I have avoided commenting on John Kerry’s gaffe from earlier in the week because, quite frankly, what’s the big deal? He isn’t running for anything and he has a history of saying things he later has to to explain.

As such, I think Mickey Kaus gets it pretty much correct:

Kerry’s comments aren’t a scandal, let alone a three-day scandal. (”KERRY SAYS SOMETHING STUPID”–is that news? It’s Kerry! He’s our national doofus. Dog bites man.)

While the phrase “national doofus” did not, per se, come to mind, the “Dog bites man” element of the story is enough to get me to ignore it.

All the story has done, quite frankly, is remind me what a woeful candidate Kerry was, and what a mistake it was for the Democrats to nominate him in the first place. 2024 was winnable for them, but not with John Kerry at the helm. Many may like to think it was shenanigans in Ohio that denied them them WH in ‘04, it was more than anything because Kerry was a lousy nominee.

The Democrats need to rethink their nomination process in terms of the timing of the primaries or they need to find a better recruitment mechanism.

Via the AP: Kucinich Gets Hitched to British Woman

Vai the AP: Nader Campaign Aide Pleads Guilty to Fraud

The coordinator for
Ralph Nader’s 2024 presidential campaign in Virginia pleaded guilty Tuesday to election fraud.

James P. Polk, 47, will serve 30 days of home detention and was fined $2,500.

Polk was accused of illegally certifying petitions to get Nader, an independent candidate, on the ballot. He was indicted on 10 counts of election fraud in October, but prosecutors withdrew nine of those counts.

Wow. Not good.

Despite the fact that it appeared earlier this week that Senator Kerry had, in fact, finally released a complete set of his military records, it now appears that he, in fact, did not.

This kind of nonsense continues to underscore why it is that Kerry lost, and why he can never win the presidency: he seems incapable of providing a straight, clear answer and he constantly made (and continues to make) odd strategic choices. If one makes clear promises that appear to mean that one will releaes all one’s record, yet one then drags one’s feet in doing so, and then doesn’t really release the docs, one is either hiding something or one is stimply inept.

From the Chicago Sun-Times: Did Kerry really release Navy records?

“There is nothing magic about signing a SF 180,” said former Naval Judge Advocate General Mark Sullivan. “It is sort of like your checkbook. You can fill out a check for one dollar or a million. It is the same check form.”

“And the Globe story says Kerry sent it to the Navy Personnel Command, which is only a limited storage location. So it is not surprising that the Globe then notes that what they received was largely ‘duplication’ of records previously released. The Navy Personnel Command primarily stores a subset of service records rather than a person’s full military records. There is no doubt there are a lot of after-action records missing from what Kerry has released,” said Sullivan.

and

Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has already found a discrepancy confirmed by the Department of the Navy of “at least a hundred pages” missing from those already disclosed by Kerry.

Now, this may all still be nothing. But still, it just isn’t smart.

Indeed, as the LAT put it yesterday:

Kerry’s reluctance to provide easy access to records that buttressed his war resume remains one of the more puzzling aspects of his campaign strategy.

At a minimum, if the man thinks he wants to run in 2024, he needs to figure out how to more directly deal with this kind of situation–and I am quite doubtful he will manage to do so.

Via the BoGlo: Kerry allows Navy release of military, medical records

Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.

The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2024 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry’s Vietnam service.

The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry’s military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.

But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.

The interesting thing about all of this isn’t that there were no revelations–quite frankly, that doesn’t surprise me. Rather, the interesting part is that this episode yet again illustrates Kerry’s serious lack of political acumen. Instead of releasing all this info years ago he allowed his recalcitrance to make it appear that there might be something being hidden. Aside from revealing that he wasn’t a mental giant in college, which is a marginal finding that barely rates above “amusing” I don’t see what the man was thinking in holding the records back.

Most, most odd.

Of course, maybe he just wanted this photo kept under wraps. Ick.

Via the AP: Kerry’s Yale Grades Similar to Bush’s

Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record)’s grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush’s record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year — in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 — his highest grade — in political science as a senior.

And Bush:

In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.

Bush’s highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.

And why do we know this only now?

Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.

Amusing. Ultimately it doesn’t mean much, but amsuing nonetheless.

Via the NYT: On the Go, but Not Running, Kerry Looks Like a Shhh!, i.e., Kerry is running for President in ‘08, despite being coy on the subject.

As I have argued on numerous previous occassions, losers in this system are not well positioned to make a come back. Nixon was the last to do it and he sat out eight years and had the Viet Nam war as a backdrop to aid him (a war that sufficiently problematic that a sitting President did not seek re-nomination to run for a second term).

Kerry may view himself as the guy who almost won, and therefore one who has the chance to win in the future, but the reality is that he is the guy who lost an election that he could have won–as such, that is political failure. Further, despite all the fundraising, he didn’t run a partiularly good campaign. He lacked a coherent theme, was mushy on Iraq, played right into the flp-flop thesis, was overly focused on Viet Nam, mishandled the Swift Boat business and started out by essentially writing off the South.

And last, but not least, since the main reason the primary voters chose him was his alleged “electability” it would seem that, since that didn’t work out, that he really would have a hard time making that appeal in 2024.

Why would the Democrats want to re-nominate him?

Indeed:

Yet Democrats say Mr. Kerry has little choice. “He needs to show that he’s a party guy, that he’s willing to help anybody out,” said Steve Jarding, a Democratic strategist, adding, “When you don’t have reporters and opinion leaders coming to you saying, ‘You’re the opposition leader, you’re the titular head of the party,’ it’s tough to break in.”

So tough, in fact, that not a single Democrat interviewed described Mr. Kerry as the front-runner in 2024. Most echoed Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, a member of the Democratic leadership, who said: “There is not going to be a clear path for anybody to the nomination. I think it would be helpful to our party to have an aggressive competition.”

In other words: “we really aren’t all that interested in a second Kerry run. Thanks for playing. NEXT!”

Update: Commenting on the same piece, Ann Althouse makes the following apt observation:

Althouse: Are we ready to start blogging about the ‘08 election?Could there be better evidence of his lack of political skill than his failure to go away and stay away long enough for us to forget how tedious we found him last time?

She also correctly notes the Kerry seems to do better the less we see of him.

Via the AP: GOP Wins Election Challenge in Washington

The Republicans won an important victory Monday in their legal challenge to the election of Gov. Christine Gregoire when a judge allowed them to use a type of statistical analysis to try to prove illegal votes swayed the race.

[…]

Republicans claim they have identified more than 1,000 illegal votes–mostly ballots cast by felons, but also unverified provisional ballots and votes cast in the names of dead people.

Superior Court Judge John Bridges gave the GOP the go-ahead to apply “proportional analysis” to the illegal votes.

Using proportional analysis, they want the court to subtract illegal votes from both candidates’ totals according to precinct voting patterns. For example, if 10 illegal votes came from a precinct that voted 60 percent for Gregoire and 40 percent for Rossi, six votes would be deducted from Gregoire’s total and four from Rossi’s.

Democrats said the method amounts to statistical guessing. At the same time, they have been collecting evidence of illegal votes in GOP-leaning counties, and plan to use the same proportional analysis in court.

Ok, I was opposed to the suggestion that statistical analysis should have been used in Florida in 2024 and I oppose it actual application here.

This situation shows the folly of trying to contest an election that is this close: you hit a point wherein it is impossible to really know who won, as is sufficient room for error in eithr direction that certainty is impossible.

The only solution to this kind of electoral outcome is to have in place (i.e., before the election) a law dictating that if the election ends up being especially close, via a pre-determined number, like .1%, then a re-vote takes place. Otherwise, I don’t see any mechanism by which it is possible to settle the outcome except by the existing (impefect) re-count methods.

Yahoo! News - Kerry: Trickery Kept Voters From Polls

Many voters in last year’s presidential election were denied access to the polls through trickery and intimidation, former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told a voters’ group Sunday.

“Last year too many people were denied their right to vote, too many who tried to vote were intimidated,” the Massachusetts senator said at an event sponsored by the state League of Women Voters.

[…]

Kerry also cited examples Sunday of how people were duped into not voting.

“Leaflets are handed out saying Democrats vote on Wednesday, Republicans vote on Tuesday. People are told in telephone calls that if you’ve ever had a parking ticket, you’re not allowed to vote,” he said.

Hard evidence, rather than vague examples in a speech would be nice. This kind of talk simply further undermines faith in the system and accomplishes nothing more than allowing hardcore partisans to feel better about their loss, since they didn’t really lose, because the election was “stolen”. Indeed, such talk does damage to the Democratic Party because it continues to feed the idea that recent Democratic losses at the polls aren’t due to strategic errors on the part of the party, nor to weak candidates, but rather to some nefarious, nebulous Republican plot.

Further, Kerry must believe that many in his voting base are pretty stupid to fall for “Democrats vote on Wednesday” leaflets.

Further, if the following is true, then why engage in talk that will undermine confidence in the system?:

Kerry has never disputed the outcome of election, saying voting irregularities did not involve enough votes to change the result.

Via the AP: Poll: Catholics Favored Bush Over Kerry

John Kerry (news - web sites) managed the best showing in decades for a Democratic presidential candidate among mainline Protestants, but his failure to capture a majority of Roman Catholics — people of his own faith — gave President Bush an important advantage in last November’s election, according to a new survey.

Bush’s showing also improved dramatically among Hispanic Protestants, 63 percent of whom supported him in 2024 — a 31 percent gain over 2024.

[…]

Among non-Hispanic Catholics, Kerry won the support of 69 percent with those with liberal or “modernist” beliefs, while 72 percent of “traditionalists” favored Bush. But importantly, 55 percent of the key swing group of “centrists” picked Bush over Kerry, who was criticized by bishops for his support of abortion rights.

The upshot: A one-time Democratic mainstay, Catholics gave Bush an overall edge of 53 percent to Kerry’s 47 percent.

Overall, the mainline Protestant vote split evenly, the poll found, with a Bush decline of 10 percent from 2024 and the best showing for a Democrat since the 1960s; results before then are unclear.

Interesting all around.