Your Team Always Looks Good "On Paper"
Does this sound like a description of a winning campaign?
Let me see if I have this straight. John Kerry, who has been running for President for the past year and a half, and clinched the “presumptive” Democrat nomination four months ago, is still “introducing himself” to the American electorate? And next week’s Dem convention is his last chance to make a connection with voters?
Mr. Broder is correct in one sense: given the all-out media barrage against the President, which Newsweek magazine has now openly conceded, the Kerry-Edwards ticket should have surged. Hell, Kerry by himself should be up twenty points after the shellacking the Bush Administration took over the course of the spring. And yet, despite all that, despite Fahrenheit 911 and all those Bushophobic books and the relentless press pounding, the race is still a dead heat. How can this be?
I’ll tell you why. And you can forget all the Kerryite spin that voters “don’t know him yet,” because they know better themselves, or they wouldn’t have kept him out of sight as much as they have. The reason John Kerry is tied in a race he should be running away with is that he is an awful candidate, period. He has no charisma, no homespun appeal, and no clear, consistent, or original message. His natural personality is aloof, patrician, and off-putting. He’s Thurston Howell III without the sense of humor. He is the blue-blood, country-club epitome of the worst Dem stereotypes of “rich Republicans,” and the more visible he is in public, the more that comes across, and the worse he does in the polls.
There’s one other tidbit in Newsweek’s admission that is very telling: "The media, I think, want Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards - I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but - they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.” [my emphasis]
From this can we not conclude that if the media were covering this campaign objectively, George Bush would be running away with it, his second term assured? And that, apart from their partisan hatred of the President, the press is openly aiding Kerry-Edwards to avoid the fall campaign being a sustained “garbage time” with no real drama or suspense, and therefore rendering the exercise a lot less interesting for them?
Rumor has it the Dems are going to attempt to “John Wayne-ize” Kerry next week. Maybe it’ll work and give their ticket a significant bounce, at least for a while. Or maybe it won’t, since for all the hoopla over the Edwards pick, the Rasmussen survey has Bush back up by two points. But one cannot help the feeling that if and when the Bush-Cheney camp finally sheds its “rope-a-dope” posture – perhaps the GOP convention will be when the bloodshot whites of Dem eyes at last will be close enough to open fire – the two Johns will once and for all be exposed for the pretenders they’ve always been.
With all this happening, one might have expected something of a Kerry surge. Democrats I interviewed are both puzzled and dismayed that it hasn't happened. Their explanation — supported by the polls — is that Kerry has not yet sold himself to swing voters as an alternative to Bush. Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania and a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told Judy Woodruff of CNN, "To be honest, even though we had a pretty active primary season ... most American people don't even believe that they're familiar with John Kerry yet."
Mark Mellman, Kerry's pollster, told my Washington Post colleague John Harris, "There's a lot of people who don't know enough about John Kerry to make a judgment about him and his values."
A Democratic senator put it more bluntly: "They haven't warmed up to him, and I don't know if they ever will."
Next week in Boston, at the Democratic National Convention, Kerry will have his best — and perhaps his last — chance to put his own stamp on this race. He cannot afford to miss it.
Let me see if I have this straight. John Kerry, who has been running for President for the past year and a half, and clinched the “presumptive” Democrat nomination four months ago, is still “introducing himself” to the American electorate? And next week’s Dem convention is his last chance to make a connection with voters?
Mr. Broder is correct in one sense: given the all-out media barrage against the President, which Newsweek magazine has now openly conceded, the Kerry-Edwards ticket should have surged. Hell, Kerry by himself should be up twenty points after the shellacking the Bush Administration took over the course of the spring. And yet, despite all that, despite Fahrenheit 911 and all those Bushophobic books and the relentless press pounding, the race is still a dead heat. How can this be?
I’ll tell you why. And you can forget all the Kerryite spin that voters “don’t know him yet,” because they know better themselves, or they wouldn’t have kept him out of sight as much as they have. The reason John Kerry is tied in a race he should be running away with is that he is an awful candidate, period. He has no charisma, no homespun appeal, and no clear, consistent, or original message. His natural personality is aloof, patrician, and off-putting. He’s Thurston Howell III without the sense of humor. He is the blue-blood, country-club epitome of the worst Dem stereotypes of “rich Republicans,” and the more visible he is in public, the more that comes across, and the worse he does in the polls.
There’s one other tidbit in Newsweek’s admission that is very telling: "The media, I think, want Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards - I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but - they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.” [my emphasis]
From this can we not conclude that if the media were covering this campaign objectively, George Bush would be running away with it, his second term assured? And that, apart from their partisan hatred of the President, the press is openly aiding Kerry-Edwards to avoid the fall campaign being a sustained “garbage time” with no real drama or suspense, and therefore rendering the exercise a lot less interesting for them?
Rumor has it the Dems are going to attempt to “John Wayne-ize” Kerry next week. Maybe it’ll work and give their ticket a significant bounce, at least for a while. Or maybe it won’t, since for all the hoopla over the Edwards pick, the Rasmussen survey has Bush back up by two points. But one cannot help the feeling that if and when the Bush-Cheney camp finally sheds its “rope-a-dope” posture – perhaps the GOP convention will be when the bloodshot whites of Dem eyes at last will be close enough to open fire – the two Johns will once and for all be exposed for the pretenders they’ve always been.
posted by JASmius at 7:23 AM
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