Washington Post's article attacks JK.

[Mass]

What did Kerry do to this guy.

I can understand that he missed the two AAR shows where he was on Thursday. Nobody is obliged to live with his ears stuck to AAR.

But the rest is so full of crap that it is crazy repetition of right wing crap.

(Now, I share his view of the Democratic Platform, but I explained already why and it is not for these reasons).

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Mass/20

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100002.html

...
Who Needs New Ideas, Anyway

By Michael Grunwald

That's folly, the wise men say: If Bush-bashing was enough, we'd be debating the Kerry administration's approach to Iraq. And much of the REAL SECURITY platform does echo the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who stood silently in the back of Wednesday's event like one of those Easter Island statues.

But the downfall of the Kerry campaign was its candidate, not its ideas; Democrats with similar ideas ran far ahead of Kerry down ballot in GOP-leaning states like Colorado and Kentucky. Bush's approval ratings were below 50 percent in 2004, but he successfully created a "choice election" that was as much about his opponent's flip-flops as his own record. As a presidential candidate, Kerry could not avoid the spotlight, and his tendency to straddle issues was on full display.
...

[fedupinBushcountry]

1. This is what you call

BAD journalism. The guy does not know a damn thing about who and why certain figures stand out front. I'm sure Kerry would have been up front and on the podium if asked, but that is not his fault, and he is not a panderer like some of the others.

This guy is full of HOGWASH. I hate these idiots, I have no idea why they write this crap. Unless they know Kerry is still in play bigtime, got to tear him down from the get go.

Why isn't he writing about Bush and how he lied his way through the campaign. IMO Kerry is still a big threat and everytime something comes up that represents what Kerry would have done as president, we get crap articles like this.

:banghead:

[MH1]

2. Interesting article about Greenwald

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/01290636.htm

Apparently he is formerly of the Globe (hmmm...) and also writes for TNR (more hmmm.)

The linked article (from 2001) discusses him getting in trouble with WaPo for severe Hillary bashing. (Even more hmmm.)

Grunwald's email: [e-mail]

He seems to be a serial Dem-basher, not just a basher of Clinton and Kerry. I'm guessing he's a greeniac who doesn't know (or maybe doesn't care) who the real friends of the environment in Washington are.

[MH1]

3. WaPo ombudsman

http://www.washpost.com/news_ed/ombudsman/index.shtml

The Ombudsman serves as the reader's advocate. She attends to questions, comments and complaints regarding The Post's content.

The current Post Ombudsman is Deborah Howell . You can reach her by e-mail at [e-mail] or by phone at 202-334-7582.

Note: If you have comments or suggestions regarding washingtonpost.com online, please send them directly to the web site at [e-mail].

[karynnj]

6. Thanks for the research

Does create an interesting perspective.

[Dr Ron]

4. Democrats in GOP-Leaning States

"Democrats with similar ideas ran far ahead of Kerry down ballot in GOP-leaning states. . ."

Most, if not all, successful Democratic candidates in red states ran on a more moderate platform.

Even if there is someone with exactly the same positions as Kerry who did poorly, this ignores the fact that it was Kerry who faced the most smears on him personally, leading to decreased votes for him.

[karynnj]

5. Pretty despicable, but likely predictable

At this point, Bush is unacceptable and it's clear Kerry's ideas are still fresh and acceptable. So, he has two choices - to say, as we've done here, "Kerry was right" or to say we should have won because Bush was below 50%, the Democratic program was good and Kerry was bad. (Note also the shift in naming the Kerry positions to the Democratic positions as if the positions existed and Kerry was just the candidate brought in to articulate them.)

What he ignores is that Bush's polls vacillated around 50%. The Presidents who last were much lower. (Bush 1 was at 29% in August 1992 and Carter was very low too.) Pundits came up with the rule that if you are below 50% you lose - even though there was no data in the 40 to 50 % range - which means the data doesn't justify that claim. No mathematician or statistician would look at that history and make that rule. (Some of the 50% not approving of Bush were likely to his right - who would "hold their noses" and vote for him over a MA liberal.)

The comment that we lost because Kerry was ineffective when he was in the spot light ignores the debates. This was the only time after the convention that Kerry was able to speak to people. That Kerry came close in the GE was due to the point swing after the debates. The primary debates were a large part of why Kerry won the primaries too.

Kerry straddled issues LESS than almost any politic an I've seen. I assume he means Iraq. The problem is there were 3 pieces there. What to do going forward - Kerry, not Bush articulated a plan and stuck with it as the Republicans lied that it was what they were doing and the media repeated them. Whether we should have gone in - "wrong war" sounds pretty clear. It didn't help that LW continued to say he was pro-war. But it was also confused with the third piece - the vote.

The problem was Kerry answered the IWR question in a very complex way and we have a media that wants yes/no answers. Kerry listed Bush promises on what he was going to do with the resolution and how he didn't do them and misled us into war, but he defended his vote - as support a President should have going to the UN. My guess is that people, not already in the anti-war camp, were not ready to hear the President more explicitly called a liar - so an answer like the truthout one which would have made Kerry sound very decisive on this issue would have lost those people. The response Kerry repeatly used implied a lie, rather than threw it in people's faces.

I think the problem was that Kerry DID have a straddle position here - and it was the only one that could have worked. A pure "the war was wrong, I voted wrong position" would have lost likely for 2 reasons - it doesn't inspire confidence and the majority of the country were still for the war.

This seems more an attempt to try to continue to foster the impression that the problem was Kerry. That the media played a role in not showing Kerry well during the election means they themselves were part of the problem. He could just be hoping for Hillary, Warner or Edwards in 2008. It could also be that he sees Kerry as the most likely threat to the neocon/neolib ideas that the WP and NYT really did buy in to.

[ProSense]

8. On Iraq June 2003 and July 2004

It's wrong war, right vote, but Bush lied. I don't see how this can be construed as straddling. It may have been spun that way, but that wasn't the reality.

Q: Has your vote to authorize the president to go to war in Iraq hurt you, and has it constrained you from criticizing the war?

The president misled America. I don't know about deliberately, but he misled America, he misled the world. He misled Americans in Congress about how he was going to go to war. About what he would do. About why. We now have a new rationale for having gone to war. And I say to voters plainly and clearly: I laid out in my speech on the Senate floor precisely the steps that I think we needed to take to use the authority that we were giving the president. If I had been president, I would have used that authority more effectively....and I would have brought countries to our side through effective diplomacy, by being patient, by using up their excuses, by working through the international objections, so that if we needed to go to war we went to war with other countries on our side that shared the cost.

I have been 100% consistent. Saddam Hussein was a threat, he needed to be held accountable to the U.N. resolutions, but it needed to be done in the right way. George Bush did it in the wrong way, and broke his promises to Americans.

Q: Did Bush mislead you personally?

Well, in the sense that any senator or congressman votes based on promises of the president. I take that personally ... that he was going to do the things that he said he was going to do. And that's the job of a president. When you break (your promise on policy), you've broken your trust.

Snip…

Q: Did you vote for presidential authority to go to war because you thought the president should be given the benefit of the doubt?

I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. Issues of war and peace go outside of partisan politics. When the president of the United States says this is the way I'm going to do something, you ought to have the right to believe that president. And if there's anything that makes me more motivated about this, it is the fact that he went back on his word with respect to an issue that involves the lives of our young Americans. Americans know that this president did not go to war as a last resort.

Q: Did he intend from the beginning to go to war, no matter what the U.N. or allies said?

But he changed that, you see. This is where the word of the president is so important. Jim Baker wrote publicly how important it was to go to the U.N. Brent Scowcroft wrote publicly. The word around Washington was, the president's father is very concerned, and they don't want to go in this direction. So the president then comes forward and says, you're right. We're going to do these other things.

Q: Was Bush merely paying lip service to trying the diplomatic route?

It appears more and more evident that that may have been the truth, which is why the president broke his word. That's why I say he misled Americans.

Q: What may have been the truth?

That they intended to go no matter what, regardless of what happened. If that is true, he even more misled the nation. If that is true.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-07-22-kerry-cover_x.htm?csp=14

Kerry says Bush misled Americans on war
By Ron Fournier, Associated Press, 6/18/2003 21:04

LEBANON, N.H. (AP) Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Wednesday that President Bush broke his promise to build an international coalition against Iraq's Saddam Hussein and then waged a war based on questionable intelligence.

''He misled every one of us,'' Kerry said. ''That's one reason why I'm running to be president of the United States.''

Kerry said Bush made his case for war based on at least two pieces of U.S. intelligence that now appear to be wrong that Iraq sought nuclear material from Africa and that Saddam's regime had aerial weapons capable of attacking the United States with biological material.

Snip...

''I will not let him off the hook throughout this campaign with respect to America's credibility and credibility to me because if he lied he lied to me personally,'' he said.

Snip...

As for the question about U.S. intelligence, Kerry said he has led the call for a congressional investigation and pledged, ''We will get to the bottom of this.''

more...

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Kerry_says_Bush_061803.htm

I hope people are paying more attention to what's being said than to spin this time or nothing will change.

[karynnj]

11. I was using the term more broadly

The press seemed to want either - The Iraq war was bad. or The Iraq war was justified. Kerry's justification of his vote allowed for war, but as a very last strategy if diplomacy failed and there was a reasonable likelihood that Iraq could represent an immediate threat. (Neither of which ever happened.) So Kerry choose the Iraq war was bad, but ...

Obviously I think Kerry had a consistent, strong response and that he said very very often that he would not have attacked when Bush did. My point was just the left, almost more than the right, stood some of these reasonable statements on their head to infer things they didn't neccesarily infer. (ie Kerry would have attacked but later or when allies agreed - which was not what Kerry said.) I think Kerry was trying to say he would (of course) protect the US, but Iraq was wrong.

[TayTay]

13. I get what you were saying Karyn

And I get the frustration that he never said what the popular media said was his position. We all felt that. (Gawd, didn't anyone else watch that first debate. 65 million Americans tune in for a debate and nobody can remember it. Geesh.)

There was a position that the initial reasons for going to war were unjustified and misleading. It was the 'wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.' (Ah, what the hell is unclear about that for some people.) However, at the time of the vote, there was concern from a lot of people about those WMD's and that the vote was meant to be a kick in the butt to get inspectors in so they could scope out the real situation. (We all know better now what the situation was. Sigh!) But the popular media wants all answers to be simple so they can play them for 10 seconds and move on to talking about something profitable, like who lost on Survivor last night. (Sigh again.) So they kept asking questions that had complex answers and then getting all bent out of shape cuz they got, ahm, complex answers. I'm sorry, but that is not Sen. Kerry's fault. The fault in that one did lie with the media stars, and with their short-term concentration problems. We are ill-served by a self-congratulatory and self-obsessed media that spins it's own lies and then can't understand why people don't take those lies as truth. (See Dana Milbank, WaPo.)

[sandnsea]

7. I can't really blame the writer

That's the Democratic Party's position. It was the candidate, not the party's ideas. That's why they avoid even the mention of his name. If journalists are getting this message from all the party leaders, then I can't really blame them for writing it down. That's the party message. I think it's a stupid message and a stupid strategy, but it is what it is.

I disagree with the rest of what the guy is saying, I don't think it's just obstructionism on the one hand, but on the other, Bush needs to be obstructed. And if we want to get into a black/white "choices" debate, it's having a government that works or none at all. Most people are going to opt for the government that works.

[jenndar]

9. You're right about obstructionism.

It sucks that Dems have been forced into so much damage control, but what are the other options? It makes me wonder whether people who want the Dems to spend more time on a "plan" think they ought to let this crackpot administration do whatever the heck it wants to in the meantime.

[paulk]

10. another right wing water boy posing as a "leftist"

http://www.truthsoup.com/john_kerrys_waffles.html



I wonder if Mehlman signs his checks personally.

[JI7]

15. what an asshole

[wisteria]

16. So this guy had been a Kerry hater even during the election.

What a jerk.
I am glad you posted this. At least we know this guy is not to be taken seriously.

[kerrygoddess]

12. Response to this

from Nick on the Dem Daily: http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=2497

Check my comment in the thread about the email I sent Grunwald.

[_dynamicdems]

14. Reading this kind of crap makes me physically sick.

Now I truly understand the meaning of something making your "blood boil."

I think if I have to read one more Kerry-bashing article I'll :nuke: