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The Kerry Tribes The seven factions fighting for control of his campaign

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Classical_Liberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-25-04 07:45 PM
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The Kerry Tribes The seven factions fighting for control of his campaign
The Kennedy Militia
The power center of the campaign. Three of Kerry's top aides—chief media strategist Bob Shrum, campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, and communications director Stephanie Cutter—come from the province of Sen. Ted Kennedy (himself an important Kerry adviser). Shrum, who has been close to Kennedy since his 1980 presidential campaign, has consolidated control over Kerry's operation, making himself its mightiest warlord. During the primaries, Shrum helped to force out Kerry's first campaign manager, Jim Jordan, and replace him with Cahill, who had been Kennedy's chief of staff. Cutter also came straight from Kennedy's staff. Shrum is a famous advocate of populist, us-against-them rhetoric, and Kerry's emphasis on "special interests" and "Benedict Arnold companies" is a clear reflection of his growing power.
What they want: Fiery populism.
Sign that they're winning: Kerry issues Shrumian broadsides against special interests.
Biggest enemy: The Clintonites, who prefer 1990s Democratic centrism to "people vs. the powerful" tirades.

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Clintonites
While few Clinton-era politicos have joined the campaign (see above), plenty of Clintonites are now toiling in Kerry's policy shop, hammering out his agenda. Kerry's policy director is Sarah Bianchi, a health-care wizard who spent years in the Clinton White House (and was Al Gore's policy director). His economics team is also composed of ex-Clinton wonks, including Gene Sperling and Roger Altman. Kerry has also recently started taking advice from Bruce Reed, Clinton's former policy director and a godfather of Democratic-centrist domestic policy. On foreign affairs, too, Kerry talks to all the top names from the Clinton years: Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Jamie Rubin. (Rand Beers, a Clint,.........

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098894/

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Classical_Liberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-25-04 07:53 PM
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1. I think this is the reason Kerry is fucking up
Edited on Sun Apr-25-04 07:54 PM by Classical_Liberal
He was originally getting his asskicked by Dean in the primaries because of the Clinton faction, so he started listening to the asskickers in the Kennedy/Band of brothers faction. Then for the general he started listening to the Demo wimps again. What's worse is that these are the people who had their asses handed to them in 2002. Particularly in Georgia.
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Guaranteed Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-25-04 08:06 PM
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2. It's all about learning from the past.
All people have to do is look at what happened in 2002 and decide for themselves.

There is no room for cowardice in this campaign.
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Classical_Liberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-25-04 08:16 PM
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3. Also read this
wenty-six-year-old Vanessa Kerry defined the pro-democracy camp’s position, just hours after the coup. She said, “I believe this administration just helped overthrow, basically overthrow, a democratically-elected president.”

But the reportedly grown men who fancy themselves as the once-and-future global kings of geopolitical intrigue, the wannabe aspirants to become the new viceroys made of chocolate with peanuts for noses, the new Ottos, the new Rogers, dressed as big-D “Democrats,” led by former Clinton administration foreign policy fixers Rand Beers, Sandy Berger and Richard Holbrooke, are said to have had a different idea: To let Aristide fall, and to keep John Kerry quiet about it.

As one regular participant in this policy group’s conference calls (a beltway version of the board game, Risk), former Kerry Senate counsel and former Clinton State Department functionary Jonathan Winer shared with me on February 24th what he had recommended to the Kerry campaign:

“My advice on Haiti was not to say anything for a few more days, because Haiti has always been a disaster and always will be a disaster and there is nothing good that we can do other than send troops in and keep them there for a really long time as a security force, and while that would be good for them in practical terms, they’d make us pay a big price for it because they prefer Haitian catastrophe to American order anytime.”

I give Jonathan points for honesty, although of course I don’t share his opinion. (How does an otherwise conscientious policymaker fall into the tar pit? It happens when he forgets that “pro-democracy” is the first, second, third, and last step of any foreign policy adventure. Wonks and Wonkettes of America: Take notes. There will be many quizzes ahead between now and January 20th..........

http://www.narconews.com/Issue32/article937.html
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