Disappointed in Terry Mac's analysis of the Kerry Campaign at a Dem luncheon

[saracat]

I attended a fundraiser this afternoon at which Terry promoted both his both and Hillary.I purchased the book and I intend to read it, but I was really put off by his barrage of negativity regarding the Kerry Campaign.According to Terry, if Kerry Had only listened to him ,he would have won. Can someone correct me but wasn't a lot of the "too measured and conservative speaking" of the Kerry Campaign dictated to Kerry by Macauliffe people? And wasn't it rumored at the time that Terry Mac and others didn't want Kerry to win because they always intended to run Hillary? Terry kept saying he(Terry) was a "straight shooter" unlike the rest of the politicians.Excuse me? I remember Terry and have met him before and he is the master of not taking a position.And he did it again today in several instances. After all he represents the mistress of triangulation herself.
I appreciate all the fund raising Terry did and do not question that he did some good things as Chair, but I take exception to his dissing Kerry as a tool to promote Hillary.BTW, He also says Kerry is quoting his book and agrees that he ran a terrible campaign.Has anyone heard this? I have heard Kerry admit he made mistakes but I have never heard him quote Terry in bashing himself!

[PresidentObama]

1. You're first mistake was listening to Terribly McAwful.

The second was buying that horrible book. Please let us know all he says in it. I can't stomach reading it. Truth be told, Terry was the DNC chair. He can't wipe his hands clean of the failures in 2002 and 2004 by blaming Senator Kerry. McAuliffe's failed strategies which said to focus on key states, and ignore others was thrown out the window and thanks to Howard Dean we're winning elections--not losing them!!

And of course Kerry admits to making mistakes. He can't wipe his hands clean of any failures his campaign made. But unlike Terribly McAwful he's not trying to. He's living up to it, and admitting he made such mistakes. Terry wants to point fingers, and make profit off it with his stupid book. To hell with him. I personally like Hillary, but her team turns me off with guys like Carville and McAuliffe.

[saracat]

3. Well, I actually liked Hillary alot less after hearing Terry answer for her!

And I wasn't a huge fan to begin with.I wish I could like her.I just can't get excited about her.I will vote for her if she is the nominee.

[blm]

2. Simple - match all the opposition positions and see who won their matchups.

Kerry vs. Bush

DNC vs RNC

RW media machine vs Left media machine

GOP lawmakers/spokespeople vs Dem lawmakers/spokespeople

How did they all do with their matchups?

[emulatorloo]

8. blm, that is damn good . . .

:toast:

[ElizabethDC]

4. In defense of Terry

I read his book, and I felt that it doesn't portray Kerry all that negatively. Now, I'm no particular supporter of Terry's - all I know about him is what I read in his book, which is obviously only one side of the story. However, the book gave me the impression that Kerry was a good guy whose campaign was run poorly, not necessarily through any fault of his own. He portrays JK as tough, but with a feeble and disorganized campaign, which he himself was frustrated about. But I really did come a way with the image of JK as a decent, well-intentioned guy - although maybe that's just my own bias showing!

[Mass]

5. You are right, but this is just more politicking from Terry.

He knows that, at some point, he and Hillary may need Kerry's support. So, he has no interest of attacking him directly.

However, attacking his campaign was also a way to attack his organizing and managerial qualities, and therefore a way to hurt him a little more if he had wanted to run in 08, and potentially, any leadership position.

No Democrat has any interest in showing Kerry as somebody who in not a decent person (at least not in his face), but attacking the campaign this badly (sure Kerry and his campaign made errors, but the results show that the campaign probably did not make THAT many errors - He got the highest % a non incumbent Democratic President or VP got since Jimmy Carter) hurt Kerry directly.

[ElizabethDC]

6. Good points, I agree.

I was just relieved when I read his book and Kerry came out looking good.

[blm]

11. You wouldn't know it by the HUNDREDS of McAuliffe's media appearances

and by his hundreds of speeches at Dem meetings all over the country.

We know EXACTLY what Terry has been doing at small Dem meeting places all over the country since the 2004 election. I attended a few of these luncheons myself, and the drumbeat to put all blame on Kerry was already in fullswing by Dec 2004.

[karynnj]

7. That Kerry's general election campaign had

some problems is very likely true. I hate Newsweek, but they refer to a "quiet Clinton coup" in late August because the campaign was having problems. Newsweek's post election perspective came mainly from the Edwards and Clinton people in the campaign - and trying to read between the lines, they were all clearly trying to shed any responsiblity.

The candidate is responsible for the campaign, but Kerry had a strange cast of chatacters to work with. Consider, that in spite of all the snark in the press in 2003 and early 2004, his win a nomination was incredibly well done and brilliantly executed. He had to quickly expand to run the general election campaign. Kerry did what every other winner of the nomination did, he absorbed some of the people who worked for other primary candidates. He also picked up many Clinton people.

Many of the Clinton people greatly contributed to view that the campaign was disorganized - as they went to the media complaining about it, starting before the convention. From various accounts, they were not loyal, not interested, and thought they should be leading. I am not sure what Kerry could have done - throwing them all out would likely have been worse then simply doing what he did - keeping some and not putting them in charge.

Because they went to the press, we know what they advised - and we know they were wrong. In the summer, they whined that Kerry did not listen to Clinton, who said they should avoid speaking of Iraq or the War on Terror because those were "Bush" issues. Kerry had excellent credentials here and those were the key issues and Kerry's numbers went up when he ignored them and spoke at NYU and the University of Pennsylvania. (Note also that in 2006, Clinton took Kerry's 2004 reason for voting for the IWR and said it was why all Democrats except Leiberman did - for Kerry it was simply the truth, that Clinton took it means he thinks it the best politicly.) The other advice that Clinton complained Kerry didn't take was on the gay amendments. Kerry was far too principled to do it and it would not have worked for him.

This also ignores that 2004 was never going to be easy and that 1992 was extremely easy - Bush I was never about 40% all year. Imagine, some alternative universe where Clinton didn't run in 1992, but ran in 2004. He would have done far worse than Kerry.

[saracat]

10. Well, he was NOT fair about Kerry at all and raised the question of what Kerry did with all that

money he raised that MacAuliffe says was not used for the purpose it was given. He was one step away from calling JK a crook and I don't see why this isn't either countered or how it supposedly helps Hillary.

[karynnj]

13. That does go too far

I didn't think I was defending McAulife - my point was in summary that his campaign problems stemmed in part from Clinton people not being willing to be good team players.

[sandnsea]

14. You're in Hillary's camp

as I recall. Right?

[saracat]

15. I have been in no ones camp yet. But Hillary was not a personal favorite .

I have had a hard time warming to her. I just don't care for her but she is competent I think.But I am liking her even less as her surrogates proceed to trash the other candidates.I believe we should support all our Dems anfd leave the politics of destruction to the GOP.

[sandnsea]

16. No, not you

I was responding to Elizabeth, with whom I've had a few skirmishes regarding Hillary, IIRC.

[saracat]

17. Ahhh! BTW I have read some of the book and it is not

nice about Kerry at all.It implies he was a boob.

[ProSense]

26. Terribly McAwful is a slut

Is Terry McAuliffe corrupt, as his critics charge, or just especially good at playing the dirty game of politics? A fresh look at Mother Jones' coverage of the new DNC chairman may help you decide.

[ElizabethDC]

20. I'm supporting Hillary, yes

but I also feel tremendous loyalty toward Kerry and would likely be supporting him if he had decided to run again (I've been a supporter of his longer than I've been a supporter of hers). Also, don't think that my support of Hillary necessarily inclines me towards McAuliffe - I'm totally neutral toward him and there are plenty of Hillary's staff who I simply don't care for. As a Kerry supporter, however, I was pleased to see that MacAuliffe's treatment of Kerry was much kinder than I had expected. That's all I'm saying.

[sandnsea]

21. The thing is

in my very personal opinion, if you don't get the way the Clintons play politics, then you aren't going to get the backhanded slams at Kerry to serve the political agenda of this book, which was to beat the hell out of Kerry during the primary because they thought he was going to be running. But that would require understanding where all the "anonymous Democrat" quotes have been coming from and how they always seem to come at just the moment when progressives are moving forward on a particular issue. The Clintons are not good for the party or the country. Not as good as we can get anyway. In my opinion.

[ElizabethDC]

22. I hear ya

I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I also disagree with pretty much all of it. Most importantly, I don't understand why the Clintons would go to such great lengths to discredit Kerry, but have left Edwards, for example, untouched - despite the fact that it was very clear that he, too, was running. I think that, based on the way things were looking for Kerry over the past few months (and, let's face it, the media had already mostly been written him off, and he'd been going down in the polls, etc.), the Clinton's main interest wouldn't have been in taking Kerry down. The botched joke didn't do it, Hillary's response to the botched joke didn't do it, and the Clintons didn't do it (no one did it, really, except the media - I think it was mostly a natural shift away from the 2004 election, though). It just doesn't add up for the Clintons to have been so devoted to tearing JK in particular down. It's easy to paint the Clintons as evil and responsible for all political happenings we don't like, but I don't think it's that clean cut.

[sandnsea]

23. The Clintons can get anything in the media

The media ignored Kerry because the word from the Clintons, er, the Dem Party, was that he 'had his chance'. The joke was the final straw and Hillary jumping in meant it was open season to take Kerry out once and for all. The botched joke was absolutely the end of the line for JK. Edwards is not getting traction, he was never the threat JK was, and Vilsack was there to be sure to work Iowa however Hil needed it worked. Now if you want hardball politics and win at all costs, then the Clintons are absolutely the ones to elect. Some days I think I can't stand another second of it.

[ElizabethDC]

24. It was not the result of what the Clintons said

let's face it - unfortunately, not a lot of Democrats were all that enthusiastic about JK to begin with. I think he's wonderful, but I recognize that I'm in the minority. The minute the election was over, most people moved on. I know this because I wasn't willing to move on, and most of my friends and family members told me to get over it. I must admit that even I, over the past few months, had experienced a declining interest in Kerry (and, frankly, in politics in general for a while) - it's not that I love him any less, I just grew less enthusiastic. The media and the Clintons had little to do with any of that, and I really don't think they had all that much to do with the waning enthusiasm for Kerry in general.

I also don't think that JK would by any means have been the major threat to Hillary even if he had stayed in the race, but who knows? I've heard that her people had long considered Edwards to be a bigger threat than Obama, but of course Obama is a relatively recent phenomenon, so it's difficult to judge.

[sandnsea]

25. Well we have a very different view n/t

[blm]

37. Baloney - the Dems go through about TEN debates - Kerry would've won every one of them

and had Hillary tied into a pretzel over Iraq alone by the first three.

[ElizabethDC]

40. That may very well be true

Kerry's an excellent debater, though I believe that Hillary is, too (I've only seen short clips of her debates, though, so I can't make a good call based on that.) Unfortunately, just because someone debates well doesn't mean they get the votes - we saw that in 2004, as Kerry clearly dominated all of the debates with Bush (and I didn't see the primary debates, so idk about those).

[blm]

43. Except we all know that Kerry DID win and BushInc had to suppress votes and

purge voter rolls and rig machines all over the country to get his win.

Thanks to McAuliffe refusing to secure the election process for the entire FOUR YEARS he was charged with doing so, and especially after the hearings on 2000 election fraud.

[karynnj]

51. You may disagree but some of us have seen

a pattern where ever since Nov 2004, the Clintons and Clinton people have gone far out of their way to knock Kerry. I know that you either don't see it or don't want to see it.

As to why not Edwards, the answer is that they do not ultimately fear him. Edwards was the beneficiary of intense good media in 2004. In spite of that, Kerry very very convincingly beat him because on a stage together, there was NO comparison. The fact of the matter is that Edwards has a very weak resume - even compared to Obama.

Also, go to pollingreport.com - one of the last polls including Kerry is from the Wall Street Journal. It was for mid December, 2006. Kerry was at 11% - this was AFTER the joke. Go back and look at all the fall polls. Edwards had tons of press for his and Elizabeth's book and political stuff he did. All positive. Kerry had almost NO positive press. They had nearly the same poll results until the joke - and Kerry was recovering.


Kerry, not Edwards, beats the Clintons on every issue. Look at the top issues in 2006:

- Iraq - Kerry is the one who was far better positioned. Tay Tay and others saw the response at Take Back America and it wan't even close. (Edwards has alternated from vague to opportunistic. He also has said mutually exclusive things on issues from the past.)

- Corruption - Let's just say that one of them closed BCCI, the other got campaign contributions from an Indonesian offshoot with help from McAuliffe. Cattle futures anyone? (Edwards has fewer scandals, but no credentials) Clean elections bill with Welstone?

- Environment - The truth is that Bill Clinton had a terrible record in Arkansas, letting Tyson pollute large areas with his chicken farms. Kerry included the Clinton years in the years the locust ate on global warming - even with Gore as VP, they did very little. Think about when you had the explosion of SUVs, convieniently not classified as cars. (Edwards had a mediocre record in the Senate)

From the early things that I have seen on the Kerrys' book, it could really have swung numbers by correcting INPLICITLY many misconceptions. The book seems incredibly inspiring, hopeful and suggests that there are solutions to what seem intractable problems - and they are coming with little or no help from the government. Kerry in the Small Business Committee has been speaking of ways to give these efforts more incentives etc. This is an incredibly positive message - and works for both the environment/alternative fuel and products, but also on economic problems. (This is far more real and compelling than Edwards and a shovel in New Orleans.)

It also involves both Kerrys and shows Teresa as the brilliant, warm woman she is. They had a sentence on the 2004 website that they were brought together by their mutual interest in the environment, but many people never got that. The media smeared Teresa because seeing her for who she is validated her husband. Both Kerrys have always seemed better at praising and speaking of others than talking about themselves - which is precisely what this book will have them doing.

With the way things stand now, Hillary is counting on Edwards and Obama either stumbling or ultimately being seen as too inexperienced. With neither Gore or Kerry in, that leaves only Hillary as an alternative. (Obama's numbers have grown impressively, but are based on a few ver excellent speeches - he may live up to them and the numbers will expand or they may deflate as fast as Dean's did.)

I can also see why Kerry made his decision. He is freer to push issues on Iraq and will be able to accomplish some of what needs to be done on the environment as a Senator. He also may have simply reached the limit of what he was willing to put himself, his family and his friends through. The cost may ultimately have been too high.

[saracat]

18. Elizabeth, the book does portray Kerry negatively.

Terry implies he was an boob who didn't know what was going on in his own campaign. The least he implies about Kerry is that he was an idiot.He definately implies that if Kerry was a smart as MacAuliffe, he would have been elected.I am sorry but I find that offensive.
He also classifies himself as a '"fighter" and Kerry as a wimp.Talk about RW spin.Protect us from our own.

[ElizabethDC]

19. I think what it portrays negatively is that Kerry had poor managerial skills

and that much of the campaign was out of his hands and taken over by infighting. But I don't think that MacAuliffe necessarily thinks it's Kerry's fault (though obviously he thinks that Kerry should have hired better people). And the only whay he's portrayed as a wimp is when McCain says to Terry that the media is making his Kerry look like a wimp - even McCain himself had nice things to say about Kerry in the book.

Obviously, Terry's going to have his own slant on things, and that's no surprise, but his treatment of Kerry was actually much, much better than what I had expected (based on what people here were saying). I think he presented Kerry as a guy who was out there, trying to get the job done, but whose staff was holding him back. Now, I don't know how much of what MacAuliffe says is true and how much isn't, but I think you're being a little over-sensitive about the portrayal of Kerry (which I completely understand, because there's obviously reason to be skeptical of the way people portray him). A friend of mine borrowed the book from me and is currently reading it - I think she's JK-neutral, so I'll have to ask her what she things.

[TayTay]

27. And Terry McAuliffe is a questionable guy

He got that sweetheart stock deal that made $18 million for him in a very short period of time. He wanted to 'loan' the Clintons the money to buy their house in NY, a deal that stunk so bad he had to withdraw the office.

This guy is bad news. He is exactly the type of person that needs to leave politics and never come back.

[ElizabethDC]

30. I don't doubt he's questionable

I'm no particular fan of his, really - I have no opinion of him whatsoever. I just thought his take on the Kerry campaign was interesting and I know it gave me a better opinion of JK than I had before.

[saracat]

29. What you apparently don't get is that all the bad people surrounding Kerry were provided by MacAulif

and all that "too measured response" and advice "not to hit back" .That was MacAuliffe too.And now Kerry has poor managerial skills> Please.Macauliffe was and a an enormous liar.

[ElizabethDC]

31. He may be a liar

I'm not saying whether he's telling the truth or not - I have no idea. I'm just saying that I thought that, in my perception, the book didn't portray Kerry nearly as badly as I expected it to, and I came out respecting Kerry a lot more than I did before.

Additionally, I didn't say that I thought Kerry had poor managerial skills, or even that MacAuliffe said that, what I merely said was that one could infer from MacAuliffe's book that perhaps Kerry didn't have managerial skills - but I thought the book did a fairly good job of distinguising between Kerry the person and Kerry the campaign. It was far different from what I had expected.

MacAuliffe may be lying about everything - and in the beginning of the book he even acknowledges that he has a tendency towards "blarney" - but I thought the book itself was interesting and entertaining, regardless of how much of it contains fiction.

[JI7]

32. does he discuss the 2002 elections ?

and the other 2004 elections that were going on ?

[karynnj]

35. I suspect part of the concern is that MacAuliffe

has a more than a slight tendancy towards "blarney". That tendancy combined with Kerry's far more admirable ability to examine his own role and take responsiblity lead to things like his comment that Sandasea quoted that Kerry agrees with him. The problem is that McAuliffe attempts to slither away from responsibility while Kerry honorably accepts his - the net result being McAuliffe attempting to put all the blame on Kerry.

The fact is that McAuliffe created one problem by setting the date when he did. At the time, it was because he assumed that the Democrat would be unable to raise money after winning the nomination. As raising money was part of his job, it shows that he thought raising money would be dificult. Kerry, himself, actually did an exceptionally good job at this, but it also shows that McAuliffe did an awful job in predicting the political situation in 2004. A large part of why Kerry succeeded in raising money at the level the Republicans did was the anger against Bush - and that WAS predictable. If you assume that money plays a role in winning, having to stretch the same money over 13 weeks that the Republicans had for 8 weeks, had to have an effect. (This was the first election affected by McCain/Feingold, but someone on the DNC staff should have seen this problem.)

The other place where he is disingenuous is that the source of the infighting in the Kerry general election campaign is known. The Clinton people fought with the Kennedy/Kerry people who ran the primary campaign. He says that Kerry should have hired better people - and the implication has been he should have given the Clinton people more power. The fact is though, an examination of "Clinton" advise versus "Boston" advise, shows the Clinton advice to have been both wrong - it was not 1992, the issue WAS the war on terror - and not designed for the candidate. (Think of how many times Begala and Carville whined that Kerry was not Clinton. Then think what people were looking for in 2004. There was a reason Kerry so easily won the nomination. The Clinton people needed to design a campaign around the strong,moral, principled, serious world leader they were given in Kerry, not lament that they didn't have the charming scroundrel again.

The real question is what would have happened if in July/August, Kerry threw out or even threatened to throw out all the contentious Clinton people. (This assumes that he could replace them with other experienced people) As it was they were going behind Kerry's back and whining to their media friends. It would be seen as Kerry splitting the party rather than unifying it - as he tried by giving everyone, including Carter and Gore speeches at the convention. Consider how this would have looked especially as Clinton had heart surgery in August.

The most significant thing McAuliffe ignores is that the party pretty much seemed to have considered 2004 to be a loss going into 2004. It was Kerry, the candidate, as much as events, that changed this and made it very close. In spite of:
- the amount of money that could be spent (August - November) - McAuliffe's fault
- a party not 100% behind him ( the fault of McAuliffe's allies)
- a media that was hopelessly biased
- local parties that per credible sources were in poor shape in key swing states
- The President having the ability and lack of decency to use terror warnings as political tools
- The vilest, heavilly funded smear campaign in recent history.
How could the campaign have been that bad that they nearly overcame all that.

Contrast to 1992. Then President Bush had approval ratings between 33 and 40%. The country was in a recession. The media favored Clinton - how many times did you view Bush throwing up on the Japanese foreign minister? (Would that have even been shown if it were W in 2004?) Yet per McAuliffe and crew, Clinton is the best politician and campaigner in his generation and the Clinton campaigns were very well done. Does anyone else see that all these things can not simultaneously be true?

The only possible way to reconcile the CW perception that the Clinton campaign was great and the Kerry campaign was troubled with how relatively difficult the 2 years were and what the results were is that Kerry as a person and statesman more than made up for any comparitive deficiencies in managing a campaign. This though suggests that people well skilled in efficiently running campaigns would do best running with Kerry as the exceptional candidate he was.

[blm]

38. How can anyone respect Kerry more from McLiar's book than from reading the record

of recent history?

You think it wasn't worth respecting Kerry enormously when he uncovered IranContra, illegal wars Central America, BCCI and CIA drugrunning?

You think the Clintons weren't PART of the coverup of those issues once Bill took office in 1993?

You respect POWER gained through deceit and cooperation with the Bush family - Kerry supporters DON'T.

[ElizabethDC]

39. Um, hello, I said that I'm a Kerry supporter

and that I've supported him longer than I've supported the Clintons. I've been in this forum since the 2004 elections, though I haven't posted much here in a while, so I don't expect people to remember that.

Additionally, you've misinterpreted what I was saying. I know all about Kerry's record - I've read Brinkley's "Tour of Duty" as well as well as the the Boston Globe biography. I never said that I didn't respect Kerry before, so I don't know why you think that. I've always had the utmost respect for Senator Kerry and I think that he's a wonderful guy. I just said that my respect for him had increased based on some of the stories from MacAuliffe's book (which I'm guessing you haven't read) - one would think that it would be considered a *good* thing that my respect for Kerry is ever-growing, so I don't know how or why you've decided to construe that negatively.

So please do not presume to tell me what I do and do not respect simply because you disagree with me on some things.

[blm]

42. Because I know exactly what McAuliffe's been doing since Nov 2004 and

I even predicted in 2005 they would try to get Dean booted after 2006 election, too.

I am not naive when it comes to their workings. So, yes, it does strike me as odd that after the way McAuliffe's been trashing Kerry the last two years that ANYONE would claim they respect Kerry even more BECAUSE of McAuliffe's book.

[ElizabethDC]

45. Why don't you just read the book for yourself?

I thought some nice things were said about Kerry - plenty of critical things, too, of course. Perhaps the reason it helped me gain respect for Kerry is that I'm inclined to think that Kerry is a good guy, and so I look for the positive. A lot of people around here are so focused on finding what's negative in people that they disagree with that they're blind to the good things, which just creates more conflict.

[blm]

52. Kerry has excellent managerial skills, and it is the reason why he was able to

restructure the Prosecutors' office in Mass., create the first Rape Counseling Dept., why he was able to push through UNpopular investigations like IranContra and BCCI and why he is able to easily construct DOABLE plans and legislation, and why he was given the task of normalizing relations with Vietnam.

It is also why he was given the enormous task of heading the Foreign policy committee in charge of the entire region undergoing the greatest chaos right now.

The PEOPLE around the Clintons are CORRUPT profiteers. Naturally they get preferred treatment from all the corrupt people surrounding BushInc.

And if TeamClinton was so damned competent why did they choose to stay SILENT and not counter TeamBush's attacks on the Democrats for 6 years?

One reason - By not working for the Democratic PARTY and its issues for 6 years, they were protecting Hillary 2008.

[wisteria]

9. McAwful is all about himself. If he didn't blame others it would look like it was

actually mostly his fault-which a lot things were. The comments on Kerry are a combination of sour grapes for not being included in the inner circle and a hit piece directed at kerry and intended to help Hillary when he was still considering another run for President.

[ray of light]

12. Regarding McAwful's rants. He had 4 years to secure our votes.

HE lost 2 elections to theives! "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice..." is what the guy is too stupid to understand. HE BLEW IT.

[sandrakae]

28. Maybe Terry needs to be told to stop his Kerry bashing or

Hilary could lose the support of John Kerry supporters. There are Millions of people who were left without a candidate when John announced he wasn't going to run. Does he think those people are irrelevant? Apparently so.

[TayTay]

33. ElizabethDC: we can't have this discussion without acknowledging

the elephant in the room, so to speak. There are a lot of people in this group who feel that the Clintons, through known surrogates like Terry McAuliffe, have acted to thwart attempts to reform the Democratic Party, have acted to increase the power and influence of consultants like McAuliffe and have erected barriers to any accountability that the Dems have to the people who elected them to power. McAuliffe isn't seen as some rogue agent who is just acting independently. He is seen as someone who does the bidding of the Clintons, without question. So his book is seen as an authorized 'hit piece' on John Kerry, not by some accident of 'blarney,' but by design.

The other problem is that Sen. Clinton is seen as a less than courageous or independent voice for reform. She lost a great deal of respect last fall when she 'piled on' for her own political benefit in issuing that call for Sen. Kerry to apologize for something he never said. That is the elephant in the room of this discussion in this thread. That was seen as a dishonorable and cravenly way of caving into Right Wing pundits who use Democrats to debase and devalue the message of Democratic politicians. Sen. Clinton did this because she wanted to score political points and prove that she was 'tough' to people who run Fox News and who spew RW Talking Points. She did not take a courageous stand with another Democratic colleague, she caved in and very quickly to a demand for a head to roll. That is the problem people have with her and with her surrogates like Terry McAuliffe.

This has to stop. I have little to no respect left for Hillary Clinton. I have also met her and was about 15 feet from her (or less) when she addressed a conference in DC last June. I was not impressed with her then and I am even less impressed with her now. If she wanted to regain that respect, she would be a stronger leader in the fight to end the war in Iraq, stop pandering to Right Wing media interests and show some spine in support of other Democrats. Instead she seems to be running a Party of One, the Party of the Clintons, and this is a political party that has no consideration for anyone or anything else beside the well-being of the Clintons.

Again, that is the elephant in the room in this discussion. I don't dislike McAuliffe for imaginary reasons, I dislike him because he is a hatchet man for the Clintons and is a representative of a style of politics that advocates for the power of a small group of people instead of for the good of the nation. I wrote this post so that we are on clear terms when we argue. This is, exactly, where I am coming from on this. We are now clear on our terms of debate. (And I am such a Masshole. God.)

[MBS]

34. very nice, concise summary

that's where I'm coming from, too. thanks for articulating this so well.

[ElizabethDC]

36. Of course I understand what you're saying

and I don't mean to defend MacAuliffe in general (which I think I've said multiple times now), and what I was saying had nothing to do with the Clintons (though, yes, I'm certainly aware that he doesn't act independently of them). I was simply saying that I thought Kerry was treated better in the book than I had expected, and that, obviously, that was a good thing, as plenty of people are going to read the book.

I understand that plenty of people have beef with the Clintons for a variety of different reasons. I can't pretend that I agree with them (or anyone) on everything (and I certainly didn't approve of Hillary's comments after the botched joke), but that's for a separate discussion. I'm not here in the JK forum to defend the Clintons. I was simply offering my interpretation on a portion of MacAuliffe's book, as it related to JK. Obviously there was loads of criticism of the way the 2004 campaign, and I don't deny that MacAuliffe wanted to make himself look good and advance his own agenda (he says in the beginning of the book that if you don't like the Clintons, then you're going to disagree with a lot of what he says). I was merely pleasantly suprised to see that JK the man emerged looking better than I expected - the book portrays him, I recall, as a figher who was dismayed what was happening in his campaign. I'm not saying I endorse this portrayal as accurate, merely that that was what was offered.

Have you read the book? Because I'd be interested to hear your take on it. Because I wasn't discussing the motives behind the book, but merely the book itself, and what I took away from it.

[saracat]

41. Amen Tay Tay! And Terry also stated publicly that the book was vetted by the Clintons and

nothing could be said without their approval. He said Hillary edited the book. Ni question, this is their book. And I vehemently disagree with Elizabeth that it makes Kerry "look good". You cannot present a candidate as a boob who has no idea what is happening in his own campaign and then say he is seoertate from his campaign. Sorry that statement doesn't wash. MacAuliffe hates Kerry and it is obvious.

[blm]

46. I have no doubt Terry McAuliffe refused to secure election in 2002 and 2004 because of Hillary 2008.

.

[ElizabethDC]

47. Yep, both Clintons saw the book before it came out

I think the book makes Kerry look good or look bad based on what you're looking for. Certainly, negative things were said, but I felt that, based on MacAuliffe's known agenda, his treatment of Kerry was fair.

And I think that the reason that Kerry might not know what's going on in every aspect of the campaign is because he was out doing the campaigning, rather than micromanaging. It's not that Kerry was separate (which I believe is what you meant when you typed "seoertate") from the campaign but that he as an individual was only one part of a large operation, and his actions as an individual can be seen as only a part of campaign as a whole. But, like I've said, I'm just saying what I got out of the book, not necessarily what happened. I don't necessarily agree with MacAuliffe either, I just thought his take on the situation was interesting, that's all.

[saracat]

50. Sorry.Unlike Terry, I don't have Hillary to edit my postings!

Having now read most of the book.I stand by my original assertions.

[wisteria]

44. You have expressed my thoughts on Ms. Clinton entirely.

Thank You, I will never forget or possibly ever forgive what she did to Senator Kerry.

[ElizabethDC]

48. Ok, I'm officially retiring from this thread

much as I enjoy the debate, I've said pretty much everything I could possibly say on the subject, and I'm going to be traveling over the next couple of days anyway. Anywho, thanks for the lively discussion!

[ProSense]

49. Terrible McAwful is trying to mask is own inability to contribute to a win.

Regime Change Now...For the Democrats

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was barely into his post-Election Day press conference when he smiled and said, "I know I cost the Bush family a little money." Spoken like a true fundraiser. He meant that the Democrats, by mounting what seemed to be a competitive campaign in Florida against Governor Jeb Bush, had forced the Republicans to spend more money and time than they had planned to defend the President's brother. On a bad-news morning, McAuliffe cited this as an accomplishment.

Snip...

McAuliffe has spinned himself into delusion. It's true that that the Republicans achieved their macro win in the Senate by squeaking by in a few close contests (while adding to their majority in the House). But what happened to McAuliffe's old line that the Ninny-in-Chief and his fellow Republicans were going to be routed by a combination of Democrats outraged over Florida (including still pissed-off African-Americans) and voters upset over their most recent 401(k) statements? The United States may remain a 50-50 nation--though it feels more like 52-48 at the moment--but within that split culture, Bush has proven he is a political power, and the Democrats have demonstrated they have no juice. This is not the "same place" as post-2000. Bush has been affirmed--as has his agenda.

...Remember James Carville and other Democratic strategists crowing at the start of 2002 that Enron would do in the Republicans? That corporate malfeasance would overshadow the war on terrorism as an issue in the 2002 elections? That was a pipe dream. But especially so with the Democrats' mixed record.

Snip...

If the current Democratic leaders took a powder, could Senator Harry Reid ☼, the Democrats' number-two in the Senate, or Representative Nancy Pelosi ☼, the Democratic minority whip, do any better? There is no easy way out for the Democrats. But the flip answer is, can they do worse? Neither Daschle nor Gephardt were able to capture the imagination of the public, at a time when, according to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, Democratic Party identification is declining faster than Republican Party identification. And at the DNC, why stick with Terry McBucks, a slick Clinton holdover obsessed with money over message?

link

"I am extremely proud of what the DNC, with the help of our Democratic Party leadership and the support of Democrats all across this country, has been able to accomplish," said Chairman McAuliffe. "Without having the bully pulpit of the White House, and with the worst economy in a generation thanks to the disastrous economic policies of the Bush administration, we have been able to raise a record amount of money this cycle, which we have put to work for Democratic candidates, as well as invested in the technological infrastructure of the Democratic Party."

At the beginning of the 2002 election cycle, the DNC had only 400,000 direct mail donors, only 70,000 email addresses of Democratic supporters, no in-house prospect list, and the average age of the Democratic small dollar donor was in the late 60s. Today, the DNC has more than 1 million direct mail donors and growing, more than 1 million emails addresses, an in-house prospect file of more than 125 million records -- compared with only two million
records just two years ago -- and the average age of the Democratic small
dollar donor has gone down to the mid to late 50's.

In addition, for September, DNC online contributions were up 500 percent from the beginning of the year, and were triple what they were for the best month so far. In September alone, the DNC had a sevenfold increase in donations per month.

"We are truly the Party of the 21st Century. The DNC has made the critical technological investments necessary for the success of Democrats on November 5, and for years to come," said Chairman McAuliffe. "We have tools, we have the technology, and we have the right message."

link

November 7, 2002

Democrats are beginning the 2004 campaign amid fingerpointing, new concerns about message, money <

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

Snip...

Democrats assessed their political prospects Wednesday after midterm elections that saw Republicans gain seats in the House, win control of the Senate and limit Democrats' pickups among governors.

Now Democrats are trying to assess blame for their lack of an effective political message, wondering where they'll find their next messenger and worrying about the loss of so-called soft money political contributions-- an important part of Democrats' financial base in recent years.

"It is a big challenge for our party," Democratic national Chairman Terry McAuliffe said. "Today we can no longer take any soft money at our national party committees, so it is a whole new world for all of us."

McAuliffe said at a Wednesday briefing on the elections that Democrats have no option but to replace tens of millions of dollars in soft money that have been lost because of new campaign finance laws. He noted the party is stepping up efforts to reach small donors and communicate with Democrats around the country by e-mail.

link

Recent article:

McAuliffe, who took heat for pumping so much national money behind Bill McBride's lopsided loss to Jeb Bush in 2002, said Kerry wasted months before setting up a coordinated campaign operation in Florida in 2004.

"I came down campaigning several times and knew we were in trouble. There was tremendous disorganization. That's not going to happen with Hillary Clinton."

So he spent a ton of the DNC's money on a loss to Bush, obviously clueless to the need for an infrastructure (or the problem with the 2000 election), then turns around and ignores said infrastructure in 2004. Now McAwful wants to blame Kerry for not doing the DNC chair's job?

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