This is the kind of mess that Kerry was up against

snip from the Tavis Smiley show interview with Bill Clinton back in June 2004:

Tavis: No matter how big he gets--as you well know, and you've acknowledged so heretofore--he cannot win the White House without the African American vote. He's gonna have a hard time doing it without the brown vote, but certainly he can't do it without the black vote. You know the joke, black people--many of them see you as America's first black president. What are you saying to John Kerry about what he needs to do? Because clearly, he has not caught fire, does not have the rapport with black America that you have. What are you saying to him about that privately?

Clinton: That he has to keep really reaching out and that he shouldn't worry about the… I mean, my rapport with the black community was born of my life, a whole life. And, you know, you read this book, you see it. It's something that started when I was a little bitty kid, before I knew there was any such thing as really racial differences with people. Black Americans don't expect him to be me. They want him to be him and they want to know him and they want to feel good about him. And I think they will respond to him just the way other Americans have as they know him more.

Tavis: But let me finish up the few minutes that we have here by asking post-John Kerry, assuming that John Kerry wins--and maybe if he doesn't win, somewhere down the road when one Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected president, is she going to tell the American people that if you elect me, you get two for the price of one?

Clinton: Hmm. Depends on how much confidence she's got in my judgment, I guess.

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200406/20040628_transcript.html

That's the kind of garbage Tavis was talking about during the election. The more he said it, the more peeps believed it. Clinton did get it though.

the funny thing is that those who watched Kerry's interviews with Tavis Smiley liked Kerry and it helped get Kerry support.

so as long as Kerry can get people to see him rather than just hear what others say it's good. but the problem is that people can't always see him.

i think what Kerry needs to do and he is somewhat doing it right now is that he just needs to go around the country and try to meet as many people directly as he can. the town hall forums are a good way to do it.

Hope I don't make any Kerrycrat's blood pressure rise from posting that. I agree 1005 though.

so we can try to find out what to do about it. especially if Kerry decides to run again.

i hope for the next 2 years Kerry goes around the country holding many town hall meetings and meeting people . he did this during the primary in iowa and new hampshire. he tried to do it during the general election but there isn't much time by then.

i think Kerry should and he probably will do other interviews with Tavis Smiley and others and discuss these things.

Kerry needs to get his record out there also. that was one of the problems. that people just didn't know about his record of helping people for years.

Doesn't make me mad. It's true. But then I think you kind of have to have an ego problem to want to run for President. It's certainly not a normal, average level of ambition. :)


I heard a fair amount right before the election that Kerry wasn't connecting with the African-American community. I worked on the front-desk phone for a little while in the local office and we got a lot of people calling who had all sorts of suggestions and complaints about the way the campaign was going (Democrats) and that was one I heard a couple of times from different people. But like with so much about this campaign, it's hard to know what was really a genuine trend and what was a manufactured media meme that too many people took too seriously.

A lot of the highest-ranking people in the Chicago office were black, and they all said they thought it was bullshit, but of course they had a professional investment.

The more honest conversation about this issue, the better, IMO.

although i agree that an ego in some way is something that could apply to anyone who runs for president. although looking at someone like Jimmy Carter i'm not so sure it's always true.

As a former President he earned the right to it and he does have an enviable rapport with the black community. The problem I have is that this was during the campaign where he as a Democrat should have been backing Kerry as well as he could.

The question was what was he telling Kerry to do visa via the black community. He spends most of the time patting himself on the
back. If is goal was to focus on how he could help Kerry - he could have:
1) Talked about what Kerry did on things that Kerry did as a prosecutor and has continued to work for during his time as Lt. Governor and Senator relating to underprivileged youth. He should have talked about Kerry's work on the crime bill.
2) He cold have talked about any connection Kerry had with Boston's black community. (The story someone posted here about him going to a black church after the Rodney King story broke would have been great.) Especially if he said, that Kerry does these things because he thinks they're the right thing to do, and that he doesn't then run around telling everyone - message (Kerry did this because he sincerely cared, not for political gain - if it was politics, he would have made a production about it, made himself the center of attention, and taken the press with him.)

Instead, what I get from what he says is "yeah, well Kerry can't compare to me. He doesn't have my background." As a surrogate, this performance stinks - more so because Clinton as the credibility with the black community to give them information on Kerry's positive record. (I doubt he would have been better with anyone else, other than Hillary.)

I like Bill Clinton, but find he helps himself rather than others. His speech at Gore's convention was all about himself. I still have read little of his book because I dislike this attitude in it. I find might self just using the index to see what he wrote about people.

Tavis can be right on some things, but he can be over the top at times.

Totally misunderstood that! :blush:


Well, he has an ego problem too, I guess!

And it works both for and against him, as it does for most people. It takes an incredible amount of ego to see the state of the world as it is and say, hey, I'm the guy, I can help to fix it. Only a tiny handful of people can actualy do this and have a sizeable portion of the population reply by saying, hey, you just might be the guy. Go ahead, give it a shot.

All successful people have big egos. (Jimmy Carter definitely did. I worked on that campaign.) Tavis has enjoyed a lot of success in his career, he is allowed to preen a bit. Some are even a tiny bit vain. As long as it remains a tiny bit, that's okay as well. We all have our human traits. In the best case scenario we are aware of our faults and try to compensate for them. We are also aware of our strengths and try to showcase them.

:hug:

"Black Americans don't expect him to be me. They want him to be him and they want to know him and they want to feel good about him. And I think they will respond to him just the way other Americans have as they know him more."

I think that's how Kerry approaches minorities. He just wanted everyone to know him, and he didn't tailor his speech to any one group in particular. Because everyone cares about what he was talking about: jobs, education, healthcare, national security. I think that approach worked too, don't you?
It is so easy to look like you are pandering to one group or another, and it comes off as really insincere and phoney. That's something JK didn't want to do, he just wanted all types of people to get to know him. He spoke (and still speaks) to people as fellow Americans.

such as debates, convention speech etc, they know what he is about.

they don't ask themselves "but when i saw him he said this and now he is saying this".

what i like about Kerry is he really tries to understand and learn about other people and their lives rather than just come up with simple empty ways of trying to get support.


if you notice the Chimp he changes his accent depending on the audience. when he went to South Carolina he puts on a much thicker southern accent. when he is in non southern places his accent pretty much goes away. he is a phony ass bitch. the ranch is part of the act also. he bought it shortly before he announced he would run for president. laura has already said they will buy another home when they leave office.

The accent changes according to who he's talking to! It's thickest I think on the campaign trail. That's all I had heard for some weeks, and then at that first press conference after the "election", he was a whole different person. And no drawl! If you ask me, he was so subdued that I thought he was on some drug or alcohol or something. Shocking. He's such a phoney. Recently I heard a clip of him talking about something economic, to a business group, and he actually sounded coherent. And again, no accent whatsoever!