Leaping lizards!! Not again!! Earlier Sen. John Flipflop Kerry said he believes homosexuals make a choice. -- Mary Cheney, Part II.
Yesterday I did a post entitled "The comment heard round the world by moms (soccer, terror and otherwise). -- Sen. Kerry speaks for Mary Cheney."
What would I love to find today? Contradiction and disagreement, anything but confirmation of my deep and heavy fears noted in my Sunday post. I didn't find the former.
Today the New York Times has an article entitled "For Kerry, a Few Words That May Be Debatable" with quotes from Democratic officials that reflect the fears I expressed yesterday. Excerpts:
Senator John Kerry and President Bush devoted four and a half hours and nearly 45,000 words to three detailed and substantial debates. But a single remark by Mr. Kerry, noting that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is a lesbian, has shadowed his strong performance and given Republicans an opening to slow the momentum Mr. Kerry got from the debates, some Democrats say.
Amid signs of Democratic concern, Mr. Kerry's advisers acknowledged Sunday that some voters perceived Mr. Kerry's remark as an invasion of Ms. Cheney's privacy, a gratuitous personal insult, or a crass political calculation by which Mr. Kerry was trying to drive a wedge between Mr. Cheney and conservatives unaware that his daughter was gay.
And Republicans were quick to seize on the exchange to reinforce their effort to portray Mr. Kerry in these closing days of the presidential race as a man who, as Mr. Cheney put it, "will say and do anything in order to get elected."
[A]s the fallout continued this weekend, some Democrats were clearly concerned, aware that there has rarely been a presidential campaign as close as this one.
It is not clear whether this is a passing dust-up, as Mr. Kerry's advisers said in dismissing these latest polls, or the kind of event that could prove consequential in a race in which voters' allegiance to Mr. Kerry is anything but deep.
Other Democrats . . . suggested Mr. Kerry had inadvertently thrown a lifeline to the White House.
As is frequently the case in campaign episodes like this, the real damage is a function of whether they reinforce existing voter concerns about a candidate, like when Bill Clinton, at the very time he was being mocked as "Slick Willie," talked about smoking marijuana and not inhaling. And Republicans were arguing that this was the case. "This reminded people that this is a guy who will say anything to get elected," Mr. [Matthew Dowd, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush,] said.
Perhaps. Democrats were less sure about that. It is not as if Mr. Kerry had argued both sides of the same issue.
_______________
P.S. The last sentence was the source for a little levity for the title of this post. (At least it better be levity, something that is not a given on any topic given the nature of our candidate.)
What would I love to find today? Contradiction and disagreement, anything but confirmation of my deep and heavy fears noted in my Sunday post. I didn't find the former.
Today the New York Times has an article entitled "For Kerry, a Few Words That May Be Debatable" with quotes from Democratic officials that reflect the fears I expressed yesterday. Excerpts:
Senator John Kerry and President Bush devoted four and a half hours and nearly 45,000 words to three detailed and substantial debates. But a single remark by Mr. Kerry, noting that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is a lesbian, has shadowed his strong performance and given Republicans an opening to slow the momentum Mr. Kerry got from the debates, some Democrats say.
Amid signs of Democratic concern, Mr. Kerry's advisers acknowledged Sunday that some voters perceived Mr. Kerry's remark as an invasion of Ms. Cheney's privacy, a gratuitous personal insult, or a crass political calculation by which Mr. Kerry was trying to drive a wedge between Mr. Cheney and conservatives unaware that his daughter was gay.
And Republicans were quick to seize on the exchange to reinforce their effort to portray Mr. Kerry in these closing days of the presidential race as a man who, as Mr. Cheney put it, "will say and do anything in order to get elected."
[A]s the fallout continued this weekend, some Democrats were clearly concerned, aware that there has rarely been a presidential campaign as close as this one.
It is not clear whether this is a passing dust-up, as Mr. Kerry's advisers said in dismissing these latest polls, or the kind of event that could prove consequential in a race in which voters' allegiance to Mr. Kerry is anything but deep.
Other Democrats . . . suggested Mr. Kerry had inadvertently thrown a lifeline to the White House.
As is frequently the case in campaign episodes like this, the real damage is a function of whether they reinforce existing voter concerns about a candidate, like when Bill Clinton, at the very time he was being mocked as "Slick Willie," talked about smoking marijuana and not inhaling. And Republicans were arguing that this was the case. "This reminded people that this is a guy who will say anything to get elected," Mr. [Matthew Dowd, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush,] said.
Perhaps. Democrats were less sure about that. It is not as if Mr. Kerry had argued both sides of the same issue.
_______________
P.S. The last sentence was the source for a little levity for the title of this post. (At least it better be levity, something that is not a given on any topic given the nature of our candidate.)
posted by Sid Cottingham | 5:36 AM
2 Comments:
We won't know if this was a genius strategy or an awful gaffe until November. Bush has abondoned swing voters, instead choosing to fire up his base. As you noted, Kerry's remark was aimed squarely at them.
But one must weigh risk and reward. Here the former greatly outweighted the latter, it seems to me. But one thing for thing for sure that is reflected in the comment, it was not accidental. A senior adviser to the President said "it wasn't just accidental that he did it - he's not an accidental guy."
Post a Comment
<< Home