Monday, September 06, 2004
Winner by Forfeit
Labor Day is the traditional opening day of the fall campaign season, but from where I sit, this ballgame is already over. What we're going to watch in the next two months is the Republicans pouring buckets of water on somebody who's already drowning thanks to his own ineptitude as a swimmer. The Kerry campaign has proven to be everything I feared the Democrats would mount against Bush in 2004--weak in expressing itself, weak in defending itself, and wedded to the deadly DLC idea that the best way to win is to be as much like Bush as possible and hope that people pull the Democrats' lever by mistake.
It is possible to stomach defeat if you go down while standing up for something, remaining true to principles that will survive even if you don't. (Which is why I ended up voting for Howard Dean in Wisconsin's primary even after it was clear he had no shot.) But what's happening to Kerry isn't defeat, it's a forfeit. It's not even showing up. Kerry is not entirely to blame for this. Rank-and-file Democrats' desire to nominate a war hero, any war hero, made them blind to the very liabilities that are being exploited by the Republicans now: Kerry's ambiguous response to his own Vietnam service in the 30 years since he came home, his votes in favor of programs advocated by the very man he wants to unseat, and his ponderous style on the stump.
The more we see of Kerry on the campaign trail, the more I am convinced that we could be just as close with Dean, Edwards, or Clark, each of whom would have been a far better, less cautious candidate than Kerry has been. The very closeness of the race only adds to the frustration of watching Kerry lose it. I know that polling due this week will show Bush up by only four or five points nationally, and with a slim lead in the state-by-state polling translated to the Electoral College. None of that matters. We have seen what the Kerry campaign does when confronted by vicious Republican attacks (fumbling their response to the Swift Boat Liars) and when handed a golden opportunity to bash Bush (opting to talk about credit-card debt on the day new poverty numbers were released). We have seen it get its righteous indignation on too late (Kerry's midnight speech after the Republican Convention). I have seen nothing that makes me think the campaign is going to radically alter its playbook. We know that what we have seen so far is just a taste of what the Republicans will unleash on Kerry in September and October, and its effect will be devastating.
Whether Democrats should adopt Republican campaign tactics in fighting Bush was the topic of a long thread at Political Animal earlier this weekend. Opinions are, as you'd expect, divided. Democrats being Democrats, we argue over how to hold the firehose while the damn building burns down. Last week, Salon's Eric Boehlert examined the Swift Boat saga in a piece titled "They Know How to Win: Does John Kerry?" Written brightly between the lines was the answer to Boehlert's question: "No."
The last word of this grim forecast belongs to a Salon letter-writer, Conor Brennan, responding to Boehlert's story.
Labor Day is the traditional opening day of the fall campaign season, but from where I sit, this ballgame is already over. What we're going to watch in the next two months is the Republicans pouring buckets of water on somebody who's already drowning thanks to his own ineptitude as a swimmer. The Kerry campaign has proven to be everything I feared the Democrats would mount against Bush in 2004--weak in expressing itself, weak in defending itself, and wedded to the deadly DLC idea that the best way to win is to be as much like Bush as possible and hope that people pull the Democrats' lever by mistake.
It is possible to stomach defeat if you go down while standing up for something, remaining true to principles that will survive even if you don't. (Which is why I ended up voting for Howard Dean in Wisconsin's primary even after it was clear he had no shot.) But what's happening to Kerry isn't defeat, it's a forfeit. It's not even showing up. Kerry is not entirely to blame for this. Rank-and-file Democrats' desire to nominate a war hero, any war hero, made them blind to the very liabilities that are being exploited by the Republicans now: Kerry's ambiguous response to his own Vietnam service in the 30 years since he came home, his votes in favor of programs advocated by the very man he wants to unseat, and his ponderous style on the stump.
The more we see of Kerry on the campaign trail, the more I am convinced that we could be just as close with Dean, Edwards, or Clark, each of whom would have been a far better, less cautious candidate than Kerry has been. The very closeness of the race only adds to the frustration of watching Kerry lose it. I know that polling due this week will show Bush up by only four or five points nationally, and with a slim lead in the state-by-state polling translated to the Electoral College. None of that matters. We have seen what the Kerry campaign does when confronted by vicious Republican attacks (fumbling their response to the Swift Boat Liars) and when handed a golden opportunity to bash Bush (opting to talk about credit-card debt on the day new poverty numbers were released). We have seen it get its righteous indignation on too late (Kerry's midnight speech after the Republican Convention). I have seen nothing that makes me think the campaign is going to radically alter its playbook. We know that what we have seen so far is just a taste of what the Republicans will unleash on Kerry in September and October, and its effect will be devastating.
Whether Democrats should adopt Republican campaign tactics in fighting Bush was the topic of a long thread at Political Animal earlier this weekend. Opinions are, as you'd expect, divided. Democrats being Democrats, we argue over how to hold the firehose while the damn building burns down. Last week, Salon's Eric Boehlert examined the Swift Boat saga in a piece titled "They Know How to Win: Does John Kerry?" Written brightly between the lines was the answer to Boehlert's question: "No."
The last word of this grim forecast belongs to a Salon letter-writer, Conor Brennan, responding to Boehlert's story.
More and more, Kerry resembles not JFK so much as another Massachusetts politician, Michael Dukakis, who allowed the other side to define him and never fought back, believing points would one day be awarded for control of the moral high ground. Sad to say (and it's not because the media are in Republican overdrive with the convention) I believe Bush will win easily in November and Kerry will be consigned to political scrap heap of "should-have-beens."My thoughts exactly.
I will end by noting that since Kerry emerged from the primaries, I have been meaning to contribute to his campaign. Still, I have not contributed and now I know why--instinctively, I find it hard to back a horse who leaves the starting gate gingerly, runs without purpose or plan and can't find its way to the winner's circle.
