Monday, September 27, 2004
Forewarned is Forearmed
Except for a short time during the Dean surge (seems decades ago, doesn't it) the Bush people expected that John Kerry would be the likely Democratic nominee in 2004 and planned their strategy accordingly. The same is true of the Clinton campaign in 1996 against Bob Dole. I wonder if knowing your opponent well ahead of time helps an incumbent president. Conversely, in 1992, I don't think the Bush 41 people figured they would end up running against Bill Clinton. I'm sure their early strategizing focused on Mario Cuomo, Bill Bradley, or Dick Gephardt. Just a thought.
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Yeah, but the opponents usually know their opponents way ahead of time, too.
Like, no matter who was nominated for the Dems. they knew they'd be running against Bush. Did that give the Dems. an advantage this year?
I don't know if there is any relevance to my own personal belief that the Dems are throwing this one; but you've got to figure that a Republican corpse with prior knowledge that he'd be running against Kerry would feel pretty good about the odds. In all seriousness, the boys in blue have to be feeling good about a Hilary Clinton ticket in '08 after four more years with President Cheney.
It didn't really matter who Bush faced. The Republican's were going to paint the Democratic canidate as a pinko,queer, friend of terrorism who is compeltely out of touch with mainstream American values. Substitute any of the Democratic canidates from this past Fall's campaign and the results are the same. Does Kerry suffer from unique personality and biographical flaws that the Bush campaign has taken advantage of? Sure. But so did everybody else. This is just the Lee Atwater sludge machine doing what it has successfully done for going on 20+ years...making Democrats look like they are from Mars. Shame on us for not fighting harder to reverse it. Bill Clinton laid out a nice blueprint for doing so...it's too bad it got lost in one of those desks he took from the White House to Chappaqua.
It didn't really matter who Bush faced. The Republican's were going to paint the Democratic canidate as a pinko,queer, friend of terrorism who is compeltely out of touch with mainstream American values. Substitute any of the Democratic canidates from this past Fall's campaign and the results are the same. Does Kerry suffer from unique personality and biographical flaws that the Bush campaign has taken advantage of? Sure. But so did everybody else. This is just the Lee Atwater sludge machine doing what it has successfully done for going on 20+ years...making Democrats look like they are from Mars. Shame on us for not fighting harder to reverse it. Bill Clinton laid out a nice blueprint for doing so...it's too bad it got lost in one of those desks he took from the White House to Chappaqua.
It didn't really matter who Bush faced. The Republican's were going to paint the Democratic canidate as a pinko,queer, friend of terrorism who is compeltely out of touch with mainstream American values. Substitute any of the Democratic canidates from this past Fall's campaign and the results are the same. Does Kerry suffer from unique personality and biographical flaws that the Bush campaign has taken advantage of? Sure. But so did everybody else. This is just the Lee Atwater sludge machine doing what it has successfully done for going on 20+ years...making Democrats look like they are from Mars. Shame on us for not fighting harder to reverse it. Bill Clinton laid out a nice blueprint for doing so...it's too bad it got lost in one of those desks he took from the White House to Chappaqua.
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