WP: Kerry Exceeds Expectations

[Jack_Dawson]

Bush's strategy may have worked too well
ANALYSIS
By Dana Milbank
Updated: 12:38 a.m. ET Oct. 15, 2004

WASHINGTON - After the three campaign debates in the past fortnight salvaged John F. Kerry's presidential candidacy, it has become clear to tacticians in both parties that the Democrat, to borrow President Bush's famous phrase from the 2000 campaign, was misunderestimated.

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The Bush campaign's ferocious advertising campaign in the spring and summer and the Republican convention were successful at defining Kerry as a vacillating opportunist who has no coherent policy on Iraq and is spineless on terrorism. But the strategy may have worked too well, pollsters and strategists say: By turning Kerry into a cartoon, the Bush campaign created such low expectations for the senator that he easily exceeded them in the debates.

"Leading up to the first debate, the Bush campaign very effectively defined John Kerry as a wishy-washy flip-flopper who never knew where he stood, and then they get on the stage and here's a John Kerry who differs from the perception," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6251550/

[WatchWhatISay]

1. Oh, I get it

It wasn't that John Kerry/John Edwards might acutally be enormously better equipped for being president/vp, its just that the bar was set so low by their opponents.

Then why do I remember All the Presidents Spin-Men out there trying to lower expectactions for Bush and raise them for Kerry (as in, what a tough opponent he was for whoever that guy was that ran against him for Mass. Senate) before the 1st and 2nd debate.

This is part of a "pattern and practice" of this administration. If the American people don't agree with them, they say they just slipped up in their ability to deliver the message. Not that their message is ever fundamentally wrong.

[Jack_Dawson]

2. Actually the article makes sense

Because it talks about how Bush's strategy has blown up in his face. Sooner or later, he will have to go face to face with this caricature he created, and he's been exposed. The polls reflect that.

[unblock]

3. it's true. they went negative WAY too early

they left time for kerry to figure out which attacks were working, and to effectively address those attacks.

this is why you shouldn't go negative until much closer to the election.

[Jack_Dawson]

4. But what else could they run on?

The "positives" of their administration? The war in Iraq we won back in May of 2003?

[ruggerson]

5. kick n/t

[gratuitous]

6. The strategy was flawed because it set low expectations?

Nonsense. The "strategy" was flawed because it was not rooted in the truth. Kerry didn't exceed a lowered expectation; he's been a good Senator and a capable politician since before Georgie crawled out of the bottle.

The Republicans certainly repeated "flip-flopper" and "wishy-washy" over and over again very effectively, and their obedient tools in the media certainly parroted those talking points, but because the strategy had the misfortune to be a lie, it fell apart.

Lowering expectations wasn't the flaw in the strategy; lying was the flaw in the strategy.

[Supersedeas]

7. suprised that the Senator from Mass is not a cartoon (substance?)