Kerry Advisers Point Fingers at Iraq and Social Issues

In a glum post-mortem to the presidential campaign, senior advisers to Senator John Kerry said Monday that Mr. Kerry lost because he had failed to turn the election into a referendum on the economy, a problem they attributed to a barrage of foreign policy news and the success of the White House in wielding cultural issues.

A pollster for Mr. Kerry, Stanley Greenberg, said that the campaign saw evidence that its position was slightly deteriorating among white rural voters 10 days before Election Day and that the erosion began "cascading from group to group."

At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Mr. Greenberg said voters had been open to backing Mr. Kerry but pulled back after he failed to convince them to make their decision based on economic issues.

"Voters were very concerned about the economy,'' Mr. Greenberg said, "but in the end, they did not respond to John Kerry on the economy. And after that, they voted their values. And that produced a cultural polarization of the electorate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/politics/campaign/09kerry.html

nt

Like those 22% FAKE value voters were EVER considering Kerry- But DO hand us a few more GOP MYTHS to chow down. YUM!

Greenberg is a pro. He knows what he's talking about.

since 1994. I don't trust any Demcrocratic analyst since then. We need a Dem version of Karl Rove to fight fire w/ fire.

Now why would a "staunch" Dem be spouting Rovian lies? Can you say plant, sell-out or perhaps he just can't admit to the fact that the media picked Kerry...not the people!

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. -- Lenin

In the last days before the election, our local county headquarters saw walk-in after walk-in who wanted to volunteer to help Kerry. The momentum was with us, not the bushies........

Right, and just because kerry got walk ins the the bush campaign got none? Wake up man. In 2002 and 2004 the GOP started up a GOTV campaign that now rivals the democratic party. The big democratic advantage used to be turn out because then its GOTV machine would really bring in the votes for the democratic candidates across the nation.

Maybe it is time to accept that the tired ideals of the 60's are not bought into by anyone but aged hippies, actors, and San Francisco. Just like fashion political beliefs wax and wane. The progressive movement is waxing. Progressive ideals will not win elections outside of certain enclaves.

Politics is sales: you are selling your ideas. If those ideas are not "puchased" in an election you can keep trying to bang your head against the wall or you can come out with NEW! IMPROVED! Progressive ideals more palatable to the rest of america.

There is real room for improvement in the governance of this country. Progressive ideas have a place in it. But keep up the crying about vote fraud, secession, and rioting; and you will have no hand in the direction of this country for decades to come.

But if you shake yourself out of this, then you can work on the next election. Come up with the new ideas that will energize voters and get them to vote democratic (or green). Don't just try to sell the same old stuff in a different package. Build a new product.

"you" want "us" to have a hand at all in shaping the direction of this country.

Curious ...

-Laelth

sure we can - burn baby burn

- Health care for Americans
- Equality for all of our citizens
- Economic justice and worker's rights

Yep, these are just hippie ideals, right bosco?? Well, this Airborne Ranger is not about to give up the fight for a civilized America.

Get thee back to the hatebox, bosco !!

Yes, take those ideas and wrap them all up in a pretty little package with a three word tag line. Then attack the competition with false and misleading ads. It works!

Republicans are enormously successful at the packaging: Ownership society, leadership, family values. And on the attack side: Flip-flopper, tax and spend liberal, out of the mainstream. Things that allow the consumer to use their own subjective interpretation. It's the snake oil flim-flam and it "sells" well.

The Democrats, on the other hand, present ideas and solutions that require thought and analysis. Neverless, they ARE solutions and progressive ideas for the betterment of society and the world as a whole. Unfortunately, the task of getting people to THINK and READ trumps being spoon fed a compressed social montage.

Gee, thanks for the advice. What "YOU" don't understand is this election has energized Democrats to becoming the Republican's worst nightmare.

Sleep tight!

Exactly my point. The typical voter does not like to do too much work in getting to vote. Here in Florida I am consistently surprised by the people who come to vote without having at least done some research on the candidates and especially the florida constitutional amendments. You can see them at the booth reading the amendments, rubbing their chin, or in line reading the sample ballot handout given to them by a poll worker.

Good governance requires thought and analysis, we are faced with serious problems such as the deficit and social security and terrorism. Problems that have no easy solution.

The problem for presenting reasoned well thought out solutions is that a lot of the electorate does not desire to spend the time to research options and promote a specific course of action to his representatives. Many don't even know the names of their senators and congressman despite having voted for that person.

All I am saying is that for decades people have not bought the message being sold. We can recognize that and change or continue the same course and continue to fail.

Which nobody has confronted yet. It's incomprehensible that broke Americans would go for a medical savings account when they've got NO money to save over buying into the federal health plan with already inexpensive rates. Or that they'd choose tax cuts that have done nothing but create massive debt. Or that they'd believe lies about a war record. Or choose abortion and gay marriage over lies about a war. This election had little to do with progressive values and almost everything to do with a massive lie machine presented by corporate America.

Have you been using it since 1972?

RTP

No, in 72 I was running around saying I'm four years old, but I was thinking about Nixon when I came up with the name. Watergate would be small potatos compared to vote fraud alleged in this election.

and Iraq was always going to be the major issue of the campaign--there was no avoiding it.

Barak Obama's position on the war was it was unnecessary to get into but we're in it now so it's America's war and we've got to be successful. Funny how that was Kerry's position too but only Illinois understood it.

the million dollar salaries paid to these jerks. Don't they get that we've heard it all before? The country is in crisis and they are trying to explain away vote fraud by focusing on Kerry, while they repeat a Repug meme.

I am sick of the post-mortem bullshit. It was murder of democracy for God's sakes, look at it as a homicide and find who pulled the trigger. HINT: DREs....

This was done as a rebuttal to an LTTE in The Day. You can find a copy of the LTTE I responded to at http://www.peopleforchange.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=18204

Fixing the Dems: A Prescription - larkspur
http://peopleforchange.net/commentaries/fixingdems

Everyone should read those links.

as a self-proclaimed "anti-terrorism warrior" is the first thing that comes to my mind. Kerry was running against a president who defiantly sat on his a$$ on vacation for the whole month prior to 9/11, but Kerry and the DNC didn't want to harp on that. Also, Kerry had Rand Beers, the SECOND anti-terrorism czar who resigned from Bush's administration; but for some inexplicable reason, the Kerry campaign refused to create TV ads with Beers telling the American public that he was personally right in the center of Bush's anti-terrorism efforts, and that those efforts were miserable. Beers was relegated to infrequent cameos on AirAmerica and NPR.

he was an eyewitness to the mess.

LA Times ran an article claiming Kerry's corporate tax reform wouldn't
do jack to stop outsourcing.

Kerry said in debate #2 he could "not stop outsourcing" and did nothing to retort to Bush's claim his plan would "do nothing".

In the grassroots, there were repeated press releases and stories
that Bush and Kerry were the same w.r.t. US jobs.

People were furious that he stopped the "Benedict Arnold CEO's" rhetoric and he especially was not trusted because he didn't recant on his NAFTA, China PNTR and other "free traitor" votes.

His economic team, in the last 4 days, released a paper, but in pdf
and just did NOT distribute it, an overall plan to curb outsourcing.

They stopped pushing to ban federal and state contracts from being offshore outsourced.

they never presented a multi-dimensional policy modification approach to strengthen the position for US jobs, nor specifically outline what
changes need to be make with US trade policy beyond vague references
to add "labor and environmental standards" and a brief mention of floating the Yuan.

this isn't exactly a major battle plan to turn a record trade deficit around.

Their trade policy was nebulous at best and sounded almost like pandering to the unions, with no real outline at all on how to deal
with the budget deficit.

Add to that, absolutely no out of the box plan to secure social security and almost no mention the real reasons social security is in trouble, which is because they dip into the money set aside for social security to finance tax cuts, DoD spending and the like.

To me, they were trying to play both sides of the fence on the economy and by doing so, lost both the "big business" groups as well as the workers.

There were people going on bus tours about the lost of American jobs, but not even much of a mention to endorse Kerry really, more about
pushing their own agenda.

The democratic party MUST start endorsing economic policy that helps
American workers and frankly, I don't think they know exactly what to do. Economics is so littered with studies biased towards the needs of
multinational corporations and seemingly economic models rarely take into account the middle class, or even the effects of a strong middle class on the overall economic health of the nation.

They also need to get out to the rural areas and talk, in DETAIL,
about their plans.

Only Elizabeth Edwards in her town hall meetings had the ability to go into the depth needed to convince people.

Seriously, the grassroots activists were not convinced. And I would claim if they were not convinced, few workers who were voting on this issue, were truly convinced the democratic party was really going to help them.

A large part of the problem is that the corporations support the Democrats almost as much as the Republicans. They give money to both parties. Democrats were afraid of losing campaign funds. Instead, they lost the election.

Period.

End of discussion.

BTW the economy is improving...

The media pretends he protects us- many voters buy it.

End of story.

We should be pointing fingers at Mary Beth Cahill. She somehow managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. I also hold Kerry responsible for sticking with her for too long, but mostly, she ran the campaign, and ran it into the ground. I suspect we've heard the last of her- hopefully.

Votes are consequently lost or cast for the opposing party.

Democratic leadership, instead of wondering who they didn't appeal to, should be wondering about how plagued with ignorance they actually are for not realizing this election was an absolute fraud. We should be wondering the same, and demanding that our leaders take note, under the consequence of total abandonment.