Kerry camp sees hope in past finishes
boston.com
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff
September 7, 2004
For John F. Kerry, the moment not only in his presidential campaign, but also in his political life, has arrived.
What the Democratic presidential nominee calls the ''golden hour" began yesterday, the period from Labor Day until Election Day, when Americans are no longer distracted by vacations or back-to-school projects. Instead, the campaign has entered an eight-week span when voters will pay their closest attention to the presidential race, an event no longer over the horizon, but just around the corner on Nov. 2.
This is the time when Kerry's near-mythic reputation as a strong closer based on his Senate campaigns dating to 1984 will be tested on a national stage. With an infusion of new advisers over Labor Day weekend and a message focused on employment, health care, and education issues, the hope is that Kerry can spark one more stretch run to victory in the race he has been building toward throughout his public life.
The fundamental question is, can a challenger portrayed as indecisive by his Republican opponents convince the American people that he has the vision, the convictions, and the mettle to replace an incumbent president during a time of war?
Kerry's strategy includes not only sharper language about the stakes of the race, but hopes for strong performances in the upcoming debates against President Bush, a furious rallying of Democratic loyalists by himself and surrogate campaigners during the final two weeks of the campaign, and the willingness -- as shown at a midnight rally last Thursday when he questioned Vice President Dick Cheney's Vietnam deferments -- to go negative on his rivals.
He also plans to talk less about his Vietnam experience, a suggestion made over the weekend in a telephone conversation with Bill Clinton, and sharpen his traveling operation by bringing John Sasso, a longtime Massachusetts Democratic operative, aboard his campaign plane.
Kerry tells voters, as he did late last month during a fund-raiser in Santa Monica, Calif., that this is ''the most important election of our lifetime."
Kerry stands in a precarious position. Polls that indicated he was even or ahead of Bush a month ago now indicate that he is either tied or trailing following the Republican National Convention and a month of attacks on his Vietnam and antiwar record by opponents known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Time and Newsweek polls indicated he is trailing by more than 10 percentage points. Other polls indicate a narrower margin, but the trend is not good for Kerry.
Some Democrats worry that they may be facing a repeat of 1988, when another Massachusetts Democrat running for president, Michael S. Dukakis, collapsed after his nominating convention. Others, especially those closest to Kerry, take heart in Kerry's political record.
Kerry has suffered only one meaningful loss, a 1972 defeat when he ran for the US House in Middlesex County amid charges of being a carpetbagger. In 1982, he upstaged Evelyn Murphy and three other candidates to win the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, propelling him to the State House. In 1984, he bested three candidates, including a rising congressman, James Shannon, in a US Senate primary, sending him toward the Capitol. In 1990, he defended his seat from Republican businessman James Rappaport, and in 1996, he defeated then-governor William F. Weld in a clash of titans that attracted national interest.
''I always thought that whoever won that race was going to keep driving towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was always my intention," Weld said last week in an interview.
Kerry's streak continued this year, when he staged a come-from-behind victory in the Iowa caucuses that led to wins in the New Hampshire primary and subsequent presidential contests.
''There's a sense of timing about this guy that's very real," said Ron Rosenblith, a Democratic operative who was political director for Kerry's 1982 and 1984 campaigns and a top strategist during his 1990 and 1996 races, and who continues to advise him today. ''That comes from the interplay between him and what the other side is saying, what the voters are saying, and in the end, it comes together with the sense of him being a great closer."
Recent attacks on Kerry, Rosenblith said, have begun to stir a strong response in the candidate, as evidenced when Kerry lit into Cheney at the midnight rally in Springfield, Ohio.
''The vice president even called me unfit for office last night," Kerry declared. ''Well, I'm going to leave it up to the voters to decide whether five deferments makes someone more qualified than two tours of combat duty."
Shannon, who returned to Massachusetts as attorney general after his Washington ascent was halted by his 1984 loss to Kerry, does not believe the Kerry campaign will collapse like the Dukakis campaign. The 1988 race, Shannon said, ''was the first time the Republicans used that attack machine," which caught Dukakis flat-footed. In addition, Dukakis had never run on a national stage before and was hamstrung by more liberal positions he had to take during an extended primary campaign, which Kerry avoided.
''I think he just has a better radar for what will sell nationally," Shannon said. ''He's an incredibly disciplined candidate, and that discipline really comes into focus when he's in the clutch."
Weld, who in a Globe poll led Kerry 42 percent to 40 percent less than two weeks before the 1996 election, disputed the perception of the senator as a strong closer, even though Kerry went on to win, 52 percent to 45 percent.
''There was no intervening event in that race that explains that," the former governor said. Instead, Weld attributed his loss to the national attention the race attracted and questions about him potentially joining a Republican majority in Washington that included such polarizing figures as then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a conservative who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry this year is national security. Bush, Cheney, and other Republicans have pounded Kerry as a flip-flopper on the issue and characterized the president as steady and strong.
''You know where I stand," Bush said Thursday in accepting his party's nomination. Highlighting Kerry's vote in favor of the war, as well as his subsequent vote against $87 billion in supplemental funding for operations in Iraq, the president said of Kerry: ''He said he was 'proud' of that vote. Then, when pressed, he said it was a 'complicated' matter. There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat."
Kerry, by contrast, plans to focus on what he sees as equally pressing concerns to voters: a loss of jobs, the rising price of health care, and the belief among a majority of voters -- as indicated in recent public opinion polls -- that the country is heading in the wrong direction.
''We want to focus in the close on the choice between continuing on the failed policies that Bush and Cheney have put forward, or moving America in a new direction," said Kerry pollster Mark Mellman.
While Bush is working to rally an estimated 4 million Christian conservative voters who did not vote in the 2000 race, Kerry is targeting swing voters, particularly those in the middle class. As he did in his debates against Weld, Kerry is also holding back some of his most urgent arguments for the close of the campaign.
''You want three words of motivation?" he said late last month in Anoka, Minn., giving a preview of his fall strategy. ''The Supreme Court. That alone is the motivation," he explained, highlighting the belief that the next president will have the opportunity to make several appointments to the high court following retirements. The day before, speaking in Green Bay, Wis., Kerry also hinted at the tenor and direction of his appeal.
''I will tell you, above all, I am a fighter, and I intend to fight for fairness," he said. ''I don't want the government intruding in places it shouldn't go. I want a fair playing field. I want to put fundamental fairness back in the workplace, so people can go to work and after a week's work, be able to pay the bills, put a little money away, do better for their family, be able to reach that golden dream, get that brass ring of America."
And speaking earlier that day to union workers in Philadelphia, he told one questioner, ''Over the next two months, we are just going to keep talking about things that are real, and I'm not going to hold back, because Americans want to know what I want to do." |
