Cooter #16 - Tactics and Strategy

Trentino's Magazine ^ | Sept. 12, 2004 | Cooter Thompson

[Davis]

E-mail to Candidate Kerry #16 From: James (Cooter) Thompson re: Tactics and Strategy

Dear Senator kerry:

Cooter here, just back from a stimulating session down to Daryl's Bait Shop and Internet Café, the regular monthly meeting of the Lagniappe Wednesday Club. Ol' Daryl himself is President and keeps things moving right along, fine as frog fur. Mostly, we chew the fat over local matters of interest, but we recently been spending a quantity of time on the election campaign.

We have seen reports you took 90 minutes of advice from former President Clinton from his hospital room a few hours before his bypass surgery. (We are pleased to hear that the operation went smoothly and he is on his way to a full recovery.) Of course we expect that he will be unable to traipse around the country campaigning on your behalf. We aren't sure whether that is good or bad for you. I mean, his presence would sort of suggest you can't make it on your own.

Likewise, we aren't sure what benefit you will get from all your new advisers. We note with surprise and bewilderment that Albert Gore, Jr., is going to advise/campaign for you. We remember he endorsed Howard Dean just before the Iowa caucuses set Dr. Dean screaming. If Mr. Gore recommends you dress in earth tones to increase your alpha male stature, please pay him no mind whatever.

But if Mr. Gore says you have to clear up your Cambodian Christmas tale and face up to your Fonda interlude, that the scars from them won't just fade away before November 2, you can believe him. And if he says that the CBS News discovery of those purported Bush National Guard documents—they're fakes—and Gore tells you that even if genuine they're no answer at all to the whoppers by you that the Swiftees have brought to light, you'd do well to heed him.

This ain't because we believe Mr. Gore is a political genius. As Armen Yazoo says, there isn't "a scintilla of evidence" for that. But you know, Senator, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

We are waiting for you to clarify your position(s) on the war in Iraq. We don't know where you stand. It seems to us that you‘re caught between a rock and a hard place. If you take the position this country should do everything it can to win that war, we estimate you will be alienating a great many members of your Party who hate America first. And if you take the contrary position, you will be sacrificing a lot of votes from the center and the undecided.

In the hope of catering to war and anti-war voters simultaneously, you have confused everyone in the Wednesday Club at Daryl's. We are average people, so we guess we're similar to average people around the country. That adds up to millions of potential voters. We don't see that confusing so many people is good political strategy.

We'd have thought that the massive and barbaric slaughter of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia, would have convinced many of the pacifists and their ilk in your camp, and perhaps even you and Mrs. Kerry, that there is a war going on. It is a worldwide war, you know. We are under attack and have been under attack from Muslim jihadists for 20 years. September 11 was the second time Muslims tried to blow up the Trade Towers in New York.

The attack in Beslan, far away from our shores, is surely part of that war. Sooner or later, your pals in Old Europe will wake up and smell the piles of corpses. Of course, there has been pitifully little coverage of Beslan in the mainstream media—it's our guess that Abu Ghraib got 70 times the press without a drop of blood being spilled—so you might have missed it altogether.

I am bound to tell you, Senator Kerry, it's the consensus of the Wednesday Club that you ought to be staking out your position on this war. Yes, it may be risky telling the voters what you really think about important matters. But that is what leaders must do.

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Cooter (with the help of J. Boudreau, A. Yazoo, and A. Trentino)

[Davis]

btt