Facing '96 Loss, Brawling Kerry Fought to Win

[isbister]

As Labor Day opened the final stretch in John Kerry's 1996 re-election campaign, polls showed that little more than a third of Massachusetts voters believed he deserved a third term in the Senate.

That summer's headlines had widened what one Kerry adviser called the "charm gap" between the senator and his challenger, William F. Weld, the affable aristocrat who had won his second term as governor two years earlier with 71 percent of the vote.

When Mr. Weld punctuated a news conference by diving fully clothed into the Charles River, Mr. Kerry seemed stiffer than ever by comparison. When Mr. Weld challenged the Republican National Convention to let him speak in favor of abortion rights, he looked like the kind of Republican a largely Democratic state could happily have represent it in Washington...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/politics/campaign/07KERR.html

[Zynx]

1. The fact that his numbers had degraded so low does not impress me.

[displacedtexan]

2. So we shouldn't support candidates with 'degraded numbers?'

I'm confused.

[Zynx]

3. That means he had negative qualities that made even Mass dislike him

He has the potential to wear very badly with people and I fear that in the general election.

[Praline]

4. Well,

he's already worn badly with me!