More Hewitt
The Kerry Campaign brain trust has decided that stunts are better than a John Kerry press conference in recovering some momentum.
This Reuters story is almost beyond belief: Max Cleland and Jim Rassman are flying down to the president's ranch to "try and deliver a letter" to the president protesting the Swift Biat vets ads. This is it? This is how they stop Kerry's sinking numbers?
Imagine a crowd waiting to see The Who who are instead greeted by Peter, Paul and Mary. Sure, both groups are connected to music, and PPM even drew some crowds in their day, but that's not what the crowd came for. Cleland and Rassman aren't what the crowd wants either. The questions that need answers can only be answered by John Kerry and, incredibly, he's taking the stonewall on another day.
The Washington Post is trying to help with a "blockbuster" front-pager which breaks the story that great lawyers have many clients. This Dana Milbank and Tom Edsall piece unleashes the news a that Bush-Cheney lawyer is also the lawyer for the Swift Boat vets. That's the headline. Look at the third paragraph:
"[Ginsburg] said two prominent Democratic lawyers are doing the same thing. He said Robert Bauer, the top legal counsel for the Kerry campaign, also is the attorney for an independent group, America Coming Together, that has been mobilizing voters in support of Kerry. In addition, Ginsberg said, Joseph Sandler is a lawyer for both the Democratic National Committee and for the independent group MoveOn.org, which has run advertisements attacking Bush."
How this can be a page one piece is mystifying, but when the news that the country's top campaign lawyers represent both candidates and 527s becomes news, you know the Kerry cheering section in the newsrooms have become desperate. Especially when the report headlines that a Bush lawyer is doing something and doesn't note that Kerry lawyers are doing the very same thing.
To repeat: Only Kerry can stop the toll taken by the searing criticisms from the men he served with in Vietnam. Kerry will eventually have to take all of the questions about his service --his Cambodian inventions, the first Purple Heart, the terrible things he said about his fellow vets, etc, etc-- and answer them on camera. The fact that he doesn't want to doesn't matter at all. He can brand the criticisms as "so petty as to be pathetic" and trot out his service as an aide to an admiral, but he refuses and refuses to meet with the press on camera and take questions. The fact that he doesn't have answers is what has led to the stonewall, and so another day's news cycle begins, and stunts, personal attacks and sidebars won't change the focus one bit.
Of course terrorism could change the focus, but not in any way that works out well for Kerry, the Great Avoider is hardly the sort to inspire confidence in an electorate which sees planes dropping from the sky and reads stories of suspicious activities by Hamas-affiliated videotapers of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
How will Kerry's allies in big media spin this news, from the Wall Street Journal:
"A political group recently formed by backers of President Bush has amassed a treasure chest of $35 million and plans a barrage of commercials criticizing Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry, even though the president this week denounced such outside organizations for running negative campaign ads.
The Progress for America Voter Fund was launched in May after the Federal Election Commission refused to shut down a crop of well-funded liberal organizations that were going after the president. Those groups, known as 527s, had formed quickly and begun raising large sums in the wake of new campaign laws, gaining a substantial edge on Republicans. Now, in an election already steamrolling fund-raising records, the new Republican group's deep pockets -- matching those of some of the big Democratic groups -- seem sure to set up an intense, and highly partisan, big-money battle on airwaves this fall."
Hard to denounce a 527 that is anti-Kerry after anti-Bush 527s have spent more than $60 million against W. The big difference, of course, is that MoveOn and The Media Fund haven't been very effective because the wild-eyed loons and Hollywood types are not very effective at grasping what moves a red state voter, or even a wobbly blue-state voter. The "My Pet Goat" stuff is great for the sufferers of Moore's Disease, but ordinary Americans think it is childish. I suspect the pro-Bush folks are going to be much, much more sophisticated in their appeals to voters:
"Progress for America plans to begin airing ads today in two battleground states, Wisconsin and Iowa, says Mr. McCabe. The ads question whether Sen. Kerry would have adequately handled the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
One of the commercials opens with the smoky ruins of the Twin Towers and moves to several pictures of Mr. Bush with New York firefighters and other rescue workers. A narrator praises Mr. Bush's leadership, and asks: "But what if Bush wasn't there? Could John Kerry have shown this leadership?" Then the ad ticks off votes by Sen. Kerry that it portrays as being against intelligence and Defense Department budgets."
That's going to leave a mark. So will the ads targeting the very liberal Ken Salazar in Colorado. Salazar, like Kerry, has responded to independent money expenditures by whining, but if the Colorado Attorney General went on record denouncing Soros and Ickes etc., I missed it. Sometime in this cycle, we are likely to see powerful ads making the simple and accurate point that a vote for Tom Daschle, or Ken Salazar, or Erskine Bowles or any of a number of Democratic senators or candidates for senate, is a vote for gay marriage. Those ads will be completely accurate because votes for any Democratic senator or would-be senator will increase the likelihood of continued filibusters against Bush nominees likely to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act and unlikely to follow the lead of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in cases that come before them similar to the one that led four justices of that court to decree the end of traditional marriage. We will then hear howls of protest that candidate A or Senator B actually opposes gay marriage. Really, the American electorate is far too sophisticated for whining or dissembling in 2004. It isn't working for Kerry, it won't work for Salazar or other Dem candidates, and as a campaign tactic it ought to be retired.
Speaking of leaving a mark, so will the incoherence emerging as the defining mark of the Kerry team. The gang around Kerry is setting a record for incompetence. Ted Kennedy sent Mary Beth Cahill to Kerry's rescue in the primaries, but that Kennedy magic doesn't seem to be working outside the fever swamps of those primaries. Could it be that the tactics and messages refined in Massachusetts just don't make much sense in Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida and even on the west coast? |
