"Listless" Or Listing?

What happens to a presidential candidate who puts all his eggs into one basket, sees the basket get smashed, and has no backup plan? He becomes “listless.”

In mid-August, with the exception of the Gallup poll, there was not a national poll that did not have John Kerry leading George W. Bush. But about as fast as you can say Swift Boat Veterans for Transforming a Presidential Election, Kerry and his crew find themselves in disarray.”On Monday in Washington meetings were being held behind closed doors at the Kerry campaign, looking for ways to get its candidate and operation back on message.

What message? “I served in Vietnam” was his message. That message has been destroyed.

There were rumors circulating mid-day Monday of ‘major shakeups’ in the campaign, according to a Kerry adviser. ‘…I would bet that in a week, there are a few people here who aren't going to be here or with the campaign.’

Ah, yes, that would be the “blame everybody but myself” stage of Kerry’s implosion.

Candidate Kerry…was on the phone for much of Monday attempting to shore up support and encourage surrogate attacks against his opponent on a day that showed support for him crumbling around the edges in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio, all states that Kerry led in by as many as seven percentage points just two weeks ago.

Oh, wow, more surrogate attacks. What a fresh approach. That’s sure to work.

Wish I could have heard the “shoring up support” part. Watching arrogant liberals whine, beg, and grovel is endlessly diverting.

’This has been just a brutal two weeks for him,’ says another Kerry adviser. ‘He had people telling him the Swift Boat ads weren't going to take because the media was going to ignore them.’

Pity for his sake he didn’t listen to them.

’There are senior people around Kerry who were buying into all the press clippings that this was our campaign to lose. Well those people aren't going to be around after Labor Day. Heads have to roll over what has happened. Kerry has not been well served. And Kerry has not served the Democratic Party well, either. This has to be hugely disappointing.’

An arrogant liberal candidate has to fire his arrogant liberal staffers for being arrogant? And replace them with what? There’s no such thing as a humble liberal.

This will just ensure further mandatory doses of “humility” for the candidate until the conclusion – that it is Kerry who needs to be dispatched – is driven home on November 2nd.

The advisers pointed to further evidence that the campaign was losing focus last week. On Friday and Saturday, considered the last official days of campaigning before the Kerry campaign slowed down for the GOP convention week, Kerry had events in Washington state. During what was supposed to be a public forum in Everett, Kerry spoke for almost an hour before the audience could participate. ‘He lost the audience a half hour into the event,’ says a Democratic National Committee staffer who observed it. ‘It was miserable. Like the old Kerry we saw as a loser during the primary season.’

A similar scene played out the next day in Tacoma, where it appeared Kerry was attempting to kill his audience. Literally. At least five attendees to the rally required medical attention during Kerry's 45-minute speech.

“Like the old Kerry we saw as a loser during the primary season.” And what was it that vaulted him to the Dem nomination, other than Howard Dean’s self-immolation?

His Vietnam war hero gimmick.

Nine weeks before Election Day is awfully late in the game to try and re-invent yourself – especially if your decades-long penchant for doing so has become a manifest liability.

Tod Lingberg nailed it in Tuesday’s Washington Times:

’Reporting for duty’ grows more illustrative of the problem by the day: Democrats may have summoned [Kerry]…But Americans have not summoned him, at least not yet. Mr. Kerry has been acting as though they had. He concluded his speech as follows: ‘I will work my heart out. But, my fellow citizens, the outcome is in your hands more than mine. It is time to reach for the next dream. It is time to look to the next horizon. For America, the hope is there. The sun is rising. Our best days are still to come.’ Very good. Now, where is the part in which, with due humility, he asks people to vote for him?

Missing. Mr. Kerry has to a make a case for himself grounded in something other than his personal excellence. That, my fellow citizens, is in his hands.

And that cupboard is bare.

UPDATE: Wow – it isn’t just the American Spectator and Washington Times saying it, but Al F’ing Hunt.

Headline of his WSJ piece: “Kerry Campaign Weighs Shake-Up As Bush Gains Upper Hand in Race”

Remember the scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the villain picks the wrong grail and he ages a thousand years in thirty seconds?