Another sign that John Kerry is doomed
The Dole comparisons have started:
"So how many Kerry Spot readers were pulling for Bob Dole in 1996? More than a few, I bet. At the National Review party at Kate's house a week or so back, there was some discussions of parallels between Dole that year and Kerry this year. Longtime member of the Senate, party loyalist, war record, has his own idiosyncratic style that doesn’t quite hit the right note with the voters. The base doesn’t quite love him, but they see him as vastly better than the incumbent. He beats a weird assortment of weaker rivals in the primary.
"And, as Jay Nordlinger pointed out, Clinton 'absolutely shellacked our guy.'
"But I ask readers to recall Dole to think of their own farfetched scenarios that they concocted in 1996, keeping hope alive that somehow, Bob Dole was going to shock the world and win the presidency. I had wondered at the time if the Electoral College vote might be much closer than anyone expected. (Clinton won 379-159, to show you how far off my thoughts were at the time.)
"Another one of the big hopes of the Republicans that year was that there was a big, silent wave of Republican voters who weren’t answering their phones, who weren’t showing up in the opinion polls, but who were going to turn out in Election Day.
"Anyway, I thought of all that as I read the headline to today’s edition of ABC News The Note: 'Faith in the Ground Game is the Last Refuge of the (Still) Optimistic Democrat.'"
I can definitely relate. Here are a couple of quotes from my blog of 8/10/96:
"On Monday, August 5th, Bill Clinton, heretofore unopposed for re-election, was suddenly and abruptly confronted with a challenger. His name? Bob Dole.
"Oh, yeah, Dole has been a presidential hopeful for the past year and a half, but only now has he become a serious candidate by making tax cuts the vehicle that will carry him to victory - if he stays behind the wheel.
"The Dole plan demolishes Dick Morris’ 'triangulation' strategy. This is the process whereby Mr. Bill prowls around the provinces pontificating on school uniforms and teen curfews and all other manner of minutia he has no direct control over, but which makes him sound, if not fashionably conservative, then certainly anything but the outlandish liberal he really is. He has succeeded spectacularly in this regard because Bob Dole has spent the past four months in a state of perpetual capsize, aimlessly wandering from one blunder to another like a blind man being led through a minefield by a seeing-eye dog with a sick sense of humor. For Triangulation to work, Clinton’s Republican opponent must embrace the mushy middle precisely because moderate positions (insofar as there is any such thing) can be manageably stolen. In embracing across-the-board tax rate reduction, Bob Dole has taken a position that Bill Clinton cannot usurp without igniting a rebellion from his liberal base. Because Dole did it first, any attempt by Mr. Bill to present a 'responsible' alternative can be dismissed as pandering me-tooism. In the highly unlikely event that Clinton got into a tax-cut bidding war, his hypocrisy would become deafening even as the debate moved farther and farther in Dole’s direction. And if he does nothing, Bubba is flushed out as the big government tax-raiser he really is.
"Tax cutting virtually sells itself. This issue has propelled pols as disparate as Ronald Reagan on one side and Jack Kennedy on the other. It even helped make Rockefeller Republican Christine Todd-Whitman governor of New Jersey, where she previously couldn’t get elected dogcatcher.
"If Bob Dole can manage to stifle that irrepressible urge of his to backpedal at the first sign of resistance, he’ll be home free."
Bob Dole lost 49%-41%. Tax cutting doesn't sell itself. And in order to sell anything, you have to have an at least competent salesperson. The Dole debacle proved conclusively that it is the candidate that matters more than his/her ideas. The former is the vehicle for the latter, and if you're stuck with a broken-down old beater, it won't matter if you're hauling solid platinum, you're not going to get from point A to point B.
But at least Senator Dole was trying to offer a positive alternative to Clinton - a reason to vote for him. Senator Kerry doesn't even do that much. To this day he has no clearly grasped, easily understood, saleable platform to put forward to compete with that of the President. He is today what he has been for the past eight months: Anybody But Bush. And that just isn't enough.
Politically speaking, I don't envy Lurch his future. Because his party, fanatically loathe to ever admit that perhaps they and their ideas are what keep shooting them down in election after election, is going to hang its 2004 defeat squarely around his scrawny, Botoxed neck.
But then, nobody on that side of the aisle will be paying much attention, what with Hillary Clinton's four-year gala processional already well underway.
"So how many Kerry Spot readers were pulling for Bob Dole in 1996? More than a few, I bet. At the National Review party at Kate's house a week or so back, there was some discussions of parallels between Dole that year and Kerry this year. Longtime member of the Senate, party loyalist, war record, has his own idiosyncratic style that doesn’t quite hit the right note with the voters. The base doesn’t quite love him, but they see him as vastly better than the incumbent. He beats a weird assortment of weaker rivals in the primary.
"And, as Jay Nordlinger pointed out, Clinton 'absolutely shellacked our guy.'
"But I ask readers to recall Dole to think of their own farfetched scenarios that they concocted in 1996, keeping hope alive that somehow, Bob Dole was going to shock the world and win the presidency. I had wondered at the time if the Electoral College vote might be much closer than anyone expected. (Clinton won 379-159, to show you how far off my thoughts were at the time.)
"Another one of the big hopes of the Republicans that year was that there was a big, silent wave of Republican voters who weren’t answering their phones, who weren’t showing up in the opinion polls, but who were going to turn out in Election Day.
"Anyway, I thought of all that as I read the headline to today’s edition of ABC News The Note: 'Faith in the Ground Game is the Last Refuge of the (Still) Optimistic Democrat.'"
I can definitely relate. Here are a couple of quotes from my blog of 8/10/96:
"On Monday, August 5th, Bill Clinton, heretofore unopposed for re-election, was suddenly and abruptly confronted with a challenger. His name? Bob Dole.
"Oh, yeah, Dole has been a presidential hopeful for the past year and a half, but only now has he become a serious candidate by making tax cuts the vehicle that will carry him to victory - if he stays behind the wheel.
"The Dole plan demolishes Dick Morris’ 'triangulation' strategy. This is the process whereby Mr. Bill prowls around the provinces pontificating on school uniforms and teen curfews and all other manner of minutia he has no direct control over, but which makes him sound, if not fashionably conservative, then certainly anything but the outlandish liberal he really is. He has succeeded spectacularly in this regard because Bob Dole has spent the past four months in a state of perpetual capsize, aimlessly wandering from one blunder to another like a blind man being led through a minefield by a seeing-eye dog with a sick sense of humor. For Triangulation to work, Clinton’s Republican opponent must embrace the mushy middle precisely because moderate positions (insofar as there is any such thing) can be manageably stolen. In embracing across-the-board tax rate reduction, Bob Dole has taken a position that Bill Clinton cannot usurp without igniting a rebellion from his liberal base. Because Dole did it first, any attempt by Mr. Bill to present a 'responsible' alternative can be dismissed as pandering me-tooism. In the highly unlikely event that Clinton got into a tax-cut bidding war, his hypocrisy would become deafening even as the debate moved farther and farther in Dole’s direction. And if he does nothing, Bubba is flushed out as the big government tax-raiser he really is.
"Tax cutting virtually sells itself. This issue has propelled pols as disparate as Ronald Reagan on one side and Jack Kennedy on the other. It even helped make Rockefeller Republican Christine Todd-Whitman governor of New Jersey, where she previously couldn’t get elected dogcatcher.
"If Bob Dole can manage to stifle that irrepressible urge of his to backpedal at the first sign of resistance, he’ll be home free."
Bob Dole lost 49%-41%. Tax cutting doesn't sell itself. And in order to sell anything, you have to have an at least competent salesperson. The Dole debacle proved conclusively that it is the candidate that matters more than his/her ideas. The former is the vehicle for the latter, and if you're stuck with a broken-down old beater, it won't matter if you're hauling solid platinum, you're not going to get from point A to point B.
But at least Senator Dole was trying to offer a positive alternative to Clinton - a reason to vote for him. Senator Kerry doesn't even do that much. To this day he has no clearly grasped, easily understood, saleable platform to put forward to compete with that of the President. He is today what he has been for the past eight months: Anybody But Bush. And that just isn't enough.
Politically speaking, I don't envy Lurch his future. Because his party, fanatically loathe to ever admit that perhaps they and their ideas are what keep shooting them down in election after election, is going to hang its 2004 defeat squarely around his scrawny, Botoxed neck.
But then, nobody on that side of the aisle will be paying much attention, what with Hillary Clinton's four-year gala processional already well underway.
posted by JASmius at 7:55 PM
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