McGrory - Hard to pull for Kerry

[unfrigginreal]

John Kerry was asked recently about the possibility that Howard Dean might forgo public matching funds in his bid for the nomination, thereby avoiding spending limits. Dean had indicated that he would accept the funds, but now is considering reversing his strategy, much like George W. Bush.

And here's what Kerry said: "Somebody who wants to be president ought to keep their word. I think it goes to the core of whether you are a different politician or a politician of your word or what you are."

snip

In this campaign, his answers on the famous Iraq vote aren't nuanced, they're ridiculous. His overall message isn't muddled, it's nonexistent. Dean, it appears, entered the race because he wanted to win. Kerry is running because he thought he could win.

The thing is, I know for a fact that Kerry can do better, and hopefully, eventually, he will. But unless and until he does, the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire can do better as well.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2003/09/16/hard_to_pull_for_kerry/

[meegbear]

1. Typical "dean's gonna win, so why don't you just drop out" tripe.

[Larkspur]

2. Agree with this reporter, Kerry's Iraq war answers are ridiculous

and it just showed how out of touch with the common person he is.

[whirlygigspin]

3. Gephardt

may just come up the middle and take it.

[Kolesar]

6. I agree that Kerry has no message (and I lament that)

These candidates have a message: Kucinich, Dean, Gephardt. Edwards has a populist message, but he gets scant exposure. Lieberman has a message, but I get annoyed when I hear it.

[CounterCoulter]

4. It's good to know...

...that the Republicans aren't having a wet dream about Howard Dean...OH WAIT. THEY ARE.

Just like the Greens, the left-wing of this party is a bunch of adolescent MORONS. Grown ups have to compromise. Either find a left wing version of Scaife to promote your radical policies or shut the fuck up and vote for the electable wing of the Democratic party.

[cjbuchanan]

5. What are you talking about?

Why do you need to insult a large portion of this board and the Democratic Party and who are you to decide who is elect able and who is not (that is why we have primaries)?

Remember, any Democrat can beat Bush & Co.

[CounterCoulter]

7. How much do you...

...actually know about Watergate?

I hope every one is aware that Watergate wasn't just about breaking in and stealing campaign secrets. It was about using the FBI and CIA to essentially CHOOSE the Democratic Nominee.

But that could never happen again could it? That couldn't be why Bush is raising more money than he could possibly need? He would never dump it in Dean's coffers via the internet. He would never actively try to support the Dean campaign by having Repubs say they were scared of Dean on Fox News? Gee that doesn't inflame the base does it?

Get with the program, folks. Bush will do anything--ANYTHING--to avoid his father's fatal flaw--allowing the economy to become the issue. This has been his strategy since the DAY he took office. And good left-wingers are playing into his hands.

[HazMat]

8. Agree with that except

it isn't really the true left-wing that Dean has. The real activists can see through the Dean bullshit express.

Dean has the childish, selfish yuppie types who will be Republicans in a few years anyway -- when they get bored of being trendy, latte liberals.

We regular Democrats are the ones who are going to have to suffer when Bush crushes Dean like an empty pint of Ben & Jerry's.

A Dean nomination will mean certain victory for Bush and the GOP.

Somewhere Karl Rove must be cackling to himself about these "useful idiots".

edit: was responding to your previous post, #4.

[CounterCoulter]

9. Great post HazMat.

Fuck civility. That is what I heard from the Greens, and you know what? I sat and watched them LITERALLY lose the election for the Left in 2000. I'm not going to bite my lip this time.

[strauss_sucks]

22. Well said...

Good post. I'm getting tired of hearing all of these, obviously politically naive, Deaners believing that the "can-do" spirit of their outsider candidate can take on Rove&Co. Rove is good, folks. Evil as sin, but good. And the entire energy/military/intelligence complex will do ANYTHING to keep Cheney/Bush in office another term.

PS. Don't get me wrong about Dean. I like what he has to say, I'm totally impressed with his and work-ethic, and I think he might make an Sec. of HHS.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. a large portion of this board

doesn't know much other than that they are very, very excited by an "outsider" confronting Bush. They don't know history. They don't know how to assess the candidates objectively and intellectually. In fact they don't know much.
Please listen to the "adults" you may have access to. Or simply read why people on here are supporting Kerry.

[unfrigginreal]

11. Deja Vu..."the grownups are in charge"...

Yes kids, forget about your grand notions of Democratic candidates standing up for your beliefs. Listen to the "adults" that led the way in the last 2 elections.

You shouldn't hold it against them that we lost...they were facing a bunch of unruly kids on the other side.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

17. If you were trying to prove my point

you couldn't do much better. Clue: Gore won.

[w4rma]

13. Gov. Howard Dean, "The passionate centrist"

NEW YORK -

At the end of summer and onset of fall, pundits are gearing up for the Democratic presidential primaries. Recently, columnists have churned out a slew of articles profiling, criticizing and praising the candidates. Rating the candidates, writers have given the health insurance gold medal to Kerry, the centrist medal to Lieberman and the leftist medal to Dean.

Absent from all this politicking, however, is discussion on the Democratic strategy. Aside from TIME magazine's "How to Build a Better Democrat," no columnist has provided a comprehensive or innovative view of the identity Democrats need to assume in the coming election.

It seems each party is having an identity crisis. George Will, the conservative columnist for the Washington Post, stated, "Foreign and domestic developments constitute an identity crisis of conservatism, which is being recast - and perhaps rendered incoherent." In an effort to broaden their image, Republicans created an unassailable facade of "compassion," claiming to be "for" all those typically overlooked by the system: the elderly, minorities, the poor.

A cue for Democrats: To broaden your image, embrace the idea of passionate centrism. A 1997 USA Today story quoted then Governor of Vermont Howard Dean as calling himself a "passionate centrist." A cursory look at his governorship proves this to be true. And so, Dean's success, both as a governor (he's won five consecutive elections) and a presidential candidate, is based on impassioned moderation.
…
http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/08/04/3f2de34c3b301
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=11564

[Classical_Liberal]

20. I can't wait till Dean or one of the other nondlcers sends you packing

The greenies did there part to help the repukes but so did you, with you insistence that the unions and civil rights organizer not fight the Rove rioters. With your failure to stand up for black voters in Florida by standing with the black caucus when the walked out, and with your insistence that we just get over it. Now your giving Rove talking points just because you don't like Dean. Talk about adolescent.

[wabeewoman]

12. I don't understand

why this paper is out to get Kerry. They are the ones who gave him crap about his nationality and a couple other things. I'm not for Kerry but think this paper is just doing a hatchet job.

[Braden]

14. Brian McGrory is Mitt Romneys Lap Dog

I will stick to the time honored tradition of making my own decisions.

[Khephra]

15. The only thing this Dean supporter has to mention

Is it's funny how no one is actually addressing the points of the article.



"So let's go back to 1996, to Kerry's reelection campaign against then-Governor Bill Weld, specifically to the night Weld met Kerry at the senator's wife's Beacon Hill mansion. They finalized an unprecedented agreement to limit advertising spending to $5 million apiece, and to limit the use of personal funds in the campaign to $500,000 apiece.

Good government types hailed the agreement as a major breakthrough. Kerry and Weld basked in the plaudits of editorialists the nation over. Kerry described the pact as "a model for campaign reform across the country."

But a funny thing happened on the way to Election Day. Kerry didn't just violate the deal, he pulverized it. Running out of money in the waning days of October, Kerry mortgaged and remortgaged the Louisburg Square house, ultimately pouring $1.7 million in personal funds into his campaign. For those of you keeping track at home, that's $1.2 million more than the agreement allowed.

As he made a mockery of the pact, he did something else distinctly distasteful. He accused Weld of violating the agreement, a charge that seemed specious at best, an outright lie at worst."

[blm]

16. That's McGrory's spin. McGrory's an RNC tool.

Evidently the people in Mass. believed that since Weld didn't stick to the agreement then Kerry shouldn't have to either.

[Terwilliger]

27. OHHHH really?

strange words from a member of the RNC:

The thing is, I know for a fact that Kerry can do better, and hopefully, eventually, he will.

[Uzybone]

18. Sorry the Boston Globe

is like the Washington Times when it comes to Kerry. They have had it in for him from the start.

[Myra]

19. "They have had it in for him from the start."

Probably true. But I have it in for Kerry
'cause of his Skull and Crossbones association/loyalties.
That's reason enough for me not to trust him.

Not that I'm taking Dean's side. I think he's a standard
issue pol.

I hope for:
1-Clark
2-Kuchinich

Neither standard issue pols.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. Jesus bleeding Christ.

Skull and Bones is a FRATERNITY. Nothing more, nothing less. Do you understand what a fraternity is? One of the purposes of such organisations is to make connections which will be useful later in life. And THIS fraternity just happens to be at an elite university attended by the offspring of the wealthy and prominent. So it makes sense that those people would be the people who become members. Just because something LOOKS like a conspiracy from the outside doesn't mean it is.

So what if Kerry was in Skull and Bones? So was Garry Trudeau...do you think HE'S part of the secret Masonic Illuminati New World Order conspiracy too?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

23. Well said. Well said.

couldn't have said it better myself. And welcome to DU. :hi:

BTW I will cut and paste or link to this answer at the merest mention of S&B from now until Kerry gets the nom.

[Spider Jerusalem]

24. Thanks for the welcome...

although I'm not really "new"...I was around briefly about a year or so back, and had to create a new username because I forgot both my password and which of my six or so e-mail addresses I used to register. Hehe.

And this conspiracy-theory stuff gets a little tiresome sometimes, eh? I thought lunatic conspiracy theorising was supposed to be the hobby of the fringe right-wing militia types. Takes all kinds, I guess.

[DrFunkenstein]

25. Add This To Your Bull & Scones File

While a senior at Yale, Kerry had been inducted into the secret Skull and Bones society, an exclusive club for Yale men destined to do great things -- or at least for those who were or sought to be well connected. Only 15 students were chosen each year, and Kerry was picked mostly because he was viewed as a future political leader, according to John Shattuck, who was a year ahead of Kerry and recommended his friend's selection. Kerry spent hours inside the tomblike society headquarters. Girls and sex and money were inevitably discussed. But what fellow ``bonesmen'' most remember is how Kerry steered the talk toward Vietnam.

``You had this group of the elite of the elite selected out of the Yale senior class who probably were most adept at gazing at their own navels and probably thought the world rotated around them,'' said one of Kerry's fellow bonesmen, Dr. Alan Cross. ``You had this one among us who saw this growing quagmire in Vietnam we were heading into with good intention and certain results. His statements were really a clarion: `Hey, guys, this is happening, this is going to define our generation.' ''

Of the 15 members of Skull and Bones, an extraordinary bond formed between the four on their way to Vietnam: Kerry; Thorne; Fred Smith, a Kerry flying partner who would later found Federal Express; and, Pershing, Kerry's close friend since age 13.

All four could have used their connections to avoid or at least delay military service. But Pershing set the tone. ``When a war comes along, you go,'' the grandson of the general of the US armies would tell the bonesmen.

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061503.shtml

[DrFunkenstein]

26. Daily Howler On McGrory's Trash Talking Kerry (January)

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh011703.shtml

And his latest piece before this starts out:

"John, put that hairbrush down and pull yourself away from the mirror for a second. We need to have a little talk."

The Globe delights in trashing Kerry, as the Daily Howler has demonstrated over and over and over.