Did The Clinton Team DOOM The Kerry Campaign?

By Arianna Huffington

November 11, 2004

Twelve days before the election, James Carville stood in a Beverly Hills living room surrounded by two generations of Hollywood stars. After being introduced by Sen. John Kerry’s daughter, Alexandra, he told the room — confidently, almost cockily — that the election was in the bag.

“If we can’t win this damn election,” the advisor to the Kerry campaign said, “with a Democratic Party more unified than ever before, with us having raised as much money as the Republicans, with 55% of the country believing we’re heading in the wrong direction, with our candidate having won all three debates, and with our side being more passionate about the outcome than theirs — if we can’t win this one, then we can’t win shit! And we need to completely rethink the Democratic Party.”

Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what should be done. But instead, Carville and his fellow architects of the Democratic defeat have spent the last week defending their campaign strategy, culminating on Monday morning with a breakfast for an elite core of Washington reporters.

At the breakfast, Carville, together with chief campaign strategist Bob Shrum and pollster Stan Greenberg, seemed intent on one thing — salvaging their reputations.

They blamed the public for not responding to John Kerry’s message on the economy, and they blamed the news media for distracting voters from this critical message with headlines from that pesky war in Iraq. “News events were driving this,” said Shrum. “The economy was not driving the news coverage.”

But shouldn’t it have been obvious that Iraq and the war on terror were the real story of this campaign? Only these Washington insiders, stuck in an anachronistic 1990s mind-set and re-fighting the ’92 election, could think that the economy would be the driving factor in a post-9/11 world with Iraq in flames. That the campaign’s leadership failed to recognize that it was no longer “the economy, stupid,” was the tragic flaw of the race.

In conversations with Kerry insiders over the last nine months, I’ve heard a recurring theme: that it was Shrum and the Clintonistas (including Greenberg, Carville and senior advisor Joe Lockhart) who dominated the campaign in the last two months and who were convinced that this election was going to be won on domestic issues, like jobs and healthcare, and not on national security.

More... http://ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=744

"No honey. It was the machines. It was the harrassment that kept people from voting. It was purging people from the rolls. It was stolen. That's all there was to it"

Take off the blinders. Sure there was fraud. Probably even a significant amount of fraud. But there does not appear to have been enough fraud to have tipped the election. I've run the numbers six ways til Sunday. Correcting for fraud doesn't put us over the top.

We have to count the votes. Sure. But there are systemic Democratic problems we need to address. And by not admitting it, you're part of the problem.

You tell me, what numbers did you run?
Are you serious-you run the numbers and there is not enough fraud to put us over the top?
LOL.
Where exactly did you get your FRAUD numbers?
:eyes:

These conspiracy theories are more than just irritating and embarrassing...They're self-fulfilling prophecies, imo. They create a Boogie Man who can't be defeated. The Boogie Man NEVER dies, afterall.

There is nothing wrong with keeping the criminals honest, but we need to focus on solid tangible reasons why we didn't win and work to correct those mistakes. This country is NOT 51% Puke!

The Kerry campaign is on the front lines here and they're not running out in the streets shreiking like maniacs...Personally, I'm with them.

"Reality, not tin foil" is my motto, too.

...as long as two of them are dead.

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I hope your next posts are more based in reality rather than on RW talking Points.

BTW, welcome to DU for a little while.

they want whats best for the country; what's best for them comes second. there's no way that either bill or hillary would try to ensure another 4 years of bush so that hillary could run in 08. break out your :tinfoilhat:

...the very end of Kerry's campaign did Kerry take advice from Carville, Lockhart and Clinton.

Yeah. That's quite a grip on power Clinton has. Most of the time, everyone ignores him.

like us all to try to resist this barage of articles trying to blame some of our best Democrats for the work of Rove and the Republican Machine.

and this is the first one that has said that all three were trying to salvage their reputations. The others all said that Shrum was unwilling to blame campaign strategy while Greenberg and Carville were willing to criticize strategy.

Also, it's not clear what Arianna is complaining about. Obviously if the Democrats are week on national security and strong on domestic issues, their job is to try to make themselves not appear week on national security issues and to make voters think that domestic issues are more important. That's exactly what Kerry did. The last ten days of the campaign, the media only talked about missing explosives and the OBL tape. Could that have hurt Democrats less? Well, maybe if they did a better job of convincing voters that jobs, class and middle class opportunity were more important (which might have been easier if the head of the ticket wasn't a wealthy New Englander who went to Yale, but whatever).

What did Arianna want them to do? Abandon domestic issues totally and completely run a campaign focused entirely on the war? Why would any Democrat vote for a Democrat who tells them that the ONLY issue is the war? I don't believe the only issue is the war. I believe the war is part of a strategy by Republicans to transfer a ton of wealth to the wealthy. It's part of a biggger picture. If I thought the only issue were war, I'd just be a Republican.

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come.get.me.

you fascist pig

What a LOSER!

crawl back into your cave and hop on your satellite phone; tell the militia to get ready. :crazy: