Interesting article on Kerry in the Hill

[Mass]

Interesting analysis, even if there are a few snarky remarks.

I would not say that Kerry is aligning to the liberal activists, I would say he is doing his job and other do not.

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/071405/kerry.html

[fedupinBushcountry]

1. I agree

Funny how they only mention what a talking head from AEI says, and the others are nameless.

I think they forget, he talked to the American people for 2 years, he gets it, to bad so many of our Dem leaders don't.

[Island Blue]

2. I think a lot of people in GD need to read this article

You know the ones who are always accusing Kerry of doing nothing and not being liberal enough. I agree with you though, it sounds like he's doing his job rather than worrying only about future political ramifications. This need of his to always "do the right thing" even if it may someday come back to haunt him is just one more thing I love about this man. He is always working on behalf of the people. Having said that, I think he's smart to realize that these issues (DSM & Rove) ARE very important to the American people right now. I think a lot of other Democratic senators are a wee bit out of touch in this regard.

[TayTay]

3. I essentially agree with the article's conclusions

The biggest criticism of Kerry last year and the one that did the most damage was the dreaded 'flip-flop' thing. As painful as it is to admit, the damn thing damaged Kerry and it was extremely difficult to erase the first impressions of a great deal of the electorate that he didn't stand for something. Well, damn it, he stands pretty clearly now for things, doesn't he. (And Norm Ornstein is a good guy. Really. I know he works at a Rethug funded place, but he's a fair man.)

A lot of thinkers in the Democratic Party believe that the way back to victory for the Party is to go to the center politically. They believe that if they take the Left's money but don't really act the way the Left wants but spurn them publicly then the mythical center will embrace them and take them into electoral heaven. Well, that is one interpretation of last year's results.

I happen to think that is the wrong interpretation. I know that Sen. Kerry doesn't like to be pigeon-holed as a 'Massachusetts liberal' but he was the most liberal Democratic nominee since at least George McGovern and maybe since Stevenson. He garnered 59 million votes and increased the Democratic vote over 2000 by, I think 6-8 million people. This is, as people around me say, not nothing. It also, to me, says that Mr. Kerry's liberalism (or perceived liberalism) was not the reason he lost. (Ahm, how many states were really close, like Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, etc.) I think he lost (election fraud not withstanding) because not enough people in the true center decided to change horses in mid-stream. I didn't see Mr. Kerry's unfavorables as all that bad, and certainly not after all the slime that was thrown at him.)

Mr. Kerry is, in his way, answering the question that has been put to Democrats after last year's election: What do you stand for? Well, he stands for a livable environment, for wiser allocation of federal dollars in insuring children, for accountability from elected officials, for a public accounting for the money spent in the war effort, for smarter and better funded security at ports and rails and so forth. He clearly stands against officials who lie to the public and damage the image of America abroad. He is against letting corporations off the hook for defrauding the public by limiting class action lawsuits. He is against letting the Administration try to balance the budget on the backs of military veterans. He is against tightening the bankruptcy laws so tightly that they make middle and lower income people scream. Yeah, I get it.

The centrists believe, well what do they believe? If you take March's bankruptcy bill and parse it and the Dems who voted for it (in like 33 separate votes) I can't figure out what the hell they stand for or who they hope to attract to their side with this vote. But they seem convinced by the argument that 'We have to be tough on dead-beats and we need to demand responsibility and accountability from people. The days of Dems coddling people as in the old Welfare Days are over.' Ahm, I submit that that is not a Democratic argument and will not attract people from the center. (It is a content-free message. And a Republican leaning one at that.)

So, yeah, I think the article is essentially right. And I am on Mr. Kerry's side. Oh, and liberals tend to vote much more heavily in the primaries. Remember that. (And I am not being cynical. It is possible to believe that Mr. Kerry learned something in the last election. Be who you are. Stand for what you believe in. It's so much easier to play defense and offense that way.)

[saracat]

4. And those other Senators are self interested weinies. They disgust me.

They should be lining up behind Kerry.But we don't live in a perfect world,and they won't .Sigh.

[TayTay]

5. Not so fast, it's not that easy

Pretend for a minute that you are Mary Landreiu from Louisiana. She is a moderate Democrat in a heavily Republican state. (New Orleans notwithstanding.) What changes the conversation in that state? How do you present liberal views in such a way that you develop a distinctive image in the public mind that is easily identified as 'Not Republican' and yet not be so liberal that you frighten off the center? How do Democrats campaign in Mississippi where Haley Barbor currently (according to SurveyUSA polling) is at a 41% to 50% favorable/unfavorable rating. How does a Dem pick up the Mississippi Governorship? This is not easy. (If it was easy, it would have been done by now.)

And I think Mr. Kerry is laying down some bets. He will damn right and well stand for identifiable Democratic things. But that is indeed a double-edged sword. (But I adore the fact that he is laying down the bets. He should receive sufficient feedback by early 2007 to see if this favors another run or if he should instead seek re-election to his seat from MA.) What he is doing is a gamble and it is different from what he did last time. (I love it, of course, but it is a damn high-stakes game. and not everyone can play it.)

[saracat]

9. Umm. I have tried to understand but sorry, selling out of democratic

ideals is selling out.Period. If someone is NOT going to represent the basic ideals of our party, why do we need them? Seriously, only if it would help us gain a majority( And even I would make a deal if we were close but we aren't and weren't) , or tip us in that direction is it in any way worth it. If they vote against us, as she so often doers, what do we need them for? We can get the rare repuke vote as often as we get some of these. If they can't get elected as a Dem, then they obviously didn't present themselves well.End of story. Obviously if they must vote repuke to keep their seat, they are Republican and don't do the Democrats any favors. This isn't about just image.It is about how some vote.And some vote against core Democratic values.Anyone who voted for the Bankruptcy Bill, for example will never have my support, pretend Dem or not. Biden can go whistle and I have never trusted Reid. But JMHO. I will always vote Dem, but I will only support those that represent my values.

[ginnyinWI]

17. I think, if anything, he didn't come off as liberal enough

The traditional, "running to the center" thing after the primaries meant blunting his more liberal stands on issues, which did make people not realize the huge difference between him and *. People in the center who were not paying very close attention didn't see it, and didn't think it mattered very much who they picked. So yeah, maybe they were too cautious on that. Some of us who "got" him had confidence that he would remain a true liberal, but those in the center were more confused.

Funny though, I think he really did appeal to a lot of people. Even my RW mom, I could tell, was rather charmed by him (although she'd never have admitted it).

And yeah, to get the nomination in the first place, you have to be more left or right, depending on your party, to convince your party that you stand for them.

This is somewhat related: The Nation has a good cover article ("Reconnecting to the World: A Foreign Policy for Democrats")this week about neoliberal Democrats who are rather hawkish on the subject of foreign policy (they are referring to the DLC),who have policies not unlike the Neocons. The article explains how wrong this is, and contrasted it with Kerry's view, that terrorism can be reduced to a "nuisance".
I think anyone who attaches themselves to a hawkish view of the war on terrorism and postulates only military solutions is going to be tainted with what Bush is doing now! The article proposes alternative solutions which are much more Kerry-like: shared power among the main world powers, working with international institutions like the U.N., working to build prosperity and peace for all. It says that FDR had it right, and that we now need a worldwide "New Deal" to solve the causes of terrorism and war. A very good read!

[TayTay]

18. Ill pick it up and thanks for the 'heads up' on it.

I think Sen. Kerry's announced book is going to be about this.

I am noticing more and more that people are favorably comparing what is happening now with what Kerry said. That whole NYTimes article was actually very good, it's just that the liars took nuisance out of context and used it to imply weakness. (Not true. The Marshall Plan was not weak, it is one of the finest things the US has ever done. Very strong and it created friends for us.)

[Goldeneye]

6. I don't know.

I don't see how what he's doing is going to alienate people. They mention his letter to speed up phase two because of the DSM, but I just can't imagine losing votes over that. 42% of the country said they favored impeachment if Bush lied, so a lot of people are looking for accountability. The article mentions the Karl Rove thing, but Kerry isn't the only one asking for Rove to be fired. He's more outspoken than most, but he's not the only one. And then the only other thing they mentioned was Kerry grilling Condi. I really don't see the harm in that. The base liked it, and the rest of the country just didn't care. If he is thinking about running again, he really does have to feed the base. I'm not saying that's the reason he's doing it. I think he genuinely wants to get these crooks, but his outspokeness makes the base happy, and the base are the ones he needs fighting for him during the primaries.

The other thing is, they didn't mention Kerry's Kids' health care program, which I think is definately something most americans would like to see passed. And they didn't mention the count every vote act, or the Kerry-Cantwell Ammendment to stop drilling in ANWR. These are popular, or would be popular if the media would report on them. He's been outspoken on many things that American's care about, including Veterans issues, Iraq, port protection, etc. I just don't see this double edged sword.

[wisteria]

7. he has been outspoken against this administration, but .

smart about it. I really haven't heard of the Repubs classifying him as far left. This is because he still has a lot of credibility and respect left from the election. After all, he was a presidential candidate and he fought a good fight. As you, I don't see the things he has fought for or been outspoken about as being only liberal causes. I think his opinions are those of a great many Americans, including myself.

[whometense]

8. Essentially I agree.

I just wanted to add that the odious Ken Mehlman was on Hardball tonight and singled Kerry out for his demand that Bush fire Rove.

It was interesting. He mentioned Kerry about four times in one minute, in a horrified tone. I can't see that kind of notice doing Kerry anything but good, frankly.

[whometense]

16. FYI, if anyone's interested

Hardball transcript here:

Karl Rove said to a reporter that you ought not include the Joe Wilson report because it's inaccurate. And Karl was right. Mr. Wilson was wrong. The report was inaccurate. He was wrong in the sense that the vice president had not sent him down. And it's rather amazing that right now we have got Democrat leaders, we've got the guy that ran for president, John Kerry, we've got Senator Clinton, former first lady, calling for someone to lose their job, smearing someone politically who is fully complying with an investigation over what you just described.

(snip)

ED ROGERS, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Well, I'm not sure that Joe Wilson had all the facts and had all the facts right. And his report has been critiqued pretty seriously by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee and been pretty much debunked. Nobody put a lot of stock in the Joe Wilson report that we know was now contrived by him and his wife in the first place. And he was a Kerry guy, was a Kerry supporter. Bob knows that. Bob was probably in touch with him.

So, nobody put a lot of credence in his report from the get-go.

MATTHEWS: Bob Shrum, were you involved with the mission to Niger, as just—you were just accused of?

BOB SHRUM, FORMER KERRY CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: Actually, I never talked to Joe Wilson, never talked to him in my life.

Number two, Joe Wilson voted for George W. Bush in the year 2000. He is no partisan Democrat. Number three, Ronald Reagan used to say facts are stubborn things. And here are the facts. There was no yellow cake. Iraq was not running a nuclear program based on material from Niger. There were no weapons of mass destruction.

But we are dealing here with the fruit of the poison tree, which is, we went to war on a false, intended or unintended, pretext. And now, to get out of it and to try to protect Karl Rove, we are having a second attempt at character assassinating Joe Wilson and his wife, who is a CIA operative.

ROGERS: No, we had—we just had an election about that. We just had an election about Bob just said. And Bob was one of the architects of the Kerry campaign, the architect of the Kerry campaign. That was rejected. We had an election that settled the claims that Bob just stated.

I find it extremely interesting that they are elevating Kerry's profile at this particular moment, and in this particular way. Not to mention the revival of that old Republican favorite, "We won so shut up."

[ginnyinWI]

21. hmm can we say "RW talking points"?

:)
Thanks for watching so I don't have to!
I absolutely hate that last talking point--"we won so shut up--everything we have ever done or ever will do is right!" It makes me feel I'm a non-entity to them.

It looks like "Kerry" is the new swear-word for the righties. ;)
"Kerry"is now their code word for "everything that's wrong", to contrast with their oh-so-righteous selves!

It's simply unbelievable! Black is white, white is black. :(
The more they hate him, the more I'll love him.

[beachmom]

10. Pandering to the base theory is incorrect for one reason: Iraq

If Kerry was truly just going to mindlessly do whatever the liberal base wanted him to do, then he would demand an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He would go non-stop anti-war, quoting poems, talking about Vietnam. That's what they want him to do. Heck, I've had my moments where that's what I wanted him to do. But, you know, he's not a panderer. Not on something as important as Iraq. He still wants the troops to get the job done, and laid out many ideas that I hope * will consider trying. The thing is is that sometimes the angry mob shouldn't be catered too, and Kerry wisely knows this. He is smart and aims for doing the right thing, and Iraq is THE biggest issue for liberals -- not just DSM, but the war now. Kerry could have taken the bait, and we all would have revelled in his eloquence that took us all back to 1971. But he knows better. The day * made his speech, I realized we couldn't just "cut and run" at the drop of a hat, but felt hopeless that there was no way out of the hole. Interestingly, it was Kerry's speech on the Senate floor that day as well as his appearance on Larry King Live that convinced me that there could be solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems in Iraq. I didn't watch him so closely before 2005, so maybe you Kerry fan old timers can fill me in, but I have been highly impressed with the incredible amount of issues he's tackled and his decisiveness and consistency throughout. I have no problem at all if someone has presidential ambitions, as long as they continue to serve their constituents, do the right thing, and never forget what it's really about -- not them, but us. Sorry, but you can't fake it for this long. Kerry has personal ambitions, yes, but they stem from his desire to help people and leave behind a better world. Yes, it's nice to win and sucks to lose, but Kerry came out of that defeat and kept going, which proves that it wasn't just about winning and the job title for him. Perhaps he asked himself why he wanted to be president in the first place, and figured out from that answer what he could achieve NOW in the Senate. That the whole exercise wasn't for nothing after all. I am still amazed by his performance since Nov. 3, 2004.

[Goldeneye]

15. I might use that line in the future...

"you can't fake it for this long." He's been out there fighting for a long time, and I think a lot of his detractors have forgotten that.

[sandnsea]

11. American Enterprise Institute

Yes that's exactly who I always turn to for an analysis of the Democratic Party.

Hatchet job. Pure and simple. I'm always stunned by the number of people who don't recognize them when they see them. (Not you Mass)

[Mass]

13. I chose to ignore Ornstein

because the article recognized something that most people do not recognize most of the time: that Kerry has been active in fighting against Bush since the election.

Sure, the article is biased, but at least, it says more of what Kerry has done on these issues than nearly everything I have read in the media even here in Boston, and it capture well the fact that some Dems will do nothing (the DSM is very exemplary in this effect).

[TayTay]

14. Agreed. Ornstein isn't a bad guy

He is on Al Franken's show all the time. I have found him to be a fair analyst.

This is a fight for what the Dems stand for. Kerry is staking out turf. So is Ms. Clinton. So will Gov. Warner and Sen. Bayh and John Edwards and so forth.

[sandnsea]

23. To what purpose?

Sorry, I see the groundwork for the Kerry Gone Wild frame. It is nice that somebody is pointing to the work he's doing, but it's not so nice that leftie pandering ala Al Gore is given as the underlying motive. I see it as something the Kerry campaign needs to get in front of, he doesn't need to be labeled the Howard Dean of 2008.

[Mass]

24. Better to be seen as Gore than Lieberman

I have no problem with the word liberal. We can discuss whether Kerry is a liberal or not, but this is NOT a dirty word and this is what the author used.

The last thing I want Kerry to do is to be triangulating like Clinton.

[sandnsea]

25. "wild-eyed"

I was referring to that aspect, not the actual politics of what he's doing. You've got Clinton out there with his bashing and "talk to the red states" and tough on national security "triangulating"; and now this "leftie looney" labeling; I just don't trust it. I'm seeing the burner getting turned up a notch, Kerry will be fighting the Clintons and we better not take it lightly.

[TayTay]

27. Those are the same labels as we saw before

And yes, they should be ready to play a better defense.

The 'loony left' stuff is going to get thrown at anyone who opposes the Admin in the time of trouble for them. They haven't got much else to go on. (Rove did a bad thing, a very bad thing. His usual tactic is to deflect by impuing the character of the attacker. All Dems are going to be 'the loony left' while these troubles continue to simmer.)

This is the same thing they have been doing for years and years. (As I remember it, it goes back to the Reagan years.) And Dems need to call them on their bullshit. But I'm not overstressed about it. There are elements of truth in everything and it should not be ignored.

[TayTay]

12. Question: Which is the bigger threat to America's future

Right Wing religious fanatacism or the economic rise of China and India? There are X amount of federal dollars that are supposed to go toward securing the country. Do we need to up the spending on the military and put it into hiring 40,000 - 100,000 more troops or do we need to take those billions of dollars and put them into education, technological innovation and worker training programs.

There is only so much money available to the federal government. The government is supposed to use it to secure our future. So, what is the greater threat to the future of America? Terrorism or the rise of other economic powers that the US has, as yet, not answered at all.

Mr. Kerry has been all over the MSM on one topic. What about the other?

[jillan]

19. And this is exactly why I support Kerry

"But while liberal activists have been energized over the Downing Street memo, other Democratic senators and major newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post have not.".



“What we have seen from Kerry since the election is that he’s more aggressive and more pugnacious,” said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
:yourock:

[TayTay]

20. I agree. (See Ornstein is not a bad guy.)

We have been saying this for a while. (Well, Whome and I have been saying this since Jan.) Really, I sense a difference. (Newbies: Other people hold a different opinion on this and see the same guy. We differ slightly on this.)

[sandnsea]

22. Oh yes

Because Kerry was either, a. such a snooze before, or b., he's gone nutso like Al Gore. Great frame, every politicians dream.

[TayTay]

26. Not getting your criticism here

Seriously, it's like we read two different articles. I read the one where Kerry was taking some risks by going to the left since Jan. I don't understand where these comments are coming from. I thought the article was mostly true. There are inherent risks in taking a definitive position in politics. (There always has been.) On the other hand, it is necessary this time. (And will become much more necessary as time goes on.)

Where's the bad?

[sandnsea]

28. "We need a regime change in Washington"

He was also one of the first to go after Bush on Tora Bora. This isn't anything new for him.

The only thing new is the media labeling his normal behavior as Al Gore fanaticism. And, by the way, the Clintons didn't fight that nonsense either, did they? Al Gore gave some excellent speeches and it's a shame the way the Clinton wing let the media smear him.

They're doing the same thing with this article, laying the ground work for the crazy Kerry meme. I would have thought last year's primaries were evidence that the country doesn't want far left politics, not even Democrats. But I guess we'll have to take that beating some more.

[TayTay]

29. He is not engaging in 'far left' politics

but the framing mechanism is different. There is more of a desire to speak plainly and forthrightly about whatever is on his mind at the moment.

One of the things I plainly like about Kerry is that he does not reduce everything to a simply catch phrase. There are things in the world that are complicated and deserve to be treated as such. But there are degrees to which you can speak about something and it's level of complication. There are less degrees now.

It was easier to smear Al Gore after the election. He disappeared from public view and went about his life. The Rethug bastard machine could spin because the target was not plainly in sight and did not defend. This is plainly not the case with Kerry. He is a very active member of the US Senate. The same people who slimed him last year are continuing the job this year. (It's what they do.) What is different is the manner and degree of response. So far, so good.

I always mentally compensate for source when I read articles. It's kind of like grading Olympic figure skating performances. I may give them a 5.8 but I am factoring in the degree of difficulty, how hard the maneuver attempted actually was and how graceful the execution of the piece as a whole was. Then I tote up the results.

This is politics. Everyone has a knife in their hand and everyone has a point-of-view favorable to their people and unfavorable to other people. It will always be that way.

[sandnsea]

30. You said he moved left

You said this was an article about areas where Kerry had moved left. In the realm of national politics and framing, that's far left politics, ala Al Gore and Moveon. It's the wild-eyed frame, that buried Howard Dean. Even though Howard Dean isn't as liberal as Kerry.

It actually isn't new, it's part of what the noise machine did during the campaign, paint Kerry as a far left Massachusetts liberal. And it worked. The only people who don't seem to recognize that Kerry is more liberal than the average Dem are those who are so far left that they can't even see the middle. That's not a slam on anybody's politics, just a statement on how difficult it is to create a Democratic Party that can win nationally.

Yes, everybody in politics has a knife in their hand. The Clintons are past sharpening and beginning to throw. I expect to see more of these kinds of comments about Kerry. I think it would be a mistake to perpetuate them, the Dean campaign made that mistake last time.

[TayTay]

31. Still don't get what you are aiming at

I think we should tease this out into it's own thread.

Kerry was slimed before. He will be slimed again. Hillary was slimed and continues to be slimed. This is what Rethugs do.

What we need to be doing to thinking ahead of the charge and coming up with a strategy. Such as:

Ken Mehlman today proclaimed that the rumors that Dem Candidate X uses stem cells as butter on his English muffins in the morning to be true. "Democrats are weak on defense, mushy on terrorism and eat snowflake babies. This is proof that Dems are completely ycuky and we propose that anyone who votes for them should get electro-shock therapy."

You know this is coming. So, what is the defense play?

[sandnsea]

32. The primaries

You don't think the Clintons will attempt pre-emptive primary strikes? We're not just fighting Republicans, sadly.

So, Mehlman picked up Bill Clinton's national security issue. Interesting. So Kerry is going to have to fight "gone left like Al Gore" and "weak on defense" from both the Republicans and the Clinton wing. Delightful.

Do you get it yet?

[TayTay]

33. No.

I don't. Kerry has gone left. (This is a relative term, as you well know.) Hillary is going center. This is why she had recently decided that the biggest threat to America's youth is Grand Theft Auto, the video game.

Kerry has his own cards to play. There are also cards to play against Hillary.

This sounds like fear. Dems get smeared. This is not news. Fight the f*ck back and show some friggin spine. This IS going to happen. Everyone knows this. Prepare for it.

Certainty of death
Small chance of success
What are we waiting for?

[sandnsea]

34. Then I guess Hillary is in

Being branded as a loonie leftie won't win. The relativeness of the term doesn't matter.

[whometense]

35. I don't mean to butt in, but

I can see a rather large difference between left and loony left. There is nothing about Kerry that says loony. Nothing at all.

I see him as staking out the territory that was always naturally his. If it hadn't been for the IWR, Dean, and maybe his prostate surgery as well, Kerry would have been there in 2003 and 2004. It's not loony, he's not a screamer, and he has an innate dignity that will help cushion him against those charges.

Kerry is no longer an unknown quantity. A large number of people got to know him quite well last year. They understand who he is. What he needs to do is expand that group, and he has a lot of time to do that.

I can't imaginw why you would say "Hillary is in" any more than anyone would say at this point "Kerry is in." Polls notwithstanding, (and having gone through the pre-primary season in the Kerry camp I know how much faith I put in early polls) there is a very large group of people who don't like or trust Hillary; whether Bill's on her side or not won't make the difference. The people who value Kerry's authenticity may have issues with Hillary's lack of same. I know this because I'm in that camp myself, and so are a lot of other people I know.

[sandnsea]

36. I think you misunderstand

The trick, it seems to me, is to move what is now considered left, back towards the center. Part of that is not allowing what ought to be mainstream, lying about wars for chrissake, be labeled as looney left. But that's exactly what this article does. For mainstream America out there, Kerry is already so far left that going further left could only mean "looney left". And Hillary is going to be doing everything in her power to push him as far to the left as she can so that she can suck up the space Kerry sucked up last year. I don't think it's good politics to let her. Not for JK, certainly not for the Dem Party. She is not the kind of Democrat I want representing me.

[TayTay]

37. Game ain't started yet

This publication is read by no one but political junkies and inside-the-beltway people. We read it because we are hardcore Kerry fans. It doesn't mean that everything in it is true or will affect things in two years.

Left is a 'loose' term. I think Sen. Kerry went 'left' when he supported the Bankruptcy Bill. (Biden and Reid didn't.) Left is defined as going for the lower and middle income people who work for a living in America. (That's what left traditionally means.) This is an easily defended record. So are the votes for veteran's benefits and for a stronger and wiser allocation of home land security funds. (Lefty stuff all the way.)

Lefty doesn't mean wacko. Liberal or progressive is what the guy is. I think he should run on it. And explain it. And explain the opposition. And make a point of saying what he has been saying like: there is a tradeoff on those tax cuts. You can have a great deal of money siphoned out of the treasury to give to people who have money alredy or you can have Kids Health Care.

This fight ain't even started yet. It's way too early to hit the panic button.

[Island Blue]

38. Hope y'all don't mind if I weigh in on this one

I agree with what Tay Tay has been saying. I don't think this article paints him as some kind of lefty looney. I think it just says that he has been doing his job (as a member of the loyal opposition) and that his Democratic base appreciates his efforts.

I also think that the other side has gone so very far to the right, that any socially responsible efforts by ANYONE seem to some folks like they are coming out of left field. I think once we've had three more years of the current administration*, the American people are going to be starving for real, grown-up, responsible leadership and that sure ain't gonna come from the right.

[ginnyinWI]

39. I think he should run as exactly what he is

He did so well in the primaries because he did just that. When he campaigned in the general election some of his positions got more muddled. (He still won the election, by the way.)

Honesty is his forte--he won't lie or be a phoney--he doesn't do it very well! So he's got to run on what he believes down to his core.
And that's what we like about him. He trusts us with the truth, and we trust him in return.

[sandnsea]

40. The game is started

I see it all around.

What might mean left to you, doesn't mean left out in fly-over country. To them, supporting people who work for a living is Republican. Left is everything provided by the government. Lefty wacko is wanting to dissolve the military because there never needs to be war. It is all relative, but when it comes to fly-over country, left is left and it seems to me it would be better to start from just being a Democrat than having to define left too.

But you can bet Hillary will love to make JK define it, instead of her.

[MH1]

41. You mean 'opposed' the bankruptcy bill.

Assuming you mean the one that passed, S.256.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00044

Damn, don't scare me like that!

btw, I don't know Reid's situation, but being from Delaware, Biden probably pretty much had to support this pos bill. I wish he hadn't, but I'm guessing DE folks have been sold the meme that it's the credit card companies that keep their state taxes low (no sales tax; however 'lowness' of the income tax is debatable).

[MH1]

42. I think I get it, but kinda disagree.

I think the part of the "left" Kerry is staking out is NOT loony, and perhaps one part of his strategy is to make people see that it isn't loony.

There definitely is a "loony" left, but it isn't the one that demands documents like the DSM to be investigated.

But I think you are worried about the common perceptions and interpretations people make today, and there's some truth that some people will see a "move to the left" as a "move toward loony". I think that's too bad, and all the more reason we have to get people to see that the so-called 'right' is wrong, and the liberals are right. Unfortunately, by not backing Kerry up on things like DSM, other dems aren't helping create that perception change that we need. Which maybe is what you're saying.

I think for JK there is also a matter of authenticity. Apparently he was accused of "inauthenticity" during the campaign. I didn't see that at all, but then I expect politicians to "campaign," which is a behavior that necessarily blurs the edges of their positions. But I think maybe he's decided, regardless of the characterization being undeserved, it was there, and to be very clear and decisive on his positions going forward, and leave no doubt about his authenticity. Being the caring human being that we all think he is, he comes down square in the liberal left on many issues.

btw, I don't think Kerry is "far left" for mainstream America. He's just been misrepresented in the media. One way the Dems (JK's team, too) can improve that is putting a LOT more emphasis on the small business stuff. I had many, many cases where small business owners or their spouses told me they couldn't vote for JK because they thought his policies would hurt their business. I didn't have a good answer for that before the election, because all my material was about stuff like the deficit, women's rights, the environment. Something to think about for next time.

[whometense]

45. I agree with everything

you are saying here. It's something I've been wondering about - how do we start to drag the center back to the center? I mean for example, now Sandra Day O'Connor is a moderate?? She's no moderate; she's just a pre-neocon conservative. She just looks moderate now that the middle is somewhere in the middle of right field.

If dems keep tacking to the center they are only aiding and abetting this trend. I think Kerry's decided to be his authentic self in this fight, and let the chips fall where they may. Not that he won't also be doing his political positioning and so forth in other ways. But he's made it pretty clear he doesn't like what the people in charge are up to. And if they keep on doing it he may just find the american people are ready to turn the whole ship of state upside down and give it a good shake.

[sandnsea]

50. For one thing

We don't let the correct place to be politically get called "moving left". Seems to me anyway.

[sandnsea]

49. I think we agree

Also, I didn't mean that you didn't understand the article, but what I was trying to say. There's certainly lots of room for interpretation in politics!

I pretty much agree with everything you're saying. The only thing is that I don't think we should give credence to the notion that Kerry is moving to the left. He is where he is because it's the correct place to be, end of story. And yes, when other Dems label DSM as "looney left", they aren't helping to mainstream the Dem message. I think some do it to stake out political territory. I think people like Joe Lieberman have a genuine different point of view; but Hillary, I just see her as pure politics. So when I see Clinton make campaign jabs, then see an article like this, and then the botox crap on top of it; well I just see classic Clinton politics at work. Hope I'm wrong.

[MH1]

51. I think you're right on that one.

Kerry is not "moving" anywhere (at least as far as I can tell). What I see is that he is being more hard-hitting on the issues that he has always stood for.

OTOH, I haven't gone back and studied his previous positions and votes. There are a couple that I've run across that might seem to belie my above statement. NAFTA is the obvious one, but there's a good rationale behind it - which I fully understand because it appears Kerry's position history has has mirrored my own. However, to say that Kerry is not moving to the left, we have to be able to discuss why things like "yes on NAFTA, no on CAFTA" (and as rethugs will say it, "I was for trade before I was against it"), don't represent a move to the left. Or if there are certain issues where his position has changed due to actual learning (geez, do we want that in a Senator?) then we, and Kerry, need to recognize and admit that honestly. It seems to me that the change in the NAFTA/CAFTA case is not one of principle, but of recognition that we tried some things in NAFTA that were supposed to produce certain benefits, and those benefits were not achieved. Plus, CAFTA is much worse than NAFTA in certain respects. So, some may frame anti-CAFTA as a "move to the left" for Kerry, but I don't see it that way, as long as his underlying principles of the goals of trade deals haven't changed.

[sandnsea]

52. It's a move forward, or it's the implementation

During Live8, part of the message was that trade is the only way for these countries to lift themselves out of poverty, but our trade policies are screwing that up.

I see the 90's move towards freer trade as an attempt to help those countries, the first step. We need to continue taking steps, not exploiting these people the way the Bushies are doing. As long as we were taking steps forward in trade and trade laws, evidenced by the Jordan agreement, Kerry supported it. But the way Bush has implemented trade, we're going to end up with the entire world looking like the Marianas. Kerry still supports the right kind of trade, CAFTA doesn't.

I don't know how you get that on a bumper sticker. It certainly isn't "moving left", it's moving forward.

[MH1]

53. Ahh, the bumper sticker problem.

"I was for it before I was against it" is completely inaccurate, but it's short and it sticks.

The problem with thoughtfully considered positions on complex issues is that they don't always lend themselves to short, sticky slogans.

[TayTay]

43. SandnSea: There are things going on

We don't spend a whole lot of time in this group talking about political power and how it is used. No politician gets elected without a knowledge of how to acquire and use raw political power. (People who are 'accidentally' elected and are unable to figure out how to manipulate circumstances and events do not last.)

Mr. Kerry is a very, very good politician. (I also like the man for what he says, what he stands for and how he champions causes I care about.) There have been articles posted here and elsewhere on DU that have pointed to what is going on behind the scenes. Pay attention. There are manipulations going on of who is getting money for 2006, who is being discouraged from running, how money will be allocated and where favors will be earned and how they will be called in. (The return of TayTay's Tea Leaves, anyone?)

My favorite Senatorial race was my oft-cited 1996 Senate race. (Great, great race, lots of fun.) Mr. Kerry won that race by around 7-8% points. Afterward, he cleaned house. He was deeply upset and angered by the fact that the people of Massachusetts didn't know or understand what he had been up to for 12 years in the Senate. Polls and public meet-and-greets had revealed a populace that was largely ignorant of what the Senator had been doing for the nation and for the Commonwealth. (In fairness, some of this stuff demands an attention span of longer than 10 seconds.)

After the election, Sen. Kerry evaluated his staff and fired many of the people who had been working for him. He revamped his office and redoubled his efforts to be in communication with the people in the various cities and towns around Massachusetts. These people who had been with him for awhile. And this was after a race he won. The result was a much, much better office and a greatly improved two-way communication between cities and towns and the Senator's office. This continues to this day. A lot of the press releases, as they should be, from Sen. Kerry's office deal with local issues and he means to say exactly what he is doing for the State. This is great stuff.

This guy learns from his mistakes. He is quite gifted at figuring out the political frames and maneuvering among the obstacles. (Duh for me! Nobody gets to be a Senator without some poltiical skill. Nobody, but nobody gets to be the nominee without a lot of skill.) I don't want to make this too long a post, but there are extremely interesting things going on just in MA to make it more favorable for a Dem to run in '08. Those things are going on nationally as well.

Should we tease this out into it's own thread? John Kerry, Politician. How to get and use power; How to win friends and influence people; How to use the money left over from a campaign to seed other races; How to influence races in states you don't reside in; How to collect on favors owed; How to block a possible opponents moves without looking like you are dong that. And so forth. Let me know.

[whometense]

44. I'm interested in reading about this,

even though I won't have anything to contribute. This is the kind of stuff I find really fascinating, but, as Stephanie Miller says, it gives me a headache in my eye. My brain just has trouble wrapping itself arouns strategy. (On a side note, I never was able to make any sense out of chess - so I think I'm missing a strategery gene or something.)

But I love hearing you guys talk about it.

[rox63]

48. Me too!

I have never ever won a game of chess, even against really bad players. And I totally suck at other games of strategy. I must be missing that same gene.

[ginnyinWI]

46. I'm interested, too

I love the political side of things, and watching an expert politician at work. An honest one, that is!

Did anyone see the Cspan thing this morning? The DNC discussing election scheduling and financing. I was ironing shirts, so it was fun to listen to. Don't know if any of their ideas will be implemented by the next presidential election, though. They are talking about shifting primary elections and things like that.

[Island Blue]

47. I'd be interested in a thread like that too.

I'd love to learn more about these thing from folks who know a lot more than I do.