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Wednesday, September 15, 2004
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HERRRRRRE'S JOHNNY!
Massachusetts Senator and Crown Prince of Vietnam, John Kerry might as well get a "Born To Lose" tattoo across his fucking forehead at this point. There's really no reason to wait until November now. The have been references in the mainstream media that the Kerry campaign reminds them of the Dukakis campaign of 1988. I followed that campaign closely. If I were an American, that would have been the first election in which I could participate. It was really funny and pretty fascinating. I'm familiar with Dukakis '88.
Team Kerry makes the Dukakis campaign look like a well-oiled machine, capable of vicious kick-assery. It appears that the only ass John Kerry can kick is his own.
This guy is genetically incapable of catching a break or exploiting an opportunity. For weeks Kerry was hammered by the twisted fantasies of bitter veterans. And what did he do? Nothing is what! He stood there like a schmuck and took it in the ass for three solid weeks. When he finally did respond, the response consisted of, "The Republicans are being mean to me. There ought to be a law against it." In fact, there is a law governing such ads as the Swift Boat Veterans. It's called McCain/Feingold, which John Kerry never tires of reminding us that he voted for (without even voting against it later, a unique Kerry achievement.)
It was the day that Kerry gave his little Swift Boat speech (not to be confused with his Vietnam speech, ALL of his speeches are his Vietnam speech), that I realized that John Kerry was doomed. Doomed in an almost biblical sense. Doomed beyond any redemption. For decades to come, children will study the Kerry campaign to learn how one may best fuck up a seemingly sure thing. The Democrats should have just nominated some pedophile from Pittsburgh instead. They'd probably have a better shot of winning Pennsylvania and sexual deviants tend to win presidential elections for the party - see Kennedy, John and Clinton, Bill.
I couldn't believe that a man who proposes that he be given the responsibility for doing battle with people like Osama bin Laden responded to a vicious attack on the only thing he appears to have done with his life with a line like, "they're meanies." Of course Republicans are mean. They're professional politicians, and as such, they enjoy winning elections. George McGovern is an exceptionally nice man. He also lost 49 states.
No sooner than the Swift Boat storm passed, the mother of all shitstorms broke. Documents that purported to prove that the President of the United States indeed bailed on his National Guard duty came to light. The timing of this was serendipitous, coming as it did on the heels of Kerry calling the President and Vice President draft dodgers 35 seconds after the close of the Republican convention. Democratic Party Chairman, Clinton stooge and dumb punk, Terry McAuliffe was on this story like a fly on shit. The DNC rolled out ads playing on the image of Bush as a draft dodger. Kerry, of course, said nothing.
Then the documents supporting the charges were revealed as forgeries. The only people who believe the story now are small children and the criminally insane Dan Rather. Do the Democrats pull their ads? No, no they don't. They seem to be waiting for all of the tawdriness to explode in their faces. This demonstrates that the Democrats are more like a shithead terrorist who gets killed when the bomb he was building blows up prematurely in his fucking rec room. They're certainly not a professional political organization anymore.
Part of the problem is institutional. Political parties are little more than coalitions of specific interests. The Republican coalition is narrow. It consists of rich people and war mongers. I'm comfortable with that. I'm already one of the latter and would very much like to be one the former when I grow up.
The Democratic coalition is much broader. It consists of unions; schoolteachers; trial lawyers; black people and, I believe, Indian Chiefs. Coalitions that broad tend to have competing interests at work within them. This is largely why the Democratic Party seems to have invented the circular firing squad. It's also why they so frequently lose elections. They love beating the shit out of each other more than they hate the Republicans. Republicans don't much like anybody, but they are united in the belief that handing Democrats their asses is fun.
There is also a professional coalition in the Democratic Party. There are the Kennedy people, as exemplified by Kerry campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill; there is the institutional party, people like chief Kerry strategist, Bob Shrum, who have built careers running Democratic campaigns; and there are the Clinton people, represented by James Carville, Paul Begala and Joe Lockhart.
Kerry,in his own lovably Kerry way, has all three wings running his campaign. This is as unprecedented as it is stupid. A presidential campaign is like a highly mobile corporation that has the life expectancy of a year. Like any corporation, there has to be clear lines of authority that will keep everyone on message. In the Kerry campaign, there's no one in charge and there is no message.
The staff is a hilarious one, too. Being a loyalist of Ted Kennedy does not make one a professional. Someone named Kennedy hasn't lost an election in Massachusetts in over a century. Shrum may be an even bigger loser than Kerry himself. This is John Kerry's first presidential campaign. It is Bob Shrum's seventh. His record thus far, 0 for 6. Yet Bob Shrum has made millions of dollars for winning as many presidential elections as I have.
No one can say that the Clinton people aren't professionals. They are the most skilled political operatives since the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972. They are very, very good. Small problem: they don't want Kerry to win. If Kerry becomes president, Hillary Clinton would have to wait until 2012 to run. And even then she would have to battle Vice President Edwards for the nomination. This is fraught with peril for two reasons. First, a sitting vice president has not been denied his party's nomination for president in decades. Second, John Edwards will probably have started shaving and learned to drive by then and Hillary Clinton will be 233 years old. See what I mean by competing interests in a coalition?
This should have been a very, very bad week for the President. Two highly damaging books were released. One alleges that George W. Bush is a coke-addled whore monger and the other makes the case that his most trusted advisors were complicit in the atrocities of Abu Ghraib. In an ordinary election year, either one of these books would throw a presidential campaign on the defensive for weeks, maybe fatally so. But neither book has gotten much notice. Instead, everyone is obsessed with who's actually in charge of Kerry's campaign and whether it's actually possible that Dan Rather has gotten crazier. You can say any number of things about President Bush, but that he doesn't have fucking shamrocks growing out of his ass isn't one of them.
The consequences of all of this are predictable. As I write this, Kerry is six points behind in Wisconsin and pretty much even with the President in Minnesota. Do you know who lives in Wisconsin and Minnesota? College students and Communists, that's who! The state of Michigan is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Auto Workers union and the race is even there. Ditto Pennsylvania. West Virginia's only tangible export appears to be Black Lung Disease and the president leads there. Kerry is so desperate at this point that he's pulled his ads in Missouri and Arizona. The wheels have completely come off this campaign. There are very few signs of any improvements that can be made on the campaign structure, and even if there were, it's now too late to make them.
Anyone with even a passing interest in politics knows that this campaign is over. While the President mocks Kerry for making spending proposals that will cost two trillion dollars over ten years, his own administration admitted this week that his own promises will cost three trillion dollars over the same period. This is ballsy in the extreme. But with the state of disrepair that the Democrats have fallen into, the President can start drinking again and still be reasonably certain of a victory in seven weeks.
If these trends continue,and barring something shocking happening, like the President being named an unindicted co-conspirator in a mob hit or Kerry suddenly walking on water during the debates, they will continue, this election isn't going to be close in the popular vote. It seems less and less likely to even be close in the Electoral College every day.
It'll be fun to watch Kerry destroy his own dreams in public. It'll be decidedly less fun watching President Bush destroy the United States government once he's re-elected though.
UPDATE - 10:13PM Good fucking Christ! There are dark mutterings of polls that show Bush ahead of Kerry by four points.....in NEW FUCKING JERSEY! It also appears that Illinois is slowly slipping away from Kerry, with his 13 point lead now down to four (within the polls margin of error. If these polls are true, and I agree with Ace in being cautious about them, this campaign is now in total collapse. New Jesrey and Illinois are normally among the safest states the Democrats have. If they go for Bush, or are even close, Kerry can kiss Florida, New Mexico, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, perhaps even Michigan and the election good bye.
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