Rewind to last spring and remember how things got so hot.

[blm]

Last spring I was saying that I never saw things get SO hot SO fast in a Dem primary before. A few others here noticed it, too, and voiced their concern.

Keep in mind when reading this article that all the candidates had been cordial to each other for the most part, except one. Also bear in mind that Kerry had been off the campaign trail during his cancer surgery and recovery period, and the "doctor" kept attacking him throughout that period.

i don't think the Dean camp should complain about reciprocation when Dean had months of attacks already under his belt. Maybe it's time to accept that reciprocation is to be expected.

USA Today, April 28, 2003

>>>>
"Until now, the competition has been relatively harmonious, at least for public consumption, with the exception of Dean. His attacks on fellow Democrats have been so cutting that sometimes the Republican National Committee e-mails them to party members. "Gephardt Plan: 'Pie-In-The-Sky Radical Revamping' " was the headline on one last week, quoting Dean.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri have been Dean targets in recent weeks. But Dean has reserved his sharpest thrusts for Kerry, repeatedly accusing him of selling out Democratic principles. The two men are virtually tied for the lead in polls in New Hampshire, which holds the critically important first primary election."
>>>>>

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-28-dem-words_x.htm

[oasis]

1. Slimeball Trippi going on the attack when the Senator's down. Kerry

said from now on he will not make the mistake of taking the high road when he is attacked.

[windansea]

2. we remember Dean initiated the slime

funny how Dean doesn't and had to go crying to Terry

[Duder]

3. I remember last Spring...

May 2, 2003

WHA...?
by Noam Scheiber

Candidate: John Kerry
Category: Intellectual Honesty
Grade: D

There are a ton of ways you can criticize Howard Dean on foreign policy, not least of them his tortured contention that he would have supported the war had Iraq not been "in compliance" (Dean's words) with the United Nations. (By that logic, of course, the fact that Iraq clearly wasn't in compliance with a litany of U.N. resolutions dating back to 1991--whether or not the current Security Council chose to recognize that fact--should have made Dean a hawk.) But one thing you can't criticize Dean on is his willingness to utter an objective truth--and a pretty banal one at that--about the fleeting nature of our superpower status. Yet that doesn't seem to have stopped John Kerry. Seizing on a recent Dean statement that it's unrealistic to think we'll have the most powerful military on the planet forever, Kerry's campaign bashed Dean for going soft on national defense. That Kerry would try to make such a dishonest leap from such a trifling comment at this stage in the campaign, when he's ostensibly the front-runner, makes you shudder to think what he might resort to if he ever fell behind.

http://www.tnr.com/primary/index.mhtml?pid=353

[Scott Lee]

4. either John Kerry never passed a history course...

Or the man is a shameless, habitual and inveterate liar. To say the USA will always have the strongest military on the planet is pure delusion.

[blm]

6. Hyperbolic much?

Do you need a paper bag?

[retyred]

8. Who do you invision

having a stronger military than the US?


retyred in fla
“Good-Night Paul, Wherever You Are”
So I read this book

[blm]

13. Actually Dean since backed off that statement.

But, I'd sure like to hear an answer.

[dsc]

16. To name several possibilities

China and India both are very large countries with an ability to have massive armies. Give them the money to buy or research and they would easily over power our military. Both Japan and Germany could field world class militaries if they so chose.

[anti-bush]

17. I think

The Romans also said this at one point. Maybe it was Alexander the Great. Or maybe it was Montezuma.

You can't predict the future, but if history tells us anything, the US will not always have the strongest military. We will be at the forefront for a long time, but we've only been the strongest military for a very short time (relatively speaking).

[oasis]

10. When John F. Kennedy said our military should be "second to none"

I guess he was full of it too.

[dsc]

18. You might want to check verb tense

Should is a present tense verb in that usage. Dean was speaking of a future point which was clearly off in the distance.

[blm]

5. Wow...and the PREVIOUS 4 months you were in a cave?

You just managed to MISS why there was reciprocation?

How many TNR Ds and Fs has Dean racked up on intellectual honesty?

Besides, there's no comparing pre 9-11 military strength remarks with post 9-11 military strength remarks, so that was intellectually dishonest of TNR, imo.

[isbister]

7. Re: Rewind to last spring and remember how things got so hot

I remember who started the attacks and it seems to me that it was before last spring.

Its amazing that so many Democrats have bought into it. You'd think they would have recognized some of these tricks after watching bush all of these years...

[blm]

9. The attacks started publically on Jan.23, to be exact.

The article above states that Dean had been attacking for awhile.


No wonder the media loved to give him attention. He was beating on their favorite targets...Democrats.

[adadem]

11. That's when

I switched campaigns. The, supposedly, good doctor started the attacks and now whines when the others fight back. Just like the playground bully who got punched in the nose and ran home whining to mommy.

The man has no integrity imo and I'm sad that I got sucked into the message and gave as much money as I did. I will not participate in the presidential part of the GE if Dean or Lieberman get the nomination...instead I will help out the guy trying to unseat the other politician who has no integrity...DeLay.

[blm]

12. I didn't know you were a former Dean supporter.

It does seem odd that the Dean camp complains that everyone else is doing Rove's job for him, yet, Dean's attacks were the ones actually being passed around by GOP operatives to diminish the other candidates.

[Northwind]

14. Bottom line

Dean started attacking when he had nothing to lose, and most importantly, when few people were paying attention. He kept it up, until he pissed off the other candidates, and they started biting back.

Problem was, by then people were paying attention, and all of the attackers came off badly, while Dean was free from that point to take it easy and watch them all disntegrate. Result: The attackers look like a bunch of desperate assholes, and Dean looks golden. Further result: $40 million dollars raised and an unbeatable lead in the primary.

This is what is known as "strategy." It worked extremely well.

Dean made a feint, and the corrupt Washington insiders fell for it hook line and sinker, and now they are a joke.

You are just pissed that your guy fell for it worse than most others.

[blm]

15. Hey. Please explain to the board here how you spread the meme

that Kerry is a corrupt Washington insider and applaud the success of that meme with new activists who don't know any better.

Young voters who never heard about BCCI and don't know much about IranContra, or that John Kerry is ACTUALLY the lawmaker who EXPOSED more government corruption than ANY other lawmaker since Teddy Roosevelt.


Explain how corrupt it is to work on the Kyoto Protocol for ten years.

Try it.

[Northwind]

26. Actually, you spread it for me.

I said it in a couple of threads, not really aimed at Kerry per se, but rather in explaination of what sort of themes and public perception were driving this campaign.

You proceeded to repeat it at every opportunity.

After that, I started using it,

A: To get on your nerves
B: To make sure you would keep repeating it. You obliged, and you fixed the pharse firmly in eeryone's mind.

Kerry supporters, by being totally reactionary, have done more to destroy Kerry's campaign than Kerry could ever have managed himself.

[blm]

31. You were BOASTING about that perception...

you were happy that a lie caught on with new, impressionable activists.

You should be ashamed that your team spread that perception. My posts alerted to your tactics and corrects the perception with the TRUTH.

[mouse7]

29. Lord knows, Kerry's not trying to spread it.

Kerry keeps wanting to say he want to kill and eat something, or cuss at someone, or lynch someone, or beat the hell out of someone...

Kerry's campaign has gone WWE. I'm waiting for Kerry to challenge Dean to a cage match.

[cindyw]

19. There is nothing about Kerry that says corrupt Washington insider.

If we can impune a man like Kerry, who has fought corruption since the day he asked the congress,

" "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" and "We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership?".


What is our party coming to when we call this great man a corrupt Washingotn insider? Very sad day for our party. What Dean has done to impune Kerry;s character in public is wrong.

[Northwind]

27. You're right.

Nothing about him says that...except his supporters.

[Forkboy]

20. Great...a "he started it" thread

but mom!

[blm]

22. A reminder thread to the all those whining about reciprocation.

.

[hellhathnofury]

21. You want to find a link to verify that statement....

"Kerry had been off the campaign trail during his cancer surgery and recovery period, and the "doctor" kept attacking him throughout that period."

Find me a direct attack.

[blm]

23. Look at the timeframe.

Dean started attacking Jan.23 and never let up. Kerry's surgery was in early Feb. and he was off the trail for about a month. Go look at the archives here at DU during that period.

[molly]

24. The minute Kerry got back on the campaign trail

and came to Philly, they were after him about the way he ordered a Philly cheese steak for crissakes! It was OK to fault him because he is not native to Philly and didn't order his cheesesteak the way natives do. :shrug:

Then he challenged Dean to a one-on-one debate and he was awful and selfish for doing that. :wtf:

Dean doesn't even know that the book of Job is in the OLD TESTAMENT, but that's OK. Can you imagine if Kerry had said that? :grr:

[CWebster]

25. Actually, as I recall, the very first attack came from Kerry

on one of those Sunday morning talk shows where both Dean and Kerry were on together. As for Dean's criticisms of Kerry? Kerry deserved it and I am glad that someone was there to tell Kerry and speak for us, because Kerry sure wasn't listening to us.

[blm]

35. What show was that?

July 2002, Kerry was hitting Bush hard on REAL issues of military competence in Åfghanistan and Dean was agreeing with Bush just to undermine Kerry.

No fair person can honestly say that Kerry attacked Dean first.

[mouse7]

28. This is BAD evidence

like I said on all the other threads you cut and pasted this old article on this morning, this is bad evidence.

The e-mail in question was a GOP e-mail, writen, edited, and sent by a GOP staffer to GOP list members. The supposed offending quote is not in the story.

[blm]

32. The email wasn't in question, that's diversionary on your part.

The article is about Dean's overall tactic to attack the others, while the others held back for a long time.

The email from the GOP only used Dean's quotes against Gephardt with their own headline. That doesn't make the article wrong.

Stop pretending that tree blocks your view of the forest.

[TrueBlueDem]

30. Actually, things first "got hot" in 2002...

...when Kerry supporters began attacking Al Gore, who was then considering another run in 2004.

Rep. Barney Frank, among others, said Gore was unelectable and should just step aside to make way for a Kerry nomination.

And anyone visiting DU in late 2002 certainly remembers the vitriol directed towards Gore and his supporters here rooting for him to run again in 2004. The GD forum was overrun with Gore threads in which his opponents -- mostly Kerry supporters -- argued ferociously that Gore was a lousy campaigner, didn't fight hard enough in the Florida debacle, was hated by the press, etc., etc., etc.

And one of the most relentless attackers of Gore in 2004 was none other than "blm," the originator of this thread. I know this for a fact, because I defended Gore countless times back then against her attacks.

[blm]

33. I never attacked Gore personally...EVER.

I always said that he had suffered from a form of stage fright that contributed to his uneven performances throughout 2000. That's IT. I was EXPLAINING why not blaming him for something he couldn't help.

I never attacked him because i liked him VERY much and worked my ass off for him in 99 and 2000, even with a high risk pregnancy. I won't take a back seat to anyone when it comes to working for Gore.

YOU and others chose to embellish what I did say and create a myth about that time. You mixed up my views with those who were truly vitriolic against Gore and tarred me with that perception. I guess you missed all the posts where I defended Gore from the ugly vitriol that I disagreed with mightily.

[Cheswick2.0]

34. that is true

That is exactly when this place got ugly. It is also when I determined I would never support John Kerry.

[Padraig18]

36. You are correct in ALL respects!

Karma is a funny thing, isn't it? :)

[blm]

37. It's not correct and anyone with a search feature

would know that if they bothered to discover the truth.

[Padraig18]

38. It IS correct.

I came here and read every day, and his recollection is dead-on accurate; the vitriol in your Gore posts was as bad as it is now in your Dean posts.