A few post-election thoughts

While this blog has been--and will continue to be--highly critical of Bush, it has said almost nothing positive about Kerry. When I punched out the number by Kerry's name on my ballot, I was voting against Bush, not for Kerry. See, John Kerry was far from my first choice as the Democratic nominee, for reasons I will partially explain later.

In another, more widely read portion of the blogosphere, I posted a series of arguments regarding Kerry's campaign. Here are the highlights...

Kerry had to get some Republican votes to win. There were plenty of Republicans who were upset with Bush, but in order to get them to cross party lines, Kerry had to give them some reason to vote for him. Instead, Kerry's basic strategy was that Bush would screw things up so badly that Kerry would have to do nothing because people would be so disgusted with Bush that they would vote for Kerry.

Gee, that didn't work out so well, now did it?

Kerry was never in a position to really attack Bush where he was most vulnerable--Iraq and terrorism. Kerry voted for the Iraq War Resolution and NEVER fully explained his vote. He blamed the intelligence and the CIA, which was Bush's position, which meant that 1) he did nothing to differentiate himself from Bush, and 2) essentially gave Bush a free pass on why we went to war (especially when combined with his vote on the IWR). Hell, in late July he even said that given everything that was known then (which is pretty much everything that was known before the war, by the way), he still would have voted for the IWR! And then he picks a running mate that was unapologetically in favor of the war. Other than the possible exception of Joe(mentum) Lieberman, Kerry and Edwards were the worst possible candidates to take on Bush on the issue of Iraq. Even so, Kerry still had plenty of options for attacking Bush on Iraq, and I kept arguing that the window was closing. I also argued that since the GOP said all along that its campaign was going to be based entirely on Iraq and terrorism, Kerry needed to go after Bush on these issues--take out the foundation, and the rest of the structure will fall.

Kerry did get aggressive on the Iraq issue in the final weeks of the campaign, but it was too little too late. People campaigning for Kerry (like Wes Clark, for example) were saying that the war was wrong, that Bush screwed up by going to war, that it was a mistake, etc., but they were not on the ballot. Kerry was the one on the ballot, and he never said any of these things.

And I was not alone on these matters. I started making these arguments in February and pretty much gave up in August.

Those are just some of the reasons I never really cared for candidate Kerry. There are more.

For one thing, he had a penchant for ripping off the ideas and statements of other candidates and passing them off as his own. At this time, I will provide only one example. Remember hearing Kerry say "The other party wants to talk about family values, but we value families"? Wes Clark started saying that early in his campaign.

In basketball, there is a creature known as "the big white stiff." This is a white guy whose only apparent talent is being tall. He lacks the agility and athletic ability of others (of all races, by the way, for some big white guys are not stiffs). In a political context, Kerry was a hugewhite stiff. Think Herman Munster without the endearing personality. Jon Stewart's Kerry impersonation was unflattering, yet it was dead on. What is so maddening is that Kerry had the ability to be something else. There were two times I was actually enthused about Kerry. The first time was after his speech at the Democratic Convention. He was loose yet forceful. He had personality. He was witty. He was outstanding. I thought "now if he will only keep doing that for the rest of the campaign." Instead, he mostly reverted back to being a stiff. The second time I was enthused was after the first debate. Kerry was brilliant, but I kept asking myself why in the world he had not been like that during the entire campaign. He was better for the rest of the campaign, but still did not stay away from stiffness, and, once again, it was too little too late. By being the big white stiff for most of the campaign, Kerry played right into the hands of the GOP's efforts to brand him as arrogant and elitist.

That's enough for now. I might post more on this topic if I feel a need to further vent, and that is definitely within the realm of possibility.

I will say one last thing. Terry McAuliffe and the rest of the DNC can pucker up and kiss my ass. Those self-absorbed boneheads are a big reason why Bush won this election. McAuliffe thankfully will no longer be chairman, but everyone on the DNC deserves to be sacked. Idiots.