Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice has an impressive post that asks Did John Kerry’s Speech Advance His Campaign?
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By Steven Taylor
Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice has an impressive post that asks Did John Kerry’s Speech Advance His Campaign? Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off|
By Steven Taylor
There is no word that damns with faint praise more than “competent.”
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By Steven Taylor
“See, you can’t talk sense to the terrorists. You can’t hope for the best. You can’t negotiate with them. We will engage those enemies around the world so we do not have to face them here at home”.–
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By Steven Taylor
From Howard Fineman’s convention blog (which is really more of a blog than Hardblogger) we find the following: We’re sitting here on the “Hardball” set and I got a little hot under the collar when Joe Scarborough presumed to give us all a lecture about the “reality” of the Kerry speech. Joe said it was a blown chance because it was too rushed. I think that Kerry, if he didn’t hit a home run, hit a solid double up the gap or even a triple and put himself in scoring position. I caught the tail end of this last night (including Fineman rolling his eyes at Scarborough), so I missed Joe’s exact argument (which I gathered was about Kerry’s cadence and general delivery). Fineman and Andrea Mitchell were quite dismissive of Scaraborough’s comments, noting that delivery doesn’t matter, but rather the words matter (not only is that not the way they cover Bush speeches, it really ignores the fact that both the words and the delivery matter). The thing that struck me about the interchange at the time, and that is driven home by Fineman’s entry (e.g., “Joe Scaraborough presumed to give us all a lecture”), is that Fineman and Mitchell weren’t exactly treating Scaraborough as a serious member of the panel (which was chaired by Chris Matthews and also included Willie Brown). Instead he was clearly the token conservative on the panel, and wasnt supposed to overly rain on the Democrat’s parade. It really should embarass Fineman who was there as an analyst, not a booster for the Kerry campaign (and unlike Professor Doctor John Lemon, I tend to think Fineman does a good job, although he has seemed a bit more agressive vis-a-vis Bush of late). And I certainly do not think that Fineman had to have a negative view of the speech because he was there as an analyst–he could legitmately have had a positive view. However, to get ticked because Scaraborough didn’t like the speech and “presumed” to share his views (which is what he was there for) came across as biased to me. At a minimum he seemed to be treating Scarborough as an interloper who shouldn’t have been allowed to crash the Hardball inner circle. Update: A thought I forgot to include: I am not sure that a “solid double” does it. Weren’t we told by the chattering class in the lead-up to the speech that Kerry needed a home run? Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (3)|
By Steven Taylor
Barry Ritholtz notes via e-mail that Security czar Ridge weighs resigning after election To be honest, this doesn’t surprise me. It is a stressful and largely thankless job. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (1)|
By Steven Taylor
This is what came to mind last night. (In fact, the image that specifically came to mind was that of Gilligan saluting during the theme song when the song tells us “The mate was a mighty sailing man”–however, I couldn’t find a picture of that). Update: Jeff Jarvis has another photographic juxtaposition. Update II:protein wisdom has another comparison (hat tip: Mark the Pundit) Update III: Included in the OTB Traffic Jam. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (16)|
By Steven Taylor
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By Steven Taylor
The week so far: OVERVIEW Assessment: This was a well-managed convention in terms of mechanics. However, I am unclear as to what idea, thought, or theme will resonate beyond the Fleet Center into the electorate. More specifically: what happened this week that will persuade the undecideds that Kerry should be the Commander-in-Chief during this time of international conflict. The early signs are that the Democrats will get a small bump in the polls: Zogby Poll Shows Democratic Ticket Up 5 Points. I will be most surprised if the bump is much more than 5 points or if it lasts long. Indeed, Kerry-Edwards ought to get some bump just from the fact that this past week has been All Kerry All the Time (as is fair). Still, despite the mechanical success of the convention, I don’t see this convention creating a substantially different view of Kerry amongst the undecideds than they had prior to the convention. If that assessment is correct, then the convention was a failure. Kerry was supposed to give the Speech of His Life last night, and I don’t think he did. It was an adequate speech, but it was hardly an awe-inspiring one. If voters didn’t know Kerry before the convention, what new thing do they know now? That he served in Viet Nam? Please: the technologically deprived denizens of the Amazon jungle know that by now. As such, I don’t see a lot of heat being generated by the convention itself, or the speech. It may jazz up those already predisposed to vote for Kerry, but they were jazzed up already just because they get to vote against Bush in November. As such, the convention did not really further Kerry’s goal of turning Bush into Texas Toast in any substantial way. I still think that the breaking point for this election season will be the debates. The Film The Speech Editorial Pages The basic assessment by the LAT editorial writers is positive, calling last night’s event a “brilliantly crafted acceptance speech.” Mainstream Analysis/Columnists The analysis piece in WaPo, A Challenge to the GOP on Values, Security, aptly notes the following: There were notable omissions in Kerry’s speech, however, that raise questions about the course he and his party have chosen for the campaign. Like other speakers during the four nights of the convention, Kerry only briefly touched on Iraq, the issue that has shaped and dominated this presidential campaign, divided the Democratic Party and at times bedeviled his own candidacy. At a time when many Americans are looking for an exit strategy and may wonder whether Kerry has a plan for Iraq that is different from Bush’s, he offered only the assurance that he knows how to get it right. And I think that this is a correct assessment: Still unanswered is how Kerry plans to keep all his promises for new programs and tax cuts and still meet his pledge to cut the soaring deficit in half in four years. While I know that for a large block of voters, change is the goal, but I still wonder as to the degree to which this “we can do better, but I won’t say how” theme will persuade the undecided. And when he did get around to discussing the matter of our national survival, he basically took a page from the post-Vietnam playbook favored by an earlier generation of Democrats. “We shouldn’t be opening firehouses in Baghdad,” the candidate declared to rousing applause, “and shutting them down in the United States of America.” Suggesting that Europeans won’t send troops to Iraq simply because they can’t stand his opponent, Kerry promised to be nicer to our allies so we could “bring our troops home.” Unlike, say, in Bosnia, he pledged to go to war “only because we have to.” Leaving unsaid exactly by whom and at what cost, he dedicated himself to making America “respected in the world.” Finally, and without saying precisely what it is, Kerry said he knows “what we have to do in Iraq.” He has a plan, you see. Just like a candidate from long ago claimed to have a plan to end a war–the war that put Kerry on the stage last night and which, for him at least, wasn’t so long ago at all. Blogospheric Reaction Mainly, I’m pissed about Iraq. How to handle Iraq is the most important question facing the president and he just punted. On other looming foreign policy issues (Iran, North Korea, Sudan) where, again, the president can pretty much do whatever he wants we are left with no idea of what a President Kerry would want to do. Nor do we even have a particularly smart backward-looking critique of the Iraq War.
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By Steven Taylor
Wrote Kevin Drum yesterday: Four weeks ago, John Judis, Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari reported in The New Republic that the administration was turning the screws on the Pakistanis to round up an al-Qaeda bigshot before the election. That seemed plausible to me, but the additional specification that they had been told the capture should be announced on “the first three days of the Democratic National Convention” seemed like a bit of a stretch. Given that most people probably didn’t even know about the arrest (it hardly preempted convention coverage), I have a hard time buying into this theory. Really, this is a major arrest that was over-shadowed by the convention, not the other way around. Surely it would have been politically better for the administraton to have this information come out next week. Only the arrest of Osama would have been enough to disrupt coverage of the DNC. Further, when the reaction to a major arrest in the war on terror (the 1998 bombings killed over 200 people) is “see: Republican dirty tricks” it is clear that one has been overly consumed with partisanship. And I reiterate: if the goal here was to disrupt “Kerry’s Night” it was a miserable failure. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (5)|
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