Not a surprise really. Especially, if, like me, you have been receiving emails from Kerry for the past 2 years touting all he was doing for Democrats, all he was doing to oppose Bush, all he was doing, etc. etc. etc. Still this story about a trip to New Hampshire does make it clear that his goal all along has been another run at the White House:
“You get one chance,” the Democrat tells a reporter. “If you can’t win, then it’s time to let someone else try.”
But less than an hour later, after she meets Kerry and listens to him deliver an impassioned speech from a wooden deck, Borden softens and says she would consider voting again for the Massachusetts Democrat.
“I always liked what he stood for but felt that he was very snobbish and arrogant,” she says. “He’s not that way. People told me I would change my mind once I met him. And they were right.”
It is not clear whether Kerry will have enough time to personally meet and convert every disaffected Democrat in the nation by the election of 2008. But he appears determined to at least counter the conventional wisdom that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has all but locked up the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I don’t buy it,” he said in an interview with The Examiner this week. “You know, people sit with you and talk with you here, and they’re going to make judgments about who can be president. They’re going to make judgments about who can run.
… “I don’t care what the dominant, conventional wisdom is today; it will not be the dominant, conventional wisdom in a year.” […]
Asked if he dreads the prospect of being “Swift-Boated” all over again, Kerry counters that he would relish such a fight.
“I’m prepared to kick their ass from one end of America to the other,” he declares. “I am so confident of my abilities to address that and to demolish it and to even turn it into a positive.”
(cont.)
Personally, I’m very ambivalent about another Kerry run. He’s a good Senator, and his policy on Iraq has done a complete 180 (give or take a few degrees) since the 2004 campaign, but I do not think he will succeed should he seek the 2008 nomination, nor do I believe he’s the best candidate the Democrats can field against the Republicans. He’s doesn’t come across well on television, whether in interviews or in other appearances. He transmits no inherent charisma when he appears on the little screen in your home, and sad to say, that is a critical qualification for any serious Presidential contender these days. He won the nomination in 2004 more by default than by anything he himself did.
And there are too many negatives about him among the general voting population thanks to the Swift Boat smears from 2004. He’d have too spend way too much time and energy combating the perception that his service in Vietnam was somehow dishonorable, and despite his high name recognition, that would be too high a hurdle to leap over in my view.
Another Kerry run may simply be too soon. We Americans live in a society that, as a general matter, is quick to abandon anyone not seen as a winner. I doubt Gore would have fared well had he run again in 2004, and Kerry has the same perception Gore had after 2000: that of an ineffective and distant campaigner, and a candidate who has too much baggage from the last election among many people in and out of the Democratic Party. Add to that the albatross of being the most recent Dem loser in an election many thought he would win, and I just don’t see his chances of pulling an Adlai Stevenson (i.e., the last consecutive Democratic Presidential nominee) as very likely.
I do however agree with him on one point. The conventional wisdom that Hillary is the front runner, or that she’s a lock for the nomination is ridiculous. That’s certainly the conventional wisdom among her supporters, and among the media, but I sincerely believe Hillary will not be the Democratic nominee in 2008. Someone will come out of the pack (hopefully someone like Wes Clark, Russ Feingold, John Edwards or perhaps even a renewed Al Gore) to snatch that brass ring away from her. It just won’t be Kerry.
