Kerry 2008?

My blog-friend Joe Gandelman is worried that John Kerry will run for the presidency again in 2008:

Oh, please, God, don’t let it be true…Don’t make me go through it again (I don’t have the disposable income for the amount of Red Bull required to sit through his speeches)…Oh, please, Lord, I’ll be a good boy, but as a former Political Science major don’t force me to watch a campaign as poorly run like that ever again. DO YOU HEAR ME??!!!

Well, of course he’s running, Joe. Running for the presidency is a vintage for which, once you’ve got a taste for it, no substitute will every really do.

Joe goes on to list Kerry’s problems:

  1. His campaign was one of the most poorly-run in recent memory — almost as hugely bungled as the campaign of Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis’.
  2. He started out being charisma-challenged and got better but it was always hard to find people truly enthusiastic about John Kerry: he was more the anti-Bush candidate and if he had won it would have been due to his improved performance at the end of the campaign and for being a viable Bush alternative.
  3. He showed poor personal judgment in some of his staffing choices and a political Pollyanna streak by seemingly not being prepared to face an effort to discredit his military record when he tried to pitch his military service as an asset.

And every single one of those things was obvious during the primaries. Add one more problem:

  1. Democrats convinced themselves that he was actually a good candidate.

Not only that: a majority of Democrats voting in primaries actually convinced themselves that he was the best of the available candidates—possibly the only candidate capable of winning. This suggest that either a majority of Democrats who vote in primaries have very poor judgement or that no available Democratic candidate was capable of winning. Either way it’s not good news for the Party.

6 comments… add one
  • More the latter, I think. Kerry was, in fact, the perfect representation of the Democratic party then… though, as far to the left as Kerry went in that campaign, I think the party as a whole has gone futher left yet. And the sound rejection of Kerry at the polls should tell you what the American people as a whole think of THAT.

  • Does he really think he can beat Hillary?

  • I don’t think it makes any difference, Marc. I doubt that anybody thinks he can get the nomination again other than, possibly, Kerry himself but I suspect he’ll run anyway.

    If Ms. Clinton is as smart as everybody keeps telling me she is, she’ll never run for the nomination. Being in the Senate is a much better job.

  • Of course he thinks he can win. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if GORE tested the waters. And the Kerry/Kennedy vs Hillary vs Dean should be entertaining

  • Gregory McDowall Link

    Though Lieberman would have been the much stronger, I voted for Kerry in the primaries because I did not want Dean to win the candidacy. In retrospect, I wish Dean would have become the Democratic candidate and then got beaten in a landslide. It would have been the best wake up call for the party to drop the moveon and Moore factions and form a viable alternative to the Republican party.

  • Jeff:

    Yes, I agree that Gore may be back in the 2008 presidential primaries. As I predicted in my 2006 predictions, I expect Biden (and probably Mark Warner) to through their hats in the ring in addition to the candidates you’ve mentioned.

    Gregory:

    I voted my conscience and voted for Lieberman in the primaries. And, as I’ve predicted, he’s now being excoriated by the Kos/MoveOn folks as a DINO. I predicted that as well—they’re trying to purge those who don’t follow their orthodoxy from the Party. Clearly, they still don’t understand what happened in November of 2004.

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