Inside the Kerry Campaign

[Symmetry]

Some relaitvly interesting artiticles over here at MSNBC.

[Master of Ossus]

Some relaitvly interesting artiticles over here at MSNBC.

That was pretty good. It kinda makes me remember why so many people didn't like Kerry, while at the same time it puts a human side on him.

[RedImperator]

Interesting insights into what happened to the Dean campaign, too. Makes you wonder what might have happened if competent people had been in charge of that one.

[MKSheppard]

Linky

The Vets Attack
New Battles: Underestimating the Swift Boat ads, the Kerry team suffered from their slow response. Then Bill Clinton's former aides arrived and staged a silent coup.

Nov. 15 issue - The attack of the Swift Boat vets did not catch the Kerry campaign by surprise, not entirely at least. Kerry's operatives had worried from the beginning that some right-wing group would try to use his old Vietnam antiwar speeches against him. In the summer of 2003 the Kerry campaign had quietly made some inquiries with C-Span, asking the cable network not to release old videotapes of Kerry as an angry young vet fulminating about war crimes and atrocities. Portions of his sometimes overwrought testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 could be twisted into an attack ad, the Kerryites feared. They were told not to worry: the rules prohibited the use of the tapes for political advertising. (When the Swift Boat vets made ads attacking Kerry with images from his 1971 testimony, they used a voice-over, an actor reading Kerry's words.)

[Patrick Degan]

Linky

The Vets Attack
New Battles: Underestimating the Swift Boat ads, the Kerry team suffered from their slow response. Then Bill Clinton's former aides arrived and staged a silent coup.

Nov. 15 issue - The attack of the Swift Boat vets did not catch the Kerry campaign by surprise, not entirely at least. Kerry's operatives had worried from the beginning that some right-wing group would try to use his old Vietnam antiwar speeches against him. In the summer of 2003 the Kerry campaign had quietly made some inquiries with C-Span, asking the cable network not to release old videotapes of Kerry as an angry young vet fulminating about war crimes and atrocities. Portions of his sometimes overwrought testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 could be twisted into an attack ad, the Kerryites feared. They were told not to worry: the rules prohibited the use of the tapes for political advertising. (When the Swift Boat vets made ads attacking Kerry with images from his 1971 testimony, they used a voice-over, an actor reading Kerry's words.)

Where Kerry fucked up on this: instead of trying to dodge the issue of his antiwar activism, he should have met it head-on, and he should have been ready to hit the Swift Boat people on every charge and immediately upon airing.

[Elfdart]

Bob Shrum and Mary Beth Cahill should never work on another presidential campaign. Clinton, like Kerry was called a coward and a traitor for his opposition to the Vietnam War -and Clinton ducked the war. Why did Clinton do better? Because James Carville and Paul Begala were pros who hit back immediately when Clinton was attacked. They were so effective that one of Bush's flunkies went to jail for rifling Clinton's passport files looking for dirt. When the R's tried to blackmail Clinton out of office in 1998, it was two Republican House Speakers who were run out of town, not him.

Maybe in 2008, when Kerry, Gore or Edwards run, they will know how to campaign and more importantly, how not to campaign. They would also have a simple, effective slogan (which they didn't have this time or in 2000) at their disposal: "I told you so."