Dem Strategy and Strategists

Kerry’s Consigliere

For the legendary strategist Bob Shrum, a lifetime in Democratic politics comes down to John Kerry and a final shot at the White House.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200405/lizza


Powerlines - reclaiming Patriotism

...But Kerry’s speech was just as striking for what it did not do, or even attempt. He offered no overarching vision of what he’d seek to do as president. In part, that’s a reflection on Kerry, who’s led discreet and commendable battles in his years as a legislator — against arctic drilling and exposing Iran-Contra — but never identified himself with a cause or ideology in the manner of, say, his Massachusetts colleague Ted Kennedy. In part, that’s a reflection on Kerry’s consigliere, Robert Shrum, a veteran campaign consultant whose candidates haven’t often had a single unifying theme to their message.

Then again, the domestic platforms of virtually every Democratic presidential candidate this year were very similar, with the exceptions of Joe Lieberman on the right and Dennis Kucinich on the left. All, including Lieberman and Kucinich, proposed, as their top-dollar item, greatly expanding health insurance, and Kerry did make clear that this was his foremost domestic priority. (Also like the other candidates, he vowed to pay for this program by rolling back tax cuts on Americans making more than $200,000 a year.) His program is actually crafted to avoid the kinds of political attack that crippled both Clinton’s program and any suggestion of single-payer, through the miracle of not really creating any new program. Instead, he has the government assume the cost of catastrophic illnesses that employers and employees now cover in the form of higher premiums and deductibles and co-pays. He expands Medicaid to benefit more poor people, and he authorizes the government to bargain with drug companies to bring down costs. No great vision there, but it would go a long way to making health care more affordable for the already-insured and more attainable for the uninsured....cont'd

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/37/powerlines-meyerson.php


Kerry's captain in the war of words,
Shrum known for populist message

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | April 17, 2004

President George W. Bush's reelection campaign long ago assembled a media team of 10 firms to shape and promote his message. By contrast, with the abrupt departure early this month of Jim Margolis, Senator John F. Kerry's campaign now has a single ad-making firm.

The Kerry campaign says it may add creative talent, but at this point all the eggs are in one basket -- Shrum, Devine & Donilon. Margolis's exit means the influence of consultant Robert M. Shrum is only likely to increase at the headquarters of the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Acknowledged as one of the great wordsmiths of American politics, Shrum, 60, still writes with pad and pen in the laptop age. Many of the candidates for whom he has toiled have been charmed by his urbanity and intellect. Some campaign aides, however, have felt wounded or stepped on by him over the years.

Besides his reputation as a fierce inside player who requires primacy in campaign councils, the most frequent criticism of Shrum is that too many of his candidates run some version of the same populist campaign. They are always fighters, usually against powerful, impersonal forces that are holding down working people...cont'd

http://tinyurl.com/6n9q8

or

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/kerry/articles/2004/04/17/kerrys_captain_in_thewar_of_words/


Stategists Invite Clinton to Bolster Kerry

...Harold Ickes, the senior political strategist in the Kerry team, contacted Mr Clinton this month to discuss ways in which the former president's political skills can be used in the coming months.

It has been agreed that he will make a leading speech at the Democratic Convention in Boston at the end of July, despite the fears of some Democrats that Mr Clinton could upstage the presumptive nominee.

"There will be members of the Kerry staff and the advisory council who will say that Kerry may be overshadowed by Clinton speaking," said Mr Ickes. "But I think that at the convention, as much as Democrats love Bill Clinton, they are going to be very much focused on their nominee and they will give him a huge send off."

The former New York governor, Mario Cuomo, still an influential figure in Democrat politics, has also advised Mr Kerry to exploit the Clinton factor.

"Whatever you can do to use Bill and Hillary, big time, use them. The sun that makes your plants grow and makes everybody strong and gives life to the world is so big that when it shows up everybody tends to notice it. So what? What do you get from the sun? You get nourishment. You get life."

Sen Kerry's foreign policy team is staffed largely by luminaries from the Clinton administration, including Madeleine Albright, Samuel Berger, William Perry and Richard Holbrooke. The Clintons have also offered frequent advice on campaign strategy and tactics. It was at Mr Clinton's instigation that a "war room" was set up at the Kerry campaign headquarters, designed for rapid response to Republican attacks......cont'd

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/30/wkerry30.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/05/30/ixworld.html


Building a Political Echo..marketing the buzz

...That the Bush campaign is more methodical in adapting marketing concepts such as influentials to politics does not surprise Michael Harrison. He is the editor of Talkers magazine, which covers talk radio. "The Republicans have always been more organized and more visionary in taking advantage of new media," Harrison said. What is striking about this year's politics is the way in which e-mail and Web sites have entered the mainstream at both ends of the ideological spectrum, and help promote the buzz that any new product, whether car or candidate, needs to be successful. "Every housewife has an e-mail," he said. "We're not talking about geeks and technoheads."...cont'd

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19040-2004May11.html


Kerry Campaign Hires MoveOn.org Strategist

Posted April 8, 2004

John Kerry's campaign has hired Zach Exley, a top strategist at MoveOn.org, to run the presidential hopeful's Internet operations, according to a report in the New York Post. The Bush administration has accused MoveOn.org and other controversial "527" groups of spending supposedly outlawed "soft money" on attack ads against the president.

http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/04/13/Politics/Kerry.Campaign.Hires.Moveon.org.Strategist-655619.shtml

Strategists want to tell Kerry's story

Kerry strategist Tad Devine discusses the presidential campaign.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-07-25-newsmakers-sunday_x.htm


Race Dogged by Terror Fight

August 2, 2004

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio, Aug. 1 - John Kerry was supposed to spend Sunday traveling through small-town Ohio and Michigan, going to church and talking at rallies. But by afternoon, his campaign was also searching northern Ohio for a secure telephone line so Mr. Kerry could squeeze in a briefing on an issue that was overtaking the day: the terrorist threat announced in Washington.

Three days after he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Kerry, along with President Bush, received a bracing reminder about how the fear of another terrorist attack on American soil had shaped the contest and about how the most pivotal thing that could happen between now and Election Day was beyond the control of either campaign....cont'd

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/campaign/02campaign.html?ex=1092628800&en=a4589d5752f650e5&ei=5070&hp


White House Jumped Gun on Politically-Timed Terror Alert

....The FBI and local police still haven't determined whether the surveillance was performed by a single person or several people, and the FBI has not yet identified anyone involved in the surveillance, the White House official said Thursday, adding that the detailed reconnaissance indicated "an awful lot of time and energy put into it."

The surveillance records had been accessed for unknown purposes this spring, months later than authorities had previously disclosed, the official said. The government had said earlier that some files had been reviewed as recently as January.

But some within the Department of Homeland Security questioned the timing of the terror alerts, issued immediately after the Democratic National Convention closed in Boston and succesfully diverting attention from the official launch of Senator John Kerry's campaign for President.

"We had the information before the convention and we didn't announce it," one DHS agent grumbles. "We had the information during the convention and didn't announcement. Nothing changed but we dropped the alert bomb right after the convention. If I were a Democrat, I'd be suspicious."

Another administration official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, claims the White House still would have issued the terror alerts even if it had known at the time that the surveillance documents did not point to an imminent operation...cont'd

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5024.shtml

people keep using him is beyond me.

From the article, Kerry's captain in thewar of words
April 17, 2004



..Shrum's clients win much more often than they lose, but like other top-tier consultants, he's had high-profile campaigns that were stinkers. In 1992, presidential candidate Bob Kerrey publicly disowned his TV ads.

..snip..


Joe Trippi, who managed Dean's campaign, worked for Shrum in the mid-1980s and later on the 1988 Gephardt campaign. Trippi calls Shrum ''brilliant, with great instincts, but stubborn when he thinks he's right." Trippi is sympathetic when the subject comes up about Shrum's failure to help elect a president.

''If you start in 1972, there have been something like 58 Democrats who have run for president, and only two have won," Trippi said. ''It's not like we've been electing a hell of a lot of presidents from our party lately."

per DU copyright rules please no more than 4 paragraphs of copyright material with a link.

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It is getting worse all the time. And undermining what tenuous foundations our democracy has left. Bush and Cheney are constantly getting at minimum a pass, while Kerry is relentlessly put on the defensive. Just last night on Washington Week all the "journalists" agreed on what a masterful stroke Cheney's "sensitive" speech was. There was no explanation of how Cheney had taken Kerry's words totally out of context. Nor how both Bush and Cheney had used exactly the same word themselves. Only admiration of how "effective" this attack was.

I notice that "reporters" are now routinely quoting and characterizing Kerry's words, while Cheney and Bush are shown actually delivering their own words. Surely there must some insistence by the Dems that if you show Bush delivering his own words the same courtesy must be extended to Kerry. The Dems just have to wake up and smell the damn coffee!!!!

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