The MARY CHENEY Flap

In a close race, any little thing can flip the outcome. Did the Mary Cheney non-scandal scandal do that? God, I hope not, but if 59,000,000 Americans could vote for Bush, well, then, I don't know. This passage from the Newsweek special seems to indicate that it had a difference in the outcome. I hope it's not true, but if it is, I'm just even more sorry about the state of the American body politic. Kerry said nothing wrong. The whole thing was a load of B.S. Yet, it seems to have cost him among some swing voters and dominated the news cycle in a negative way for Kerry. The story wasn't about how Kerry had cleaned Bush's clock a third time, it was a story about Mary Cheney. And I worry that maybe, just maybe it made a difference in the final outcome, mainly by blunting Kerry's momentum.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6423994/site/newsweek/

Kerry was sure he had won the final debate. When the debate team came onto the plane afterward, Kerry, all smiles, hugged Shrum hard and said, "Thanks." Shrum felt redeemed. He hadn't felt so much affection from Kerry since the night they had won the Iowa caucuses back in January.

But in a conference room a few minutes away from the auditorium of Arizona State University, Republican pollster Ed Goeas knew better. About 30 minutes into the debate, Kerry was asked by moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS whether he thought homosexuality was a matter of choice or birth. In his answer, Kerry brought up Dick Cheney's gay daughter, Mary. Goeas's focus group—five Republicans, five Democrats, five independents—had a "huge negative reaction," Goeas later recalled. The group seemed to react differently to Kerry after his remark about Mary. Their comments, recorded on notecards after the Democratic candidate answered each question, became more wary and suspicious: "He didn't answer the question" or "He answered the question with an attack on the president." When the debate was over, 11 of the 15 cast votes for Bush.

<snip>

Kerry's remark was a break for the Bush campaign. The flap over the Mary Cheney remark diverted attention from Bush's performance and put the spotlight squarely on Kerry. Mary Beth Cahill did not help matters by saying after the debate that Mary was "fair game" (the veep's daughter was, in fact, long out of the closet, a gay activist herself). Kerry's aides insisted that the candidate's remark had not been intentional, that he was just trying to say something nice about Mary but sounded "klutzy" instead. (Indeed, both Tad Devine and Shrum had grimaced when they heard Kerry make the remark as they nervously watched the debate from their trailer.)

The explanations were too late. So-called security moms who had been initially inclined to vote for Bush, then swung toward Kerry after the first two debates, were put off by his seemingly gratuitous attempt to drag Cheney's daughter into the race. Kerry's momentum was stopped. With less than three weeks to go, both sides were claiming narrow leads. The race looked dead even.

"Is there anything I could do or say or write that would convince you to willingly, happily, eagerly, anxiously, deliriously, lustfully put my dick in your mouth and leave it there until I had an orgasm? I rest my case."

don't believe what "republican pollsters" say about their focus groups, they've been known to lie, as hard as that is to believe.

I saw Frank Luntz (a republican pollster, despite MSNBC's billing him as just a "pollster") completely lie about what his focus group had just said on camera. They were clearly seen to say one thing to us, then Luntz turns to the camera and says they said another. You could see the focus group behind him shaking their heads.

If there was one single turning point that I had to pick, the Mary Cheney flap would be at the top of my list. When he made that flap, I turned to my wife and told her I thought Kerry just might've lost the election. I called my friends and family after that debate for their opinion of his flap and they all agreed he blew it.

While Kerry maybe intended to point out BFEE hypocrisy, what he did instead was give people a reason to feel sympathy for them, by putting a face on it.

Bad move.

If people felt any sympathy for gay people because of Kerry's remark, they surely didn't show it at the polls, did they.

Some folks logic defies me. Either K/E didn't condemn gays enough, or a remark by Kerry meant to be empathetic generated too much of a sympathetic backlash. Can't have it both ways.

As in, feeling sorry for Cheney.

Kerry did nothing wrong by bringing up Mary Cheney. Why do you think the Republicans seized on it? Because they knew that it was powerful so they had to spin it around and make it a liability. They are so much better at that than we are and it drives me crazy.

He made his difference with Bush very clear when he answered the question about whether homosexuality was a choice. He could have said everything else he said, without that.

it was a distraction from this fact

they just don't want them to marry.

They're such hypocrites, they need to pretend not to hate the objects of their hatred.

vote for Bush anyway.

... cringed when Kerry named Mary Cheney.

It was a bumbling addition to what was essentially an inclusive statement.

just in case some of them forgot.

It was the way he said it, the timing of it, and it came off as a ploy. After Edwards had tactfully addressed the same subject with Cheney, there was really no need for Kerry to bring it up out of the blue and in the manner he did it. It was the tone of Kerry's voice. You could tell that it was completely rehearsed.

When Kerry said it, it seemed like there was a ten second delay between the word's "a" and "lesbian".

"And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a.........................................Lesbian"....

not in the fact that Kerry made the remark, because every candidate is going to say something. But the backup wasn't there, the groundwork hadn't been laid properly to deal with a candidate who could ramble in his rhetoric.

I grimaced, too, when he said it. He went on in that debate to say some very beautiful things about his life and faith, but we failed to frame it into what he had felt. We should have played into our part of his humanity, instead of apolgizing and saying Bush said his lies. Dem rhetoric is way too much "well, you're right on that, but here's my point" instead of "it's like this".

We get off track by trying to make our candidates perfect. They are perfectly good people, not perfect people. Kerry was a good man, good enough to be a great Pres, and we have to once again learn to be inspired by mere mortals.

Was to allow the media to avoid discussing any of the other domestic issues that came up in the debate.

Being gracious (well, I thought it was a forced graciousness--just didn't ring true) in the VP debate. Did Edwards float it out there to see what Cheney's reaction might be?

the media made it a bigger deal and it blunted Kerrys rise.

She's a public figure; she was an employee of Coor's Brewing as some kind of ombudsperson for outreach to the gay community, and she was an employed member of her father's campaign. As such, she wasn't just a public figure, but a public figure specifically because of her sexuality.

Why did she not speak out, if she was offended? Her parents and her sister cried crocodile tears and impugned the very core characters of both of our nominees, but SHE SAID NOTHING.

The answer to all this, of course, is that we're walking on eggshells about the issue of gay rights to such a timid degree that nobody called her out. Someone needs to force her hand on this now: this issue has had at least some effect on the election, and she needs to be called into account for either letting her family use her as a sympathy ploy or or something akin to that. She's benefitting by the victory of Daddy and the Mob, so she owes us a response. This is self-serving crap on the part of her family, especially since they brought it up, and it wasn't used by our candidates in a divisive way.

What's her take on this? Is she so above reproach and super-sensitive that we should tiptoe around her feelings as she allows herself to be used to entrench a totalitarian regime that personally benefits her?

A prominent Lesbian should be out there calling her out; I know it's a complex thing, but shouldn't that be the case? She's helped screw over her sisters and hasn't even had the decency to show up and take some heat for it. I hope that paycheck's mighty big.

Any thoughts on this?

I have no more respect for her than I have for someone like the late Roy Cohn.

I thought that he shouldn't have done it and apparently so did everyone else. It now appears obvious that it caused Kerry's drop in the polls in the immediate aftermath of the third debate.