What did Kerry do with the fax?

I have no clue what's going on. Someone here made a thread about it, it got lots of replies; but nowhere on that thread does it explain what Kerry did. I watched the debate, and I didn't see any fax or anything. What's up?

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0310/09/se.03.html

WOODRUFF: Governor Dean, before you sit down, I've just been handed a document. I think it came out of the press room that Senator Kerry's staff has been distributing some comments about what was said. Among other things they are saying that you, Governor Dean, tried to kick Vermont seniors off their prescription drug plan. That's relevant to what you were just saying here, so do you want to respond to that?

DEAN: Does that go along with the fact that I'm just like Newt Gingrich, too, and I tried to undo Medicare.

That's silly, of course. What I did try to do was get a cigarette tax past the Republican House. They wouldn't pass them. I told them if they didn't pass a cigarette tax to pay for our health care program, then they wouldn't be able to fund seniors' prescriptions.

They passed the cigarette tax, as I knew they would.

WOODRUFF: Senator Kerry, what about that?

KERRY: Well, it's not silly. It's what he did. I mean, it's sad. But he in fact, in order to balance his budget, terminated -- called for the full termination of what was called the V-Script program, and also turned to seniors and made prescription drugs more expensive for them in order to balance the budget.

Now, that's a fact. I didn't raise this, and I didn't know they were saying that, and it's sort of separate from where we were.

what's the big deal?

One candidate's campaign gets to fax in an inflammatorily worded question for another candidate DURING the debate and the moderater reads it verbatim. The questioned candidate responds, but the moderator lets the other candidate (the one whose campaign faxed in the question) have the last rebuttal.

It stinks, but frankly, I think Dean handled it just fine and it really just made Kerry look desperate and Woodruff look biased.

even if there were, a candidate isn't responsible for all the actions of his supporters. Prove that Kerry himself was behind it and you can legitimately criticize him.

Woodruff is the one at fault here. It was incredibly stupid and unprofessional of her to raise this issue. I think her bias would have to be against Kerry, though, because if she wanted to make Dean look bad she'd have said she had a FAX from HIS supporters about someone else -- or she'd have tried to make him look bad by using the information that was supposedly in the FAX against him by asking a question about it.

And the only campaign talking about this bogus story is the Kerry campaign. I went to Kerry's blog once to read what was going on and this exact same story was being posted there.

during the debates. What was unprecedented was Woodruff reading one DURING the actual debate, This could have happened to ANY of the candidates, but, the CNN producer targeted Kerry. Newbie political watchers would have no idea that it was CNN, not Kerry, who did the ambushing.

CNN admitted it was THEIR mistake afterwards.

>>>>>>>
But one of the impromptu critiques accidentally made its way into the debate itself. During an audience question-and-answer period, CNN moderator Judy Woodruff said she was just handed a "document" from the campaign of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry saying Howard Dean tried "to kick Vermont seniors off prescription drug plan" when he was governor. She then pressed Dean for a response. He called the accusation silly.

"What I did try to do was get a cigarette tax past the Republican House," Dean said. "I told them if they didn't pass a cigarette tax to pay for our health care program, then they wouldn't be able to fund seniors' prescriptions. They passed the cigarette tax, as I knew they would."

Kerry retorted that his press release was accurate.

"In order to balance his budget, he called for the full termination of what was called the V-Script program, and also turned to seniors and made prescription drugs more expensive for them in order to balance the budget," Kerry said.
The strange moment was actually a mistake, CNN officials admitted.

"Sometimes during the course of these debates weird stuff happens," said Tom Hannon, CNN's political director. "The idea at one point was to read one of these documents to see if the candidates could back up their statement. We ultimately decided against it. How it got in there was unintentional. Not everyone got the word apparently."
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1010debate-side10.html

he's a bit rough at the edges when it comes to diplomacy and not saying stupid things.

He's not poor as in boring (that would describe Kerry); it's that he speaks without rhythm and frequently stutters.

you didn't allude to Kerry as "looking French".

Stupid and careless things Kerry has done:

voting for war
voting for the Patriot Act
voting for No Child Left Behind
voting for some tax cuts our country can't afford
abstaining from the partial birth abortion vote
missing the mini mukes vote
missing well over half of the votes he was elected to be at
lying
trying to "out-Bush" Bush by posing on a big boat
Acting like a 4th grader, poking fun at another candidate while that candidate was out organizing and collecting food for striking workers.
Asking for swiss cheese on a Philly Cheese Steak
Eating in public like a prissy woman
wanting to force America's children into unpaid servitude in order to get a high school diploma
refusing to answer any difficult questions about important issues until he sees what the polls say.
Pretending to protest Vietnam by throwing his medals away only to display them on his office wall at a later date.
Pretending to care about job outsourcing when his own wife has all kinds of factories overseas and buys products from companies who use illegal child labor.
Can't decide whether he's Irish or Jewish so wants to be both because he thinks he'll get more votes and money.
Rides a motorcycle without a helmet so his bad hairdo won't get messed up.
Tells election 2000 voters to "Get Over it!" and insults Gore by making the comment "the last guy who claimed to invent the internet didn't do so well."

Now what were you saying about Dean?

Maybe you should have it as a sig line.

Rides a motorcycle without a helmet so his bad hairdo won't get messed up.

It's stupid to ride without wearing a helmet!

among other BS claims is the truly insulting one that Kerry "pretended to protest the Vietnam War". That is truly insulting but I will excuse it because it is so obviously and completely ignorant of the facts of JK's involvement in that cause.

The fact is KK has an irrational hatred of Kerry as evidenced by the lameness of nearly all of her listed "sins" as you call them. I can't bother dealing with the rest of the others becasue they are all so G'damned fucking lame.

Because I strongly oppose some of what he stands for, am disgusted by his behavior and he repeatedly LIES. So yes, it's true that I dislike him. Hate? No. But I sure don't want to see him get nominated because then I'll have to vote for someone I've probably never even heard of unless I can write in Howard Dean.

And Dean wasn't allowed to respond to those lies. It looked like it had been planned. Kerry's facial expressions afterwards was all smug and self-satisfied. His behavior with those expressions reminded me of the looks Donald Rumsfield makes when he lies about Iraq in press conferences and thinks he's fooled everyone. It was disgusting.

and I said so in real time in the debate thread. She has since publicly apologized, but she should have known better.

grasping at straws and will not be the candidate.

I can't even think of a campaign trying to interject something like that into the debate. That's like having help from the outside. Nobody was privy to that kind of "entitlement" on that stage.

My understanding is that it is now common practice that campaigns have staffers watching, reacting and sending press releases with info to news sources during the debates - with the intention of getting their "facts" (or "fax" be it the case) into the post-debate talking heads discussions.

I have no reason to believe that this was any different than current practice on the part of the Kerry team.

What is different - was CNN - in the middle of the debate - pulling one of these in - and using it DURING the debate.

It appears that they wanted the "drama" of accusations (hence use of content and where it came from) of the two candidates reacting.

In other debates I have noted what appears to be a tendency to try to stoke squabbles on stage. I think that is what this was about.

And was she apologizing for her entire night, or just that ten seconds? :)

They are used by the campaigns to correct, refute, or clarify points made there. They ALL do this, and those who are unfamiliar with this standard procedure are just displaying their naivete about political campaigns.

Woodruff did something UNPRECEDENTED. She used one of those faxes, targeting Kerry, as if his campaign pushed it onto her. It didn't. A CNN producer gave it to her to use during the debate.

CNN later said it was "unintentional" and a mistake.

>>>>>>>
But one of the impromptu critiques accidentally made its way into the debate itself. During an audience question-and-answer period, CNN moderator Judy Woodruff said she was just handed a "document" from the campaign of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry saying Howard Dean tried "to kick Vermont seniors off prescription drug plan" when he was governor. She then pressed Dean for a response. He called the accusation silly.

"What I did try to do was get a cigarette tax past the Republican House," Dean said. "I told them if they didn't pass a cigarette tax to pay for our health care program, then they wouldn't be able to fund seniors' prescriptions. They passed the cigarette tax, as I knew they would."

Kerry retorted that his press release was accurate.

"In order to balance his budget, he called for the full termination of what was called the V-Script program, and also turned to seniors and made prescription drugs more expensive for them in order to balance the budget," Kerry said.

The strange moment was actually a mistake, CNN officials admitted.
"Sometimes during the course of these debates weird stuff happens," said Tom Hannon, CNN's political director. "The idea at one point was to read one of these documents to see if the candidates could back up their statement. We ultimately decided against it. How it got in there was unintentional. Not everyone got the word apparently."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1010debate-side10.html