Posted on 11/12/2004 10:06:13 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
Top strategists with John Kerry's presidential campaign are blaming his crushing defeat last week on bad advice from Clinton operatives who took over the campaign after Labor Day.
"When [James] Carville and [Stan] Greenberg tell reporters that the campaign was missing a defining narrative, they forget that they were the ones insisting we had to keep beating the domestic-issues drum," complained David Thorne on Thursday.
Thorne - a brother-in-law from Kerry's first marriage to Julia Thorne - was one of Kerry's closest advisors throughout the campaign.
Thorne told political gadfly Arianna Huffington that because of the misguided Carville-Greenberg strategy, "We never defended John's character and focused on his leadership with the same singularity of purpose that the Republicans put on George Bush's leadership."
Kerry's brother Cameron agreed, telling Huffington, "There is a very strong John Kerry narrative that is about leadership, character and trust. But it was never made central to the campaign."
Tom Vallely, the Vietnam War veteran whom Kerry tapped to lead the response to the Swift boat attacks, told the columnist: "The Clinton team, though technically skillful, could not see reality they could only see their version of reality. And that was always about pivoting to domestic issues."
Reports Huffington:
"In conversations with Kerry insiders over the last nine months, Ive heard a recurring theme: that it was [Bob] Shrum and the Clintonistas [including Greenberg, Carville and senior advisor Joe Lockhart] who dominated the campaign in the last two months and who were convinced that this election was going to be won on domestic issues, like jobs and healthcare, and not on national security."
The failed strategy apparently originated with ex-President Clinton himself, who trumpeted the domestic issues mantra in repeated calls to Kerry.
Writes Huffington:
"Behind the scenes, former President Clinton also kept up the drumbeat, telling Kerry in private conversations right to the end that he should focus on the economy rather than Iraq or the war on terror, and that he should come out in favor of all 11 state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage a move that would have been a political disaster for a candidate who had already been painted as an unprincipled flip-flopper."
Yep. I've been saying for a while now that there was a coup de main in progress.
Knowing they were failing, the Kerrylosers took on the Clintoonistas to have a scape goat.
These thick-headed wonks miss the point that it's always about the candidate, not the campaign.
Clinton tried to make the 92 playbook work again. Too bad for him that W was using the same playbook.
Oh please.
Kerry got more votes than Clinton or Gore. The Dems turned out their base.
The unspoken secret is that it turned out our base is larger than theirs.
IF the Clinton's wanted to torpedo Kerry, and I'm not saying they didn't, this election proved they don't hold sway over the majority of their base because they turned out in spite of the Clinton's wishes.
disagree. Kerry had no choice but switch the focus from domestic issues to the war, as the "always reliable polls" were saying that americans were more worried about it.
One of the Heinz boys, Chris, I think, has already gone down that road.
This excuse isn't enough. Even when they did talk about national security, all they did was complain. If they had another vision of leadership I certainly didn't see it.
I really believe, when it came down to it--when people got in the booth--they thought about Septmeber 11th, the impending Islamic problem and they voted for Bush.
I'd be willing to wager, many more people than would ever come forward--pulled the lever for Bush.
the kerry campaign reminded me of the movie "who's minding the mint?"
This sounds like a Kerry supporter KYA. Fact is, nobody couldn make a silk purse out of a sows ear when it came to Kerry. He had no leadership skills, a poor Congressional record, a worse war record and did not know how to tell the truth. Once the American public started recieving information about the real Kerry via alternate news sources the mainstream media could no longer sell Kerry as the candidate he was not.
couuntdown to irreversible implosion has begun....
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Rush is Freepin' again. First the mannequin story, now this one.
bwahahahahaha.
Looking back, it doesn't seem to me as though Kerry did center his campaign on economic questions. His campaign was not dominated by "it's the economy stupid" or "are you better off now that you were four years ago." It does look as though in some way he wasn't there in the later stages of the campaign, that is, he didn't seem to have much of a focus at all. But such focus as there was looks to have been more Iraq and alliances than jobs and wages.
This is a case of "don't take their advice, and then blame them anyway.
Why dose kerry wait until after the election to try to think.
Gee..we could have told them that back when Kerry won the primaries.
Exactly who said they had to take their advice?
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