and Gephardt had been on the national stage long enough that if they had any SwiftVet-like skeletons in their closets, those would long since have been dealt with. But the Demoocrats went with Kerry, a guy from a one-party state who had never really faced the kind of scrutiny that a candidate for national office draws. Now he turns out to have an inflated war history and a past consorting with Jane Fonda. Well, splat he goes. The Democrats are, as they say in Boston, scrod. |
B U M P
It is shameful how the media have behaved in this election, and it is saddening that even ONE person would vote for Kerry. But they will.
Let's not get complacent. There's a long road to travel, and miles to go before we sleep.
I'm fighting my own, very small guerilla war. When I run into "Pauline Kael" liberals, you know, the kind who say things on the assumption that everyone thinks like them and that--of course--everyone thinks George W. Bush is a ___________(fill in the blank), I make sure to let them know I support the President.
I do it politely (it's hard for me), and I try not to be belligerent, but I make sure to let them know there IS a whole world out there beyond their imagining.
Beyond that, I want them to know being a sheeple does NOT get them the approbation they expect. Liberals think they are free thinkers, but they run in crowds. They want to be loved, and they want to be "in." With my disdain I make them pay a little price for being Kerry supporters. It's not much, but I'm doing something. -OhMike
Yeah, why are HMOs still around? Nobody who has to deal with them likes them, they serve no economic purpose other than to deny health care to participants while accepting their money, and they siphon off funds better used to provide real health care in other situations.
At best, they are suitable only for things like routine medical checkups, and fail miserably in big-ticket medical procedures, chiseling down the medical professionals for the services provided, and delaying delivery of critical services until the medical condition has seriously deteriorated. And as such, much of their available funds are eaten up by litigation.
HMOs exist primarily as a revenue source for savvy lawyers.
Because their existence and their use by employers is mandated by Federal law, USC Title 42 Chapter 6A subchapter XI (1973).
Sponsored by Edward Moore Kennedy, of course.
This is one of the most crisply accurate analyses of the health insurance problems I've ever seen!
This is something that Her Heinous should take note of. Both Kerry and Clinton think the Oval Office is theirs by "right devine". In Kerry's case, We the People have more or less determined otherwise, due solely to that scrutiny. Should "Senator Shameless" attempt to do the same as "Senator Spitballs" in 2008, she will likely meet with the same fate...
the infowarrior
bttt
Take a look at these three short video clips, especially the last one. You will walk away with a heavy heart.
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The Democrats brought this on themselves. When Dean imploded, they needed a new "frontrunner" in a hurry. For reasons they will be arguing about for the next year, they settled on Kerry.