Karl Rove is NO genius

[mtnsnake]

That's the biggest cop-out of all time. It was the people running our campaign being so freaking stupid, not Rove being any such mastermind. The tactics Karl Rove employed are no different than what you can find on any elementary schoolyard playground where a couple bullies are involved.

The truth of the matter is that the Democrats made it a piece of cake for him and the repukes. The Democratic campaign made the biggest boner imagineable right from the outset:

We let the theme of the campaign become all about OUR candidate and not about Bush. The focus should've been entirely on THE-MOST-PATHETIC-PRESIDENT-IN-HISTORY, yet we ignored their initial lies and stuck to the high road. How could anyone ever think of taking the high road when you're talking about the worst president in history? We let the campaign become all about the wrong guy. We let the country wonder about Kerry, instead of wondering about the corrupt bastard in the White House.

The Republicans lied and they smeared, and we let them. By lying and smearing, the Republicans shifted the focus onto Kerry, and we let them get away with it. When they first started lying and smearing, we didn't respond, and that was a fatal mistake. We didn't respond to the Swift Boat liars. For Christs sake, we didn't even have an answer to that despicable humiliating scene at the Repuke convention where masses of wild-eyed, drool-dripping republican freaks clapped flip-flops together in unison that had Kerry's picture painted on them. So, because we didn't respond, the Repukes did what any other predator would do. They lied and humiliated even more. The more they lied about our man, the more the focus was off theirs. It's embarrassing that we fell for such an easy ploy as this. Oops, we forgot who the focus was supposed to be on.

This should've been an easy Democratic campaign win and it wasn't, and it was all because we allowed them to keep the focus off Bush...and on Kerry instead. We allowed them to do that right from the start and we never adjusted. We should've pounded the shit out of them.

[NYCGirl]

1. And whose brilliant idea was it to have "no Bush bashing" at the

Democratic National Convention?

[WI_DEM]

3. I agree

That was the biggest blunder of the campaign. The Dem convention was about the wrong war--Vietnam, instead of the war that counted right now--Iraq.

[diplomats]

5. Bob Shrum's probably

and we all know his presidential campaign track record.

[bcflor]

13. Rove is

maybe not a genius but I wish we had someone like him! Bob Shrum is 0 for 8!!! I'd take Rove over Shrum any day!!!

[mtnsnake]

14. For a brief while, I thought like you did

Bob Shrum isn't 0 for 8 because of Karl Rove; he's 0 for 8 because of himself.

[fob]

17. Did you watch the convention? If you did, I don't know what speeches

you saw/heard, but the ones I caught were anti-bush* barnburners! I'm not sure where to find them, but they gotta be in cyberspace somewhere, so if you come across them start with Jimmy Carter's speech. Jimmy laid the smackdown on shrubby* but GOOD!

I did hear the talking heads (aka mediawhores) spouting off on how the Dems better not be bush* bashing and that slowly changed into "the Dems got the message and no bush* bashing will be allowed" and "several speeches were rewritten to remove caustic anti-bush* language" and other tripe like that, but whether that was a tactical "leak" as cover by the Dems or more likely the MW's sticking to their rnc script is an issue. What I do know is there was plenty of ire hurled bush*s way during the convention.

Don't believe the rnc-dictated-mediawhore-recited-hype.

[NYCGirl]

18. I saw the entire convention, and burned many of the speeches on DVD...

but I guess your perception of a "barnburner" and mine differ greatly. Some oblique references to the administration in power (and interesting that the strongest, other than off-script Sharpton, was Carter's, the most gentlemanly of ex-presidents) do not a barnburner make, IMO.

[fob]

21. Maybe that's the problem. Perception. It was not my "perception"

that there was bush*bashing in speeches, it was there to see and hear plainly. Of course there were speeches that had no bush*bashing, because there were more than a few that were positive and forward-looking in scope (Obama's comes to mind here). I don't think EVERY speech had to refer to bush* as the anti-christ, but it certainly was NOT imperceptible that plenty of speakers took their shots. I am supposing that the mediawhore's spin I spoke of in my previous post has colored more than a few persons PERCEPTION of the speeches. This is not an, "I'm right, you're wrong" post, just my opinion offered to you. Maybe a re-examination of the speeches without mediawhore overdubbing of the rnc message of the day will lead you to a different conclusion.

Disclaimer: I'm not arguing that the true message of the speaker's words won out over the mediawhore message of "no bush*bashing" at the time, I'm just saying that an impartial look back will reveal the falsity of that particular lie.

Peace.


And Fuck bush*!

[jpgray]

30. Sharpton's speech, anyone? (nt)

[NYCGirl]

31. I pointed out Sharpton's unscripted speech in the thread above:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1465887&mesg_id=1466003&page=

[jpgray]

33. Didn't see it, sorry. We were pretty screwed no matter what we did

Remember the weeks leading up to the convention, the media were constantly admonishing the Democrats about the "Hollywood hate fest", the primaries which were months of "Bush bashing", and the main question was "can the Democrats keep the Bush bashing under control to avoid alienating voters?" And of course framed in that way, the listener/watcher doesn't even need to put forth a subjective slant--one is provided for him or her.

Given the choice though, I think going for Bush's throat would have been more satisfying and more successful.

[WI_DEM]

2. It was said all along if the democrats made this a referendum

on Bush we win, but when it became a referendum on Kerry, Bush was able to keep it close enough to steal Ohio and win the election.

[diplomats]

8. I agree

and there's no way this should've been anything other than a referendum on Bush. When incumbents run, that's the way it's supposed to be.

[mtnsnake]

9. Absolutely. This should never have even been that close

for them to steal.

It should've been a runaway, had we simply kept the focus where it belonged. To do that, we needed to answer their outrageous lies from the get-go, and we didn't. The focus then switched for good away from Bush and onto Kerry.

[cruadin]

4. Well said---I'm tired of Karl Rove being talked about...

as he if he were some Titan of chicanery and political manipulation. He's a two-bit hack with a one-note spiel.

The Democrats working for Kerry (and the other nominees) let the Repugs frame the debate AND define the terms.

That's why we lost.

[Gnaeus]

6. We had to walk a narrow road.

We would have been bludgeoned by ads if we had gone negative early, we didn't define Kerry before they turned him into a "flip-flopper" make Bush seem the better leader.

[liberal N proud]

7. You are absolutly correct, the Democrats did not attack shrub

From Jan through November, everything should have been focused on what a poor excuse of a president shrub has been. They let him off.
There is always this talk about clean campaign and the public dose not like the dirt.
What a bunch of BS that is. Look how they flock to FAUX lies and the swift boat liars. The public loves dirt and mud slinging, that is why reality TV is so big.
The attacks really need to start now on the repukes for every fuck up they pour out.
The public would eat it up just like a soap oprah.

[sendero]

16. Exactly....

..... I say this here every chance I get, and here's another one.

Nobody ever lost an election for slinging mud - as long as the mud you are slinging is believable. It doesn't even have to be true, just believable.

When the Dems fell for the "I hope they are not going to Bash Bush at the convention", I was beside myself. The moron or morons who come up with that idea should be pumping out porta-potties, not running a f*cking election campaign.

If we don't get the idiots and wimps away from our campaigns, we might as well quit now.

[JI7]

10. actually, they should have talked about Kerry's record more

his record as prosecutor and his record in the Senate.

[marc_the_dem]

11. hopefully we'll learn from this

and put away the kid gloves...

[peacetalksforall]

12. You say school yard and you are correct. I say he operates at the

lowest level of humanity and people who praise and work with him and those for whom he does his work operate at the lowest level of humanity. I think school yard kids are just discovering the capability to operate at the lowest levels of humanity, but don'tusually get stuck there.

[BuelahWitch]

32. Rove was beat up by a Catholic schoolgirl in 1960

during that presidential election. He's been "paying her back" ever since...

[AzDar]

15. Karl Rove isn't a genius; just a corrupt, wanna-be-a-politician-but-one

look-at-my-chinless-face-would-turn-off-even-the-most-brainwashed-sheep-and-therefore-have-found-myself-the-perfect-mindless-marionette-to-control-Dumbfuck.He's dirty and would do ANYTHING (and apparently HAS), to keep his Pinocchio in power.

[illflem]

19. Rove is no genus nor his tactics original

The Third Reich used almost the same...

[Leilani]

20. The biggest outrage of all is that the Dems knew what was coming

They had seen Rove in action in 2000, yet they wwere TOTALLY unprepared to go against him.

For the most important race of my lifetime, this campaign was an absolute disaster, no ifs, ands, or buts.

And if it wasn't for the grass roots work & money, Bush would have won more states than he did.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

24. Democrats need to get out of their 60's leftie "let's all get along"...

crap! Until we do this, the Party has no where to go but down some more!

Get some balls and fight!

[moggie12]

22. Yes! Yes! We could've buried that big Bumble Bush!

You are SO right!

1) Karl framed the campaign as "strong and steadfast" vs. "weak-kneed flip-flopper". Not only did Shrum & Co. not offer a different "story frame", they played right into Karl's by not fighting back against Republican lies, thus making Kerry look, you guessed it, weak-kneed! How could they have missed Karl's strategy??? It's mind-boggling. And what was so hard about coming up with their own "story frame"? How about "Kerry is intelligent and competent" vs "Bush is a Bungler". They could've made a killer commercial listing all Bush's foreign policy bungles -- not just Iraq, of course, but all of them (e.g., announcing via a State of the Union message that N. Korea is a member of the "axis of evil" without calling the South Koreans first to let them know).

2) Kerry could've done Bush in with his convention speech, but instead it was a flowery mish-mosh of this and that. Did you know Kerry's mom used to read to him at night, sit by his bed when he was sick, was his Cub Scout den leader, and got a 50-year-service Girl Scout pin? America does because that's what Shrum had Kerry blathering on about during the first part of his speech. Too bad everybody was asleep by the time Kerry got midway into the speech and said his little two line blurb about "fighting an intelligent war against terror". Too bad everybody never got to hear from Democratic candidate for President about Bush recklessly leading the country down the path to geopolitical chaos and economic ruin.

Can I sue Shrum & Co and get my Kerry donation back?????

[mtnsnake]

27. It's almost mind-boggling, isn't it

how the Kerry camp didn't do the simple things that were running through all our minds....like PASTE THE DAMN CHIMP!!! It would've been the right thing to do and it would've been so damn easy.

Instead, the only *tough talk* we got from Kerry was that overdone lingo about himself (again because he let the focus be on him instead of Bush), "If I'm elected, I'm going to seek the terrorists out and KILL them!"...like he was the Terminator or something

Nope, that goofy looking bastard, Rove, wasn't any genius by a long shot. The Kerry campaign just made him seem like one.

[NYCGirl]

23. Let's not forget the Republicans portraying Kerry/Edwards

as gay lovers! This article on Salon.com reminded me of that golden oldie below-the-belt punch from Rove...

The Year of the Sucker Punch

[amjucsc]

25. While I mostly agree

A lot of the campaign had to revolve around making Kerry out to be a superior alternative to W in the eyes of the moderate voters who actually decided the election. If simply saying "Bush bad, vote for us" was enough then we'd have won.

Instead our sales team screwed up selling Kerry. I don't know that Rove was a genius, but their svengalis was definitely superior to our svengalis.

[robbedvoter]

26. No genius indeed. But a thug. And we won.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3987237.stm

Early exit polls quoted by media seemed to give Mr Kerry the edge, but colleagues said Mr Rove indicated right away that they did not tally with his information.

He used his own data to put Ohio and Florida in the Bush column - bringing cheers from the president and his family when he went into the Roosevelt Room and told them


The sooner you admit this, the sooner we can fight for democracy. Until that, keep doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

[cyn2]

38. interesting....weren't those the same words used in 2000 by shrub?

When Bush made some statement during the night of election 2000, didn't he say something about the vote giving FL to Gore, "didn't match his information"....then got on phone to bro. jeb. I thought that was an odd statement at the time, now Rove using the same thing.

[jerryster]

28. Have to disagree for the most part

First, Let me say that I do agree with you about Kerry needing to respond immediately to the Swift Boat Liars. Big mistake. People want to blame Schrum. I blame Kerry. He needed to lead at that moment, but he was led instead. He even acknowledged that he should have responded. However, would it have made a difference? I believe the answer is no.

It depresses the hell out of me to say this but the fact is that there are more and more right wing conservatives emerging every day. Remember, Kerry got the 2nd highest vote total in history. Bush got the highest. I know that a lot of people have tried to downplay the evangelical vote, especially since so many Jews and Catholics voted for Bush. I hold fast to the belief that it was absolutely the evangelical votes that won it for Bush. Why? Well, I hate to admit this as well, but it was something said by both Rove and LaHood. They believed that 4 million evangelicals stayed home in 2000. If they voted in 2004, they said, Bush would win. He won. By about 4 million votes. That to me is just simple math.

I just don't see how any Democratic candidate would have won those states that Bush won. Remember also that a lot of the states Kerry won were too close for comfort, (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin come to mind). What chance did we have in those states where so many people call themselves evangelicals and believe absolutely that Bush is one of their own? None, I daresay.

Is there good news here? I don't know. Perhaps those same people will stay home in 2008 if they don't accept the Repub candidate as one of their own. Remember, though, their numbers are growing. And let's be clear about it; a growing number of Hispanics and African Americans are joining their ranks as well. Did you see the recent march against gay marriage in one southern state (I forget which one)? Thousands of anti gay marriage protesters and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM AFRICAN AMERICAN! (I say to them: welcome to the wrong side of a civil rights issue. How ironic.)

I absolutely understand your anger and frustration. But you said it should have been an easy win. No way. The people who needed to be convinced that Bush is a corrupt lying SOB (which he is, of course) were never going to be receptive to the message. As a friend of mine said, even if Bush killed someone, as long as it wasn't a Republican, those people were going to vote for him. Sadly, I think this country is going to be in the grip of religious conservatism for quite some time.

[Silverhair]

29. Kerry doomed himself.

First, all during the Democratic primaries and during the campaign, there was lots of Bush bashing. Sometimes it seemed like Kerry expected people to vote for him simply because he wasn't Bush.

But Kerry was doomed from the start. Last year, before the first primary, I posted repeatedly on DU that the main issue in the fall was going to be NATIONAL SECURITY!!!!! I said that 9-11 had fundamentaly changed the American people. I was flamed for saying that. Well, it was the main issue, whether we liked it or not.

So, instead of a famous General (Who was also a southerner and a Rhodes scholar) we put up a war protester, whose military background was as a junior officer. Granted, his service was more than Bush's, but he returned to lead a war protest movement, and meet privately with the enemy in Paris. That scared the crap out of middle America. They were afraid that Kerry would sell them out. All that Rove had to do was hammer away at that theme.

Notice how after Kerry mopped the floor with Bush in the first debate, Bush's poll rating barely dropped. Kerry victories in debates two and three were not as one sided at the first, but Bush's polls improved.

With Clark that would not have happened. He was in Vietnam and decorated too, but he didn't come back to lead protests. He stayed and served at a time when it was extremely unpopular. Clark would have had respect in the red states, and would have won a few of them.

[opihimoimoi]

35. I sincerely believe there were forces to help Kerry win the primaries...

For the reasons you mention.

[mtnsnake]

41. I couldn't agree with you more.

Not a very electable candidate to begin with, and our campaign advisors made it a one-theme campaign (the war)...which put the focus on Kerry. How stupid could they possibly get?

[mtnsnake]

40. Interesting argument

as pessismistic as it is, considering how you feel about the evangelical vote being the difference. You might be right, but regardless to whatever made the difference, it's still very argueable that the Kerry campaign was pathetic. Whatever the case, then Rove shouldn't be made out to be some kind of genius. Yes, I'll give the freak, Karl Rove, SOME credit for some of his backhanded tactics, but that's about it. If any repuke is responsible for their win, I'd have to say Cheney, for following through with his pre-planned invasion of Iraq.

If it weren't for a pathetic Kerry campaign and the war in Iraq, Rove wouldn't be considered anything more than a sore loser right about now.

[opihimoimoi]

34. We should not bend to the pressure to be like them...

I don't mean we should be pansies either....

What we should do is gather forces in a way to better our odds of success.

This we had not done...thus the loss

During the debates I had mentioned all contenders should shove personal shit aside and come forth with vigerous help. Forget TOKEN HELP....

Had the losing contenders come to join forces to put better odds on Kerry Edwards, the result might have been far different in Kerry's favor.

They coulda get together in a group 2 or 3 times a month for a day or two at a stretch to demo UNITY... Take the Bus route thing... People like their ROAST Shows where peers roast one another with mucho slide shows/video clips

Why not a Monthly Roast Show with Bush/etc roasted every month...Two and three at a time ala Daly Show....

[theboss]

36. Dude, Rove can cause earthquakes and hurricanes

Not only is he brilliant, but he is a sorcerer.

[Old Mouse]

37. Rove is obsessed with making people BELIEVE he is a genius

When he is just a moral defect of a man. He has only one trick: to create a lie so big that it crosses all boundaries of human decency. The average man can't believe someone could be so heinous as to create such a fabrication, so the lesser sin, the content of the lie, must be true.

Public service is supposed to be about promoting general welfare and maintaining infrastructure, But Rove knows nothing of any of this. He only knows how to insulate himself within the power elite and spin propaganda while our country falls into ruin from neglect.

He is a megalomaniac who doesn't recognize his own lack of vision, obsessed with validating his(lack of)genius at the expense of human lives. An ugly, impotent, little psychotic of a man.

[NVMojo]

39. sorry but this worm is clever and the Dem Party hasn't learned anything

about his political terrorism to develop our own "counter Rove terrorism" strategies.

[mtnsnake]

42. Things aren't always as they appear

Considering a dreadful campaign on our part, and the Iraq war, Karl Rove had life easy. Kerry ended up campaigning against himself.

[Cary]

43. Take a step back.

We lost this election. All of the would haves, should haves, and could haves change nothing.

In retrospect, could we have won if. . . ? If what? And even if we could identify that "if", would it still be an "if" in two years, or four years?

This handwringing and blame game is a waste of time. We have new battles to fight, like this Social Security issue.

[DemGirl7]

44. Karl Rove is more evil than Satan. n/t