Four Structural Weakneses of John Kerry

Kaus points to a The New Republic Online piece by Noam Scheiber, in which the author details Kerry's four strucutral weaknesses:

1) His poor gut-level instincts lead to exploitable gaffes:

Bush in his natural state is an anti-intellectual cowboy: heavy on bravado, light on nuance. When he lets slip what he's really thinking--like his ill-advised "bring it on" comment from last year--and that comment gets repeated by political opponents, it probably alienates half the country, but it galvanizes the other half and ends up a wash. Kerry at his most authentic is a committed internationalist--someone who values the stability of alliances over the freedom of unilateral action. There's nothing wrong with this position per se. Except that, when expressed in a single, unguarded comment capable of being distorted by political opponents, it probably alienates considerably more than half the voting public.

2) His rapid-responses tend to focus more on rapidity than on the contents of the responses:

The problem is that the point of a rapid response strategy isn't just to offer some response--any response--when the candidate is attacked, so long as it's quick. The point is to offer a response that effectively deadens the issue--a goal sometimes better accomplished without the over-the-top, war-room approach that's been the Kerry campaign's only speed to date.

During the "more leaders" contretemps, for example, the Kerry camp's response was to claim that what Kerry had actually said ("more leaders") was much more vague than the quote that first appeared in newspapers ("foreign leaders")--so much so that, according to Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter, the phrase could have referred to "anybody, here at home, abroad, anybody." (This was at odds with the context of Kerry's comment, which clearly indicated he was talking about foreigners.) And, oh yeah, the campaign also trotted out Democratic foreign policy luminaries like Bill Richardson, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright to argue, as Holbrooke did, "It's so obviously the truth what Kerry said, and the Republicans are just having fun with it." Shockingly, none of this proved very effective at making the issue go away. Unfortunately, things only get worse from here on out: Kerry, by virtue of his long voting record in the Senate, is going to be playing a lot of defense.

3) His dual reputations of liberal and flip-flopper:

Whatever you do to rebut one charge just confirms the other. Take gay marriage. In the past Kerry has tended to stake out relatively liberal terrain on the issue--for example, he voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. This would seem to put him to the left of the average swing voter, a position that could be exploited by the Bush campaign. So how would Kerry insulate himself from this kind of attack? The only way that comes to mind is by moving rightward--which Kerry did earlier this year when he hinted he might support an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution banning gay marriage. In one fell swoop Kerry transformed himself from a liberal on gay marriage to ... a flip-flopper on gay marriage.

4) Money: Bush's buckets of hard money trumps an army of 527s:

For all the talk about various Democratic-leaning 527s (that is, independent nonprofits) helping to balance out Bush's huge financial advantage, Tuesday's showdown in West Virginia showed why nothing beats good old-fashioned hard money when it comes to waging a presidential campaign. Before Kerry could touch down in West Virginia, the Bush campaign had saturated the airwaves with the aforementioned weak-on-national-security commercial--which framed the debate for Kerry's West Virginia trip in terms most favorable to Bush. By contrast, because none of the 527s trying to help Kerry can coordinate their message with his campaign (at least not legally), Bush is much less likely to face such focused debate-framing when he touches down in the swing states he's targeting.

Posted by Steven Taylor at March 20, 2024 02:54 PM | TrackBack