Advisers Urge Kerry to Flex Power in Senate and Party

New York Times ^ | Nov. 6, 2004 | DAVID M. HALBFINGER

[FairOpinion]

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."

[FairOpinion]

Bush's response, when people say he should listen to Kerry and the Democrats should be the same as Arnold Schwarzenegger's, when he was asked a similar question.

"Why would I listen to losers?" Schwarzenegger asked. "Let's be honest."

The WINNER sets the agenda. Bush won a decisive victory with 286 electoral votes and over 50% of the popular vote.

[bear11]

"W" is for WINNER!

[PhotoFixer3]

Unlike Al Gore, who made a tortured exit from the public stage after his loss to Mr. Bush four years ago

That would be President Bush to you...

[NonValueAdded]

The gift that keeps on giving!

[Chieftain]

Kerry is BURNT TOAST! Stick a fork in him, he's done!

At 8:00 PM Wednesday, Nov 3rd, 2004, I held a formal burning of discarded Kerry campaign signs as a way of signifying that his effect on my life is finished!

I placed a protest sign I had made for FReepin' him on his first visit to my hometown, Jacksonville, Florida, in May 2004. It had his face imposed on the Vietnam Memorial with his Senate testimony words on the wall, with my words underneath about how he betrayed us and smeared our reputations.

One of my sons videoed the affair for posterity, the other participated in lighting the signs. We also had a fireworks celebration of the Bush victory after the sign burning. I invited my neighbor, FReeper "Cup a Joe" a fellow veteran, to participate. His daughters also participated by reading an appeal to voters to reject Kerry on Election day. He has been a anxious about defeating Kerry as I was and he joined me as we fought to expose Kerry's FRAUD.

I also invited a couple other neighbors and their families to come watch.

When all the signs had burned and all the fireworks finished, Cup a Joe and I held our signs that we used for sign waving on election day and gave out a big "Victory Yell"!

It was a great celebration and a real cleansing of the TRAITOR Hanoi John Kerry from our lives forever!

[CWOJackson]

"Mr. Kerry has a Senate seat to return to..."

Yes, it's hardly been used before.

[SusaninOhio]

Yup, keep listening to those advisors. They've done such a great job so far (for President Bush).

[FairOpinion]

This is great! Thanks for sharing the pictures.

[Cowboy Bob]

Sen. Kerry, do America a favor and resign. The Republican Governor of Massachusetts will be glad to name your replacement!

[plushaye]

The same thing was said about Gore after 2000 but the Clintons banished him to the backroom. They hold the sway over the party and Kerry has no clout to fight them with.

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

Maybe Kerry will take over Daschle's place as chief obstructionist.

[trashcanbred]

For 20 years Kerry has done nothing in the Senate... now they want him to be a motivator? Out of all the predictions and things that could happen after this election this one won't be it.

[Cowboy Bob]

Edwards will make a big play for the conservative side...

Why? He's one of the most Liberal Senators.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

It was a great celebration and a real cleansing of the TRAITOR Hanoi John Kerry from our lives forever!

He's not gone just yet. We need to get the Clintons to expose his original discharge paters. Then, he will be through.

[Chieftain]

Here's more about Vietnam vets and Kerry...
This sign was erected by a fellow Vietnam veteran and retired Marine in his yard in Orange Park, Florida, not a mile and half from my house...

After Tuesday, his neighbor modified it...

[Libertarian444]

DE-NILE

[Mr. Keys]

Hopefully this POS will be totally exposed for what he is and will be forced from the Senate in disgrace. I know this is probably wishful thinking but this turd does not belong in any public office.

[FairOpinion]

Articles don't talk about the SwiftVets much. But I am firmly convinced that they were the ones who disrupted Kerry's momentum, set the stage and significantly contributed to a Bush Victory.

God Bless them all. They have been vindicated. They defeated the Traitor.

[bc boy]

an observant canuck says that kerry is way passed the alien label...he is a committed marxist/socialist just like former canuck prime minister pierre trudeau[yes people another frog]who single handidly destroyed canada as free enterprise capitalist democracy in the 1970's and we are still fighting the socialist hords and marxist vermin trying to take our counrty back from them...it ain't easy...don't let it happen to you boys and girls...don't let down your guard....eh...the bc boy

[Tallguy]

Flex his muscles?! Good idea! Maybe Kerry & that other loser, Gore, can do their "Hans und Franz" routine at the next convention.