John Kerry and John Edwards didn't become the leaders of the anti-Bush

[Sterling]

This was posted by DUer IrateCitizen in another thread as a response to a post attacking Michael Moore.
We all know this statement is true. Lets ask ourselves why for a moment.

"John Kerry and John Edwards didn't become the leaders of the anti-Bush movement because they weren't even really part of it."

Discuss.

[Eric J in MN]

1. Privately, John Kerry told a supporter that

the Bush-people are a crooked bunch of liars (and a microphone picked it up.)

But publicly, Kerry never made that point.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Kerry and Edwards

were the Democratic nominees, period. I don't think they wanted to associate themselves too closely to the anti-Bush people; at least the anti-Bush people I knew who weren't regular Democrats felt that Kerry and Edwards really hadn't addressed their concerns. They said that they felt K/E knew they wouldn't vote for Bush and took them for granted.

[knight_of_the_star]

3. They were trying to have it both ways

Look like the anti-Bush to please the party while not to please the middle. They succeeded at neither really when you look at it.

[Vincardog]

4. They took bad advice to 'Stay above the negative adds'

That and the fact that the MSM would not give them any coverage makes it hard to believe they won.

[noamnety]

5. They slammed all of his policies

But didn't slam him personally. That's what statesmen do, I guess - at least those that want to be unifiers. I don't have a problem with that.

If they supported his policies on Iraq, taxes, the environment, social security, medicare, etc, I would be angry. It's okay with me that they didn't come out in their campaign speeches and bash Bush, or Laura. Kerry said from the start he wanted to run a positive campaign, which I took to mean character assassination was off limits, policy assassination was fair game.

[Johonny]

7. I agree

I thought Kerry had a good strategy. Hit Bush on all his weak topics over and over again. People just didn't or wouldn't listen. I'm sick of the Kerry didn't do X talk. Because almot always Kerry did do it but no one was listening (covering).

You generally don't attack canidates personally. It's almost always better to let third parties do it for you. There were several personal attacks on Bush during the election year. If you missed them you weren't trying.

[Carolinian]

8. And that's the big difference I see between the Republicans

and the Democrats. When the Republican man is down his party rallies behind him. When the Democrat man is down his party turns against him. No wonder we lost.

[demnan]

6. This is more of

woulda, coulda and shoulda

We're bound to pick a fighter next go round.

[msgadget]

9. The true movement is passionate,

they were too politic.

[DjTj]

10. ...did the anti-Bush movement vote for somebody else?

because if not, it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election.

And it doesn't matter going forward because anti-Bush won't be a movement at all four years from now.

[AP]

11. LBJ: "You don't win by telling people what you're against. You win...

...by telling people what you're for."

The Democrats will have a better chance of winning in 2008 because unlike 2004 we're going to be talking about what we believe in rather than who we hate.

ABB probably cost Kerry a lot of votes. And now people are saying he wasn't ABB enough? Jeez.

[kerrygoddess]

12. Thank You!

[AP]

14. LBJ said that months before he decimated the Republicans in '64.

Yes, he got a sympathy vote. But he said that there was no way the Republicans were going to win because alll they did was run around a tell people how bad Johnson was without giving people any reason to vote for them. He anticipated the biggest landslide in modern American history, IIRC.

[kerrygoddess]

13. For the record

Both Kerry and Edwards attacked Bush quite frequently... the Media did not pick it up and everyone else was evidently too busy whining and complaining to notice!

We needed a president who was capable of changing things, not anybody but Bush! because so many people were so busy complaining about Bush, they all forgot that!

Now it's time to stand up for what we believe in and fight for those principles.

[AP]

15. An example of what they did: they would blame Bush for something, and then

the media would blame somebody else for the same thing.

Mediatenor.com has statistics showing the number of statements on the news that blamed the mess in Iraq on the armed services. It matches the graph showing who voters thought was to blame.

So Kerry and Edwards would say Iraq is a mess and it's Bush's fault. The media would say Iraq was a mess and it's the military's fault. And people thought, OK, Iraq's a mess, and of course the Democrats are going to blame Bush, but all the neutral reporters I trust are saying that it's the military's fault, so I'm not going to blame Bush. Meanwhile, they're much more concerned about the economy than Iraq, but only 4% of the news coverage mentions the economy (and some of that coverage is saying the economy is good!), and the Democrats are talking way more about Iraq than about opportunity, so maybe Iraq is the most important issue. I'm scared, so I'll vote for the people who have no hesitation about bombing people and arent' bothered by things like whether the evidence supports it or not.