Posted on 11/06/2004 6:40:04 AM PST by OESY
Still reeling from his loss to President Bush on Tuesday, Senator John Kerry is being urged by top advisers and friends to take a high-profile role as the Democratic Party grapples with issues like selecting its next chairman and shaping its identity and course.
Unlike Al Gore, who made a tortured exit from the public stage after his loss to Mr. Bush four years ago, Mr. Kerry has a Senate seat to return to and is under no pressure to disappear from view for the sake of national unity and the legitimacy of the presidency, his advisers say. They argue that his continuing presence in the Senate gives him a natural role in determining how Democrats deal with the White House.
"If President Bush indeed wants to earn the support of people who supported Kerry, then he'll probably have to deal with Kerry," said Mike McCurry, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign. "The question for Kerry is in some ways the same as for Bush: Does the president want to lead by establishing some bipartisan consensus in the center, or does he want to govern from the ideological right?
"Kerry would be the person that could help him accomplish that, but if not, there will be a hunger for someone to stand up to Bush."
Mr. Kerry's confidants pointed to his e-mail list of 2.6 million supporters - which helped him raise more than $249 million, a record for a presidential challenger - as a major asset that Mr. Kerry could harness to project his influence well beyond the Senate chamber, and not just in financial terms. They said one option would be to set up a new organization the way Howard Dean did with his political action group, Democracy for America, after his defeat in the Democratic primaries.
"All those people are looking for guidance," said David Thorne, Mr. Kerry's best friend, who also oversaw the campaign's Internet operation. "Will they respond, and what do you say, are questions, but no one has ever had anything like that. You have a constituency. What do you do? Can you keep that together, and keep speaking with them and working with them?"
Cameron Kerry, the senator's brother, said, "Fifty-five million people voted for him; they need a voice, and he can be their voice. The discussion of how best to do that is ongoing. He's certainly not going to just walk away and lick his wounds."
But others cautioned that Mr. Kerry had little time to waste. Senate Democrats are already lining up behind Senators Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois as their new leaders. And with Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards and Dr. Dean in waiting as potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2008, Mr. Kerry is likely to have stiff competition for the party's helm.
Moreover, he will have to fend off those who argue that he is a poor choice for the party's public face, having failed to connect with many voters on bread-and-butter Democratic issues like jobs and health care, some Democratic strategists said.
"I doubt if any of the contenders would accede to Kerry as the head of the party," said Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, a liberal group. "He does have this added problem of, when you lost, it does put a tarnish on things, even when you got the most votes of any losing candidate ever.
"Plus, Democrats are pretty famous for eating their wounded. Hillary will have a significant feminist vote, Edwards will make a big play for the conservative side and the populists, I've heard that Bill Richardson is already starting his campaign, and then there's Dean. You'll see a lot of people out there who people will want to give a chance to and not Kerry."
Mr. Kerry's top advisers said they expected that as the titular head of the party the senator would have a good deal of influence over choosing a successor to Terry McAuliffe, the party's national chairman.
Others cautioned that only a sitting president typically gets to name the party leader and said that while Mr. Kerry would have a say, so would labor leaders, minority leaders and others, including the party's so-called Clinton wing. Among those already said to be lobbying for Mr. McAuliffe's job is Donna Brazile, who was Mr. Gore's campaign manager and is national chairwoman of the party's Voting Rights Institute.
Several Democratic strategists argued that the best role for Mr. Kerry outside the Senate would be as a forceful Democratic spokesman and critic on foreign affairs and national security, which are his policy areas of greatest comfort and which dominated the presidential campaign.
"I never thought in my lifetime I'd see a Democrat run on a platform of strong national defense," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant. "I think of Bush's as an unstable presidency. Democrats want to stabilize their country again, and John Kerry can help do that in offering a powerful countervailing voice to the Bush doctrine, or lack of a plan. He can become a coalition builder, with the McCains, Hagels and Lugars. And he understands Bush more than any other member of the Senate."
Mr. Kerry's focus on national security, as it turned out, hurt his efforts to break through to middle-class voters on pocketbook issues like jobs and health care, according to Democrats inside and outside of Mr. Kerry's campaign, who pointed to several reasons.
For one, they said Mr. Kerry was hamstrung in making his pitch on domestic policy as planned for the final weeks of the race, because events in Iraq - new casualties, missing explosives, or other fodder for attacks on Mr. Bush - constantly intervened.
"The central debate that happened every single day from Labor Day on was, do we want a domestic message, a foreign policy message, or do we do both?" said one campaign strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen as criticizing his former colleagues or his boss. "Every day we'd have a plan going into that day, and every day we'd have to say, do we respond to the events that interfered with our plan, or do we not?''
"You'd go into Ohio, which lost a quarter of a million jobs, and there'd be 15 soldiers killed that morning in Iraq, and we'd planned to talk about the job losses," the strategist said. If Mr. Kerry said a few words in response to the day's casualties, "that's what the press is going to cover, and we'll never get our job message out. On the other hand, how can we give a speech and not talk about it? Every single day we had to face that dilemma."
But another major reason Mr. Kerry was unable to close the sale with middle-class voters, advisers said, was that the Bush-Cheney campaign succeeded - with Mr. Kerry's help - in making him seem somehow alien and too far removed from the lives of those voters to understand them.
"Partly it was his style, the way he looked, the way he talked, his wife, the windsurfing, the houses," said the former strategist, who like other campaign officials said the sum total played into the Republican caricature of Mr. Kerry as vaguely foreign. "So I don't think there was any one specific thing, but it was a series of gut things that made a difficult question for them even harder.''
"We tried to get his language pared down more, with simpler speeches, less statistics; we had him out hunting, we put him in a bar in Wisconsin to watch a football game; we tried to humanize him more for people," the strategist said. "But at the end of the day, what's probably most important in politics is, you want to be as authentic as you can.
"Gore crossed the line of being inauthentic and didn't pass the smell test. Kerry didn't cross that line, but people didn't authentically connect with him, either. People felt they could connect with Bush even if they didn't agree with him, and on the margins that matters."
For Mr. Kerry, and the party, there is an old lesson here worth relearning, the strategist said: "There has been and continues to be a common tendency of Democrats trying to reach people through their brains and Republicans through their hearts. And in politics, hearts win the day."
LOL thanks for the laugh. Richardson couldn't even deliver his own state to the Rats.
One of the first things Republicans should do is expand the tax cuts (lower tax rates, not credits or deductions). Watch the Dems squirm and Kerry flipflop.
Mr.Kerry will first have to survive the traitor trial which should be starting soon, now that the election is over.
Kerry, whose ONLY experience as a "leader" was with the VVAW, will go back to the Senate in his capacity as chief chair duster - keeping the dust from collecting on his chair, but not much good for anything else.
His fellow Dems might expect him to "take the lead" are asking a wheel of limberger cheese to become a rose bush.
Ain't gonna happen.
Besides, we win more elections as long as the "team" of Clinton/McAuliffe are calling the shots.
If you look at it that way, Kerry was a good choice for the Dems; he got them that close. They may run him again with a bit of correction for 100K in Ohio. A regional running mate for instance.
He'll hold court like a president in exile. Plenty of people will go along with the charade, especially the lickspittle Europeans.
I hope he does...it will further erode support for the democrat party.
Arnie siad it best: "Why should I listen to losers?"
He is still going to have to answer to the charges of aiding and abetting the enemy brought on by Winter Soldier and the Swifties. The media will not be able to keep passing on this now. I for one am looking forward to his answering these charges and am equally sure he will be raked over the coals by his party for losing. They are looking for any excuse to explain their loss. Kerry's past offers the single most viable explanation and gives the rest of them a pass on their own failings.
Well, if this week's vitriolic editorial comments are any indication, his constituency lost interest in his guidance before Wednesday afternoon's concession speech.
"Kerry would be the person that could help him accomplish that, but if not, there will be a hunger for someone to stand up to Bush."
If Kerry doesn't offer a conciliatory tone, it'll be one more nail in the Democrat coffin. The country is more united behind this president and his agenda (as evidenced by the congressional gains) than they have been in a generation. More of their same partisanship will only hurt their party and show them to be dividers, not uniters.
Plus which, how much of the heartland or the nation really wants to rally behind the junior senator from a liberal east coast state...in opposition to a popular sitting president? He never really scored well with democrats...he was just the most viable "anybody but Bush" on the ballot.
..and you forgot, a "prized Senate Fench Poodle" for ThereeEEEEEsa to walk around with. :)
Snort. He'd have to show up first.
this require Kerry to actually show up and want to work... and want to work hard... i highly doubt this will happen...
please--Richardson's a crook... too much fodder... at the most, he'll use his "crookedness" to deliver NM...
but i do believe that the RNC needs to reach out to Latino voters NOW... we cannot wait until January 2008... and it has to be ongoing...
Plus, Richardson will get crushed due to his association with the N Korea Oil for No Nukes scam.
Bush has no reason whatsoever to speak with kerry.
It's really up to the Democrats to speak with him and decide whether they want to give him an imporant role.
It's unlikely. Why would they give an important post to a man who never shows up for work? Moreover, a man with no real power base, who was mainly a sock puppet for Teddy Kennedy in the war of Kennedys vs clintons for control of the party? Teddy needed Kerry because Chappaquiddick makes it impossible for him to run for president. But he certainly doesn't need him to take his place as a power broker in the Senate.
I agree with the vets. Kerry has to be brought down totally. We need to keep after him to sign Form 180.
GO SWIFTIES!
We have got to finish this traitor off NOW once and for all to see him for exactly what he is...
Even the many of the Dems in the end will be glad the liar lost...
imo
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