Donut-headed Dem Party hacks lost 2004, not Kerry.

[dusmcj]

So I hear that

"He has already cost us one election. The guy just needs to keep his mouth shut until after the election," a top Democratic strategist said Tuesday.

from
CNN story

So I have a reply: it was Democratic Party handlers who lost the 2004 election, not John Kerry, and they lost it by doing their best to turn him into the kind of lifeless zombie who passes for a candidate too often in either major party. I remember clearly the night after the last major primaries where it became clear that he would be the candidate. By the next morning, gone was the lively energetic guy planning strategy with his inner circle, replaced by a cartoon of stentorian authority with a voice so low it must have hurt, enunciation that must have taken effort not to speed up; in short, a comic book kitsch pastiche of what some hack handlers thought would appeal to the market segment. Thanks guys, you fucked up an excellent candidate.

So I have a message for the handlers and other members of the institutional community of the Democratic Party.

First off, until you manage to put together more of a strategy than sending out emails with "fight" in the subject line, and instead formulate a cogent policy platform and then figure out how to sell it, not to party members but to people who vote for the other guys, rather than participating in the politics of gesture and personality and wondering why the experts therein, a bunch of morons commonly known as American conservatives, are able to keep you on the ropes, shut the fuck up. Certainly about people who've achieved as much over the course of their lives as John Kerry. The attribution "Democratic strategist" made me puke, because most of the time since 2000 it's been an oxymoron. Time to stop bathing in the reflected light of a brilliant man (i.e. Brother Bill) and tune in to the here and now and make something happen without him at the helm. Again, the politics of personality and the Great Man theory, which are both fundamentally antidemocratic (instead, proto fascist).

More broadly: this election is a test. You, the "Democratic Party strategists" had a dear man, but an incompetent as an opponent two national elections in a row, and you lost to him. Don't whine that nasty Karl Rove used fear and the power of 9/11 over the electorate was just too strong. This is the party of FDR, Truman, JFK and Clinton that you DARE to presume to inherit. And you fucking pansies can't come up with more than emails that have a minimum count of uses of the root "fight" in the subject line ? Please. The Democratic Party is not here to provide you with a career in politics. First off because at least part of your salary is paid by my contributions, and if you continue to fail to produce, I will be one of the people helping to unemploy you. Parties, like government, business and society are here to serve the people, rather than the reverse, and when they fail to do that, they become irrelevant. Time to leave the dessert tray and tune into reality with a small 'r' before that happens to you.

Yes, I am incensed at the poor performance not of Democratic candidates but of the Democratic Party infrastructure and particularly its putative "leadership". We wouldn't want to start investigating whether conditions have essentially reverted to the machine politics of 100 years ago, now would we ?

The upshot of it is, you, just like government, serve us. Not the other way around. I don't need a group to survive, or to succeed. Groups, on the other hand, need members in order to continue existing. You want to keep your members, read the writing on the wall and tune in to what the people actually want and need. Now.

[jean]

1. which "top Democratic strategist?" That person needs to have their mouth

duct-taped shut for the duration of the campaign season.

[SoCalDem]

8. Where's Shum? Begala? Carville? (I would guess one of them would say it)

or something similar..

[LSK]

2. K&R

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. knr

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. k/r

[comradebillyboy]

5. Was Kerry just a tool for his handlers?

Did he not have a say in his campaign? Kerry bears plenty of responsibility for his loss.

[nosmokes]

6. plenty of blame to go around

and lots of it rests squarely on kerry's shoulders.

[dalloway]

7. BRAVO

[stepnw1f]

9. Well Said...

We don't need wimps tearing us down from the inside. Anyone at this point in the game talking shit about another liberal before this election is suspect to me. Sorry... sounds extreme? TOO FUCKING BAD!

[KharmaTrain]

10. Inversely...Handlers Made A Sow Into An Empty Suit

Of course it's some "annoynmous source" who has the spine of a jelly fish and probably collects weathervanes. The Repugnican operatives love these people...they do lunch, meet at the health club, hang out at the same drinkie drinkie parties. They know which of these "strategists" are unhappy campers and gladly point CNN and others in their direction for a quote when it's needed to score a political point and spin a story. Of course the "annoymous source" will come back after the smoke clears and play the other side of the fence.

Yes, it's the handlers who blew Kerry's 2004 race. They were the ones who kept him on the tight leash. They were the ones who scheduled that silly photo-op with the hunters right before the election. They were the ones who pulled resources from competitive states early and never gave voters a reason to vote FOR Kerry.

On the other hand, the GOOP kept their sockpuppet on a strict script for nearly 6 years...starting in the primaries in '99 and until this summer. Remember how we picked on the bastard for not holding press conference...or when he did, how scripted they were? Even the phony southern accent...this was another masterful job of political handling...something a machine is always good at. They can elect dead men and horses.

Right now the election is too close for us to start circular firing squads...and that's exactly what the GOOP would love for us to do. Another poster here put this non-story in a far better perspective and Kos has also picked up on it...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/31/173116/88

If Republicans want to debate who supports the troops more, let's have that debate. I'd love to talk about nothing else than Iraq for the next week.

And for the rest of you who think this is the end of the world -- stop being afraid of your own shadow. Just stop it. Fight or get out of the kitchen. It will get hotter than even this.

Call this manuever a "hail Kerry" despperation attempt...and as we've seen with several of these last minute ploys...from Allen's parsing of Webb's writings to Michael J. Fox's "faking his illness" to Harold Ford's appetite for white women, it's starting to really backfire.

[Unbowed]

11. Good post. Thank you.

Well stated and logical. Far too little logic to go around these days. I'm happy that I found DU because some folks here have more than their fair share of said logic.

[tomreedtoon]

12. Kerry is learning...slowly....what he should've done in 2004.

I have no problem with him speaking out now. My problem is that he didn't speak out in 2003 and 2004.

And I am unwilling to let the blame rest with some anonymous, probably FICTIONAL "Democratic handlers." It is ALWAYS the candidate who determines the direction of the campaign. If someone who knows would like to testify that the Democratic Leadership Council held a knife to Kerry's throat and made him capitulate to their demands, go ahead.

If Kerry keeps fighting the way he did this last week, he might get that albatross off his neck and have a chance at a Presidential run in 2012. Or maybe the Democratic candidate in 2008 might make him Vice President and make him a spokesman for the administration, so he could have a work-study program.

ON EDIT: Reminded of the great Lewis Black quote from his recent HBO show. "For the Democrats not to pick somebody who could beat Bush, is like picking a normal guy who couldn't win in the Special Olympics."

[dusmcj]

13. not in the age of market research and media consultants

if you think that the candidate is some leadership figure who has ultimate say and veto power over what his platform will be and how he presents himself, I think you are out of touch with the American political landscape AD 2006. The Democrats unfortunately read the Republicans "Big Book of Gesture Politics: How to Define and Sell Your Image to the Voting Market" and during the Clinton years imported both big money, and the media consultants, market researchers, demographic analysts that it deals in. The DNC leadership became and still is a powerful entity which sadly is still stuck in the Clinton program of appealing to the center. Unfortunately, there are apparently precious few people capable of formulating strategic direction, Brother Bill being a lifesaving recent exception, and the leadership hasn't figured out that too much pandering to uncommitted (and unengaged ? how can you be uncommitted in the US in 2006 ? because you're clueless ?) voters means that issues get dumbed down and softened to the point where they don't get addressed for fear of offending some demographic. Instead, candidates are massaged and buffed until they're telegenic, and until they are an efficient vehicle to sell a package defined by the party. Yes, they are an empty vessel into which the party strategists pour whatever brew they came up with this election cycle, at which point they are the "Hoffnungstraeger" (carrier of hope in German) for this platform.

In an ideal world from the point of view of party operatives. A candidate with an independent personality intersects with this approach in various ways. In the case of President Clinton, a truly brilliant individual who also had deep background in addition to raw intellect, plus a powerful personality and an innate connection to the broad American public did in fact define direction, and bent the party handling impulses until they became useful tools. Sen. Kerry by contrast I perceive as a less gifted political acteur, yet one with a similar pure independent mind, who needed to make peace with the party apparatus, and never managed to bend it into a useful tool. Instead, shallow hacks more at home in advertising applied makeup and voice coaching until he matched the comic book superhero persona they had in mind - "It's... DEMOMAN!!!! Able to leap corrupt cesspools in a single bound! Ready to get unruly conservatives Under Control!!! Preserving social programs while balancing the budget and making nice with the planet and saving the trees" - where Mr. Clinton in fact did these things, but because he understood them and he knew he had to and knew how, rather than because Party operatives defined him that way.

What it comes down to is that ideological and intellectual caliber is not high enough among the Party leadership, and allegedly can be replaced by knowing how the system works and working it harder than the GOP does, when in fact that does not work. Bill Clinton cannot be the one shining exception of the last 20 years in the Democratic ideological pantheon; there are others like him whose voices need to be heard. Those who know how to work the system need to be their servants, not their masters or sculptors. Otherwise we're no different than the GOP.

[tomreedtoon]

15. Long, wordy response, but enlightening.

It's very much like modern-day Hollywood, which (like the political parties) has been taken over by conservative, risk-wary large corporations. And like the movies and TV shows produced today, they are dull, uninteresting and predictable. And they are usually sequels and remakes and flops (oh, my!)

The Democrats don't need a candidate like that. They need an independent film type candidate. Even in a predictable system, you get outlaws whose films suddenly gain attention - Kevin Smith's films and scripts come to mind for some reason.

Come to think of it, the dopers Jay and Silent Bob would do a better job at beating Bush than any of the Big Three candidates.

[wisteria]

14. They are prestituting for Clinton and trying to knock him out as

competition. They know, in a debate,on issues on integrity and honesty he would beat her to a pulp. She is an ugly human being.

[LaPera]

16. Not to menton the voting fraud via Blackwell in Ohio.