Posted on 09/22/2004 8:18:27 AM PDT by Kenny Bunk
So how can you tell when he's closing, people keep asking me.
And when is he going to start?
He is John Kerry, who I've watched in every election he's ever won. As best as I can tell, he started yesterday;
For John Kerry, closing means discipline. It means defining the message, and sticking with it, hammering everything through it, until the end.
"As I said in my speech yesterday," John Kerry kept saying in answer to questions today, and then indeed, repeated what he said the day before, which was about the present and the future of Iraq, not the past. Sticking to message.
A message is not a synonym for a slogan, which campaigns that are behind tend to have many of, often a different one every day. It is an idea that captures the case for or against a candidacy, through which all issues and all questions can be seen. "It's the economy, stupid" meant take every question, every opportunity, and turn it back to the economy and how they botched it and we'll fix it. "Lower taxes, smaller government" requires no explanation. Neither does: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" The more complicated it is, the worse. Often campaigns have difficulty articulating a winning message for the very simple reason that they don't have one, or because the winning message that year simply doesn't match the candidate the party has nominated.
At the Democratic Convention, John Kerry did not make the case against Bush or his presidency - it was against the rules even to mention his name. It seemed, then, that people did not need to hear it, that they would react negatively to a negative convention. Hindsight is 20-20, and a total waste of time with six weeks to go. Victory will have a thousand fathers (and mothers) - defeat is always an orphan.
John Kerry has to make the case against Bush and for himself. It has to be based in what is happening to real people now and in the future. You could find it with a highlighter pen in yesterday's speech.
President Bush took the country in the wrong direction. He mislead the country based on bad/tainted facts to gain our support. He stubbornly refuses to face reality and admit his mistakes. Real people suffer the consequences of these mistakes. Kerry has a plan to make things better - to succeed, where he has failed.
George Bush's tough has to become stubborn and wrongheaded, the way it was earlier this summer. That won't happen when the debate is about what happened in votes two years ago, or 10 years ago, much less in the Guard 30 years ago. The debate has to be about where we are, and where we're headed - about the present and the future, about the country, not John Kerry.
This is, I should add, precisely the message that Bob Shrum was selling the night of the president's acceptance speech in New York. Which is more evidence, if more were needed, of the other truth, which is that it's always "the candidate, stupid" - particularly when you're talking about John Kerry. So put away the obituaries.
The conventional wisdom consensus of the latest inconsistent polls, including the internal campaign polls, puts the race at about 5 points in Bush's favor. That's still striking distance at six weeks and three debates. John Kerry has finally stripped away the bark on the Iraq issue. And maybe off himself.
The close has begun.
Does Kerry even have a strategy? Didn't think so.
Only a liberal could think like this. So, Kerry will continue to appeal to diehard liberals except the few who will prefer voting for Nader.
But where's the beef? Yes, kerry keeps saying the same thing, and then saying, "As I said yesterday?" But what was it that he said yesterday, other than "I hate Bush and everything he does"?
Nothing.
Well it's one thing to say that Bush has been "wrong", it is quite another to define what is "right". I still have not heard from Kerry what should be done that Bush is not doing - I don't expect I will hear this.
All Kerry apologists should be asked a simple question:
In ONE SENTENCE, please explain John Kerry's position on Iraq.
Hey, Susan, it's Kerry's race to lose, John Zogby told us so, why does Kerry need to worry at all?
Yeah, Kerry is really telling it like it is now. Never mind that it's different than what he said last week...or the week before...or the week before that...or last year...
When will these libs learn that consistency matters? Kerry sounding like Howard Dean isn't going to impress anybody.
Dear Susan:
Be sure on your way home tonight to have a forth highball instead of your usual three. Maybe if you're lucky you'll get one of your college male students to buy you one and in return you can slobber your nonsense into his ear as he throws your sorry *ss into a cab. Obviously, you write this crap when you're buzzed.
After November 2nd, I predict that you and Bill Maher types in this country will be ancient history.
A college professor? What course do you teach?
nick
I can just imagine Ted Kennedy, half-drunk screaming, "John Kerry the comeback kid, part deux"
I didn't think so.
She's right but in Kerry's case it's about "the stupid candidate". I think we haven't seen the last of the flip-flops yet.
I've got an idea that "kerry is an exploder" will be closer to the truth.
Susan Estrich is a delusional woman. Forget anything she is saying.
I have talked to many people and the message Kerry has settled on is one that will work well for them. He is going to make this about Iraq and I believe that he will scare people into voting for him. Yes. I am worried. It will all really hing on the debates.
Oh, so FINALLY, Kerry's vaunted "close" commences.
This is when he stops flip flopping and starts repeating the same speech.
Only in the deluded mind of Estrich and her ilk will this be effective.
If you repeat a lie enough...and all that.....GG
I predict a lot of commas and parenthetical comments.
Kerry's close.... to getting a new coat and a free ride in a rubber truck to the Happy Meadows Sanitarium.
Even Ronald Reagan stumbled in the debates in his reelection campaign; no sitting president has handled them without stumbling except x42.But there will be three debates, so Bush will have ample opportunity to recover from whatever stumble he may encounter in the first one. In the long run - and probably even in the short run - Kerry's arrogance and Bush's sincerity will come across.
Kerry lost credibility with the majority of voters, it is too late to change this. He is known as a flip floper with the "majority" of voters. He cannot recover from this. The majority of voters will not trust him and they do not consider him a strong leader. We are at war, the majority of voters will vote for a strong and decisive leader and this man is President Bush.
Oddly enough, they already have it down to one sentence: "We'd do it better." They just never explain HOW, in any (even remotely) concrete way.
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