Reply #12: Democrats have misgivings as Kerry tests waters for '08 [View All]

Democrats have misgivings as Kerry tests waters for '08

Some backers won't count him out.
Others don't want a "shopworn" candidate.

And don't be shocked if he launches another presidential candidacy in 2008, despite the fact that no U.S. senator has ever run, lost, and won a subsequent nomination. History notwithstanding, however, it may not be easy for Kerry to simply walk away, not after winning 59 million votes - although there are plenty of Democrats who wish that he would.

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Jenny Backus, a party strategist who helped launch Kerry's PAC, said later: "It sounds corny, but last year he met a lot of people who invested their hopes in him. Those stories are real, even if the national press corps is sometimes cynical about them. You create a movement, and you have a responsibility to keep it going... His job is to be a national Democratic figure. That job is open."

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And he's been dogged by bloggers who want him to authorize the release of all his military records, to clear up questions raised in 2004. He told NBC on Jan. 30 that he would sign military form SF-180 to do so, but he hasn't yet. Most of the heat has come from conservatives, but Democratic blogger Mickey Kaus also is on the case, urging party brethren to "remove this increasingly pathetic figure from our national stage." (The word in Washington is that Kerry will sign the form soon.)

Kerry also seems compelled to defend his 2004 record; he boasts these days that he won 10 million more votes than Bill Clinton did in 1996 (omitting the fact that President Bush won 23 million more votes than Clinton opponent Bob Dole). And on Feb. 28 in Boston, he noted that he beat Bush among young voters and unmarried women (omitting the fact that he lost every age group over 30, and lost the biggest female category, white married women).