Anatomy Of A Crushing Political Defeat by Arianna Huffington

This election was not stolen. It was lost by the Kerry campaign.

The reason it's so important to make this crystal clear — even as Kerry's concession speech is still ringing in our ears — is that to the victors go not only the spoils but the explanations. And the Republicans are framing their victory as the triumph of conservative moral values and the wedge cultural issues they exploited throughout the campaign.

But it wasn't gay marriage that did the Democrats in; it was the fatal decision to make the pursuit of undecided voters the overarching strategy of the Kerry campaign.

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The fixation on undecided voters turned a campaign that should have been about big ideas, big decisions, and the very, very big differences between the worldviews of John Kerry and George Bush — both on national security and domestic priorities — into a narrow trench war fought over ludicrous non-issues like whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant a Purple Heart.

This timid, spineless, walking-on-eggshells strategy — with no central theme or moral vision — played right into the hands of the Bush-Cheney team's portrayal of Kerry as an unprincipled, equivocating flip-flopper who, in a time of war and national unease, stood for nothing other than his desire to become president.

The Republicans spent a hundred million dollars selling this image of Kerry to the public. But the public would not have bought it if the Kerry campaign had run a bold, visionary race that at every moment and every corner contradicted the caricature.

Kerry's advisors were so obsessed with not upsetting America's fence-sitting voters they ended up driving the Kerry bandwagon straight over the edge of the Grand Canyon, where the candidate proclaimed that even if he knew then what we all know now — that there were no WMD in Iraq — he still would have voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

more....

http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=742

And, some good points. I've posted several times on here the past few days about how the RW propaganda machine immediately leaped into action as soon as Kerry had the nomination sewn up - their talking point of Kerry being an unprincipled flip-flopper who changes like the wind was left out there WAY too long unanswered. People like DailyKos and DU had strong rebuttals showing Bush as an even greater flip-flopper, but the Kerry campaign never countered it.

Same with the Swift Boat liars. They were eventually discredited - a month later after their attacks had been on the news 24/7 for weeks.

Same thing with Bush's economic message. Not once did I hear a counter to Bush bragging about 1.7 million jobs in 12 months (later to be 1.9 million in 13 months). Come on, that is so easy - you just have to say that an AVERAGE 13 month period under Bill Clinton brought you over 3 million new jobs. Bush 1 got hammered by Clinton for a jobless recovery that had similar numbers, or better, than what Bush 2 was bragging about!

That's what really doomed the campaign. It made kerry sound wishy washy (and, to be fair- he actually was wishy washy about certain things). Big mistake that shouldn't continue to be repeated (although it seems as if Democrats never learn).