From Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:
“I’m also told that Hillary Clinton partisans are licking their chops to see the film, which ‘could end up being the silver bullet that kills Kerry’s presidential chances for 2008.”
The film won’t be seen publicly until Thursday, but a press release claims the movie “turns a harsh but deeply revealing mirror on the campaign … a disorganized, contentious, self-absorbed team that thought they could win by ‘not making mistakes,’ and keeping their candidate in the public eye without clarifying a position on anything.”
Key highlights from those who’ve seen it privately: “Clinton scowling and rolling her eyes over an apparent Kerry gaffe during a presidential debate; Kerry pretending to interview himself and babbling in Italian while waiting for a real interview to begin; Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) cursing at reporters during a campaign stop, and Kerry message guru Robert Shrum confidently declaring a few days before the 2004 election: ‘Zogby just announced who’s gonna win. Us!'”
It’s always a risk to allow cameras in a campaign. If you win, everyone is a hero and they will cut the movie in a way that tries to explain how victory was achieved. But if you lose, they will cut the movie in a way that tries to explain how defeat was assured. Rosenbaum said that the movie was going to strive for objectivity:
I love these types of behind-the-scenes political documentaries. Of course, I’m a political junkie.
…Rosenbaum will examine Kerry via his interaction with the immediate sphere that surrounds him, including his personal assistant, trip director, press secretaries and strategic advisers, all of whom will be key characters in the movie.
“We want to give people a chance to form opinions that are not based purely on stump speeches,” Rosenbaum said. “Cameras are usually on John Kerry when he’s giving a speech or a press conference or in a photo opportunity.
“We realized that in none of these moments do you get to see him in anything but performance mode,” he added. “The idea of our film is to show all the moments in between.” link
I have a feeling that this movie will humanize Kerry. I don’t think it will hurt his prospects for 2008 as much as Hillary’s people think. But I’m sure it has some embarrassing moments. After all, it is a documentation of failure.
I can’t wait for this movie. Any word on when/if it’ll be on TV?
Say, Boo, you junkie, have you seen the documentary abt Mark Green’s campaign in the primary and then against Bloomberg? I’ve only caught snippets, but it’s fascinating.
Then there’s an old documentary about Clinton’s campaign that was a gas.
I’ve never seen the Green movie. His political career was another victim of 9/11. They postponed the mayoral election on 9/11 and then Bloomberg won on the coattails of Guiliani’s performance.
You have to admit though that Bloomberg’s 70 million dollars (of his own money which he plowed into the race) had something to do with the outcome. Just like Bloomberg’s 100 million dollars (of his own money) seems to be influencing the outcome of the current race.
Ferrer was way ahead until he decided to run to the right of Bloomberg …
and it blew up in his stupid face… that is why he is not liked… in this staunchly Democratic diverse city… it was him being racist NOT others being racist towards him… it was his to lose and he went with a tried and failed DLC manuever… and it worked like it always has.. he tanked..
Oh… I think Kerry killed his chances of winning about 2 seconds after he conceded.
He was pulled off of life support when he was discovered to have “saved” 15 million dollars from the primaries instead of rolling it over into the General Election funds or giving it to the DNC who could have spent it on him.
He nailed the coffin shut when he refused to speak up in the Senate for African Americans who were once again had their votes disenfranchised…
….and Hilliary should not be licking her lips because no one is thrilled with her butt either.
Kerry, Hillary, and Gore are still the most likely nominees.
Of the three, sad to say, I’d have to go with Kerry.
But Russ Feingold is my guy right now.
Once bitten twice shy…
Kerry betrayed that African American voters… at least Gore had an excuse that he did not know what Bush would do…Kerry knew exactly what bush would do, Kerry knew ahead of time that Bush was already cheating…there was video of GOP registers tearing up Dem registration cards…
Sorry… at this point it is a lose/lose situation and I WILL sit it out if it is Kerry or Hilliary… enough is enough maybe when enough Gopers start hurting then things will change because they are never going to change if we are waiting for these Democrats to do something.
…little plugs up my nose that forensics detectives use when they find a ripe body, but I, for one, will not sit out an election no matter who the Democrats nominate (given the likely choices at this stage). I may not be happy with their pick – I rarely am – but I’m not eager for a Supreme Court with even more originalists, textualists and strict constructionists screwing up the final 30 years of my life, thanks.
Not to mention what the Republicans will do with the economy, foreign policy and social policy.
the battle for the soul of the party is the primaries. The battle for the soul of the country is the general election.
In 1988 I was for Biden (prior to his aneurysm), then Hart (prior to the Monkey Business), and finally Dukakis.
In 1992 I was for Tsongas, and then Clinton.
In 1996 I didn’t vote because of the fund-raising scandals.
In 1999 I began doing volunteer work for Bradley. I had a very hard time voting for Gore, but I did it.
In 2004, I was for Kerry from the beginning to the end, but all my paid work was for non-partisan voter reg and GOTV.
So, I’ve never voted for my first choice and had that choice win.
Those were different times…
back then I had much less reason to fear a GOP win and much more freedom to cast a protest vote, or sit on the sidelines.
.
as outsider running for a presidential bid. The stars write a great chance for him to move into a political job by 2006, and running for presidential candidate in 2008.
I know you have written about Bill Bradley, a high school basketballer from Crystal City, Mo. Is there any chance this may happen BooMan? I believe the voters will be disgusted with all and everything residing in Washington D.C. by 2008. The Democrats need an outsider, perhaps an excellent governor or even a corporate CEO with great experience, political insight and a heart.
I would be interested in a quick poll between max. 7 candidates :: Bill Bradley, Gov Bill Richardson, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Wesley Clark and John Edwards.
▼ ▼ ▼
…but whatever can be said of the rest of them, please, please, please don’t let it be Richardson.
Bill Bradley was an ineffective candidate running for the Democratic nomination in 2000. He seemed to be concerned about having a ‘conversation’ with America without realizing that America didn’t want to interact (as we do, it seems on the blogs), but to be titillated. His thoughtfulness seemed to come off as sleepiness mixed with over-intellectualization.
Bradley’s great strength was his ability to talk across race lines–however, he was sunk by Gore at the debate at the Apollo. The Apollo is, I think, what killed Bradley’s chances in 2000.
will not sit out an election no matter who the Democrats nominate
Sorry but that dog don’t bite anymore… too much betrayal has gone under the bridge and elected Democrats refuse to show and once of good faith.
Not to mention what the Republicans will do with the economy, foreign policy and social policy.
What …you mean all those nasty policies that the Democrats “HAPPILY” went along with like CAFTA, Bankruptcy Bill, War in Iraq, and Roberts…. give me a break…
No I may have to sit this one out…purity…special interest…whatever,… “BEEN THERE, DONE THAT”… time to change the fucking record…because frankly because these people are NOT Democrats…they are some sucked out hollow NDN/DLC pod people… the Democratic establishment are BIGGER liars than the GOP and that is no easy feat…
This is a party not a Blood Oath
If the Democratic leadership wants to continue to play this dangerous game of chicken …to see who blinks first the party or the base… the party wants to go to the right and the base wants all those “special interests” groups on the left.
This game is tiring but they no doubt will continue as long as their pockets keep being filled by corporate, fundamentalist and military interest … I have a feeling that after Gore and Kerry that they will be in for a rude awakening…
…do what exactly?
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been at odds with the Democrats since the party refused to seat the Mississippi Freedom delegation in 1964, and I was none-too-keen on LBJ and McNamara either. But, when it comes to electoral politics, Democrats are all we’ve got, at least at the national level. And, while relentlessly critical of many Democrats, I’ll never buy the BS that there’s no difference between the two parties. We wouldn’t be faced with John Roberts right now if Kerry had won. That may seem like a small thing to you, but unless stem cell research really pays off, I’ll probably be dead before he’s replaced as CJ. I’d like not to have three more of him on the Supreme Court, thanks.
Unless somebody figures out how to adopt a parliamentary or other multiparty arrangement in America, the only way to get a replacement for the Democratic Party is to figure out how to avoid the mistakes of the Populist Party, the Bullmoose Party, the Progressive Party, the Socialist Party, the various Communist Parties, the Citizens Party, the Green Party. I don’t hear anybody making noises in that direction.
Now if you’re talking extra-electoral politics, that’s another story, and I’ve been involved in those for decades, with a few victories, many defeats. I don’t plan to sit out those battles either.
Democrats are all we’ve got
Bullshit
I’d rather support a Green on the local level than most of these so-called Democrats, who absolutely refuse to be an opposition party on the national level.
ZERO TOLERENCE … let Kos and his disciples pay for these Deadbeat Dems… from me they won’t get a penny nor a vote.
I’ll never buy the BS that there’s no difference between the two parties
Then you are willfully blind.
If Bush had an once of humanity and hadn’t fucked up so royally with Katrina I am CERTAIN that many Blacks would have taken a longer look at the GOP… one can only get fucked over for so long… and now the Democratic leadership is not even TRYING to hide their animosity towards the base… so they can screw themselves.
No one noticed when Clinton pushed Blacks, poor and the union out of the boat because the economy was doing well at the time and of course these people had already become invisible… now when the Democratic leadership is prying the fingers from off the edge of the boat of women, gays and anti-Iraq war constituents… suddenly people are taking notice.
Bush could have NEVER destroyed the safety net as much as he had … if Clinton hadn’t first taken an axe to it…
Democrats are all we’ve got
Gimme be a break… what is that saying… With friends like these…. (sucking teeth noise)
If we keep sending up Democratic Republicans there really WON’T BE A DIFFERENCE and the GOP issues and policies will ALWAYS win.
This is a just Party not a Blood Oath…
…what is your ELECTORAL alternative? A few Greens at the local level? Nice. But invisible. And with zero chance of transforming themselves into a national presence.
By the way, a lot of elected Democrats and others of us who ally with the Democrats made loud objections over what Bill Clinton did to jettison blacks, the poor and minorities. Some of us are still screaming about the way welfare reform was handled, just to offer a single example. But, it wasn’t Clinton who started dismantling the safety net, it was Ronald Reagan, and Dubyanocchio’s efforts were just a continuation of Ronzo’s after Clinton’s far more modest moves in that arena, including putting the brakes on in a few cases. And, even if you hated everything else about Clinton, he didn’t nominate a Griswold-busting Supreme Court justice. On the contrary.
Politics is the art of the possible. If I had my druthers, every Senator would be to the left of Barbara Boxer, every Representative to the left of Bernie Sanders. And I’m all for fighting tooth and claw for all the issues I’m sure you and I agree about. I’m probably to the left of you on some of them, although maybe not. And I’m all for contesting lame Democrats in primaries everywhere.
But when it comes down to the final choice, I’ll vote for the Democrat. Anybody who suggests that any of the likely presidential Democrats – yes, including Lieberman, Biden and H. Clinton – will be worse than another Bush or a Cheney or a McCain in the White House is the one who is “willfully blind.”
All due respect, MB, but it isn’t that they’ll be worse or better, it is that they will be exactly the same.
But that’s jsut my opinion and one vote ain’t shit.
Thank you…
MB that is a broken record and it doesn’t work any more… “netrootz” is a double edge sword…yes,it allowed for truck loads of small donantions, but it also gave more people …like me.. an up close and personal view of how this really works.
In Clintons day it may have taken years to understand that he really screwed the party now it only takes weeks. Harry Reid sold out the base to Robert when he allowed LIEberman to neuter the filibuster vote… he can now pretend he is doing something noble by “symbolically” voting against Roberts… but we already know he fucked us over and Hilliary and they got the “librul” Dems to “Trade Places” with them… but in the end the Democratic leadership supports Roberts on the bench… and…so no… Dems win shit by keeping these Dems in power… at least I could sleep at night if I help an honest candidate to power…. an honest Green dog catcher would be better than this Casey crap.
anything convincing from you yet either….don’t vote for dems, but……what?
I didn’t say don’t vote for Dems.
I don’t vote for Republicans just because they have ab R next to their name… I don’t vote for them… because I don’t like their policies… so why in the hell would I vote for some one just because they have a D behind their name and the same policy positions….
Those are the people I will not fund nor vote for… D or R.
ok, so vote for who I want to vote for based on my own principles is what you’ve been saying all along?
Then why all of this energy spent tearing down Democrats? Why not spend the energy building up an alternative?
I remain unconvinced.
I remain unconvince
Like I could really give a hoot…
I know you don’t, and you embody the attitude of the democratic party with that remark.
Also a mass migration to the Greens even though this is not a representational parliament would still in effect give lerverage to basic civil rights issues.
Look who is holding the power now in Germany the Greens and the FPD have the two major parties by the balls and are forcing them to negotiate with them…
How would this give leverage to civil rights issues?
And I’m afriad I don’t understadn the reference to Germany.
You seem not to be understand many things…
And this kind of comment is why I called you a bitch. You seem to delight in acting superior — for a while I bought the act, now I know better. And you act enraged when I ask you to stop?
You stupid cow, I answered your fucking questions… and you took it upon yourself to feign ignorance… or perhaps it was real.
I’d rather be ignorant than self-rightous.
…accomplish a mass migration to the Greens? The party has a couple of hundred elected officials nationwide, all but one of them chosen in non-partisan races where they are not identified on the ballot as Greens, and zero presence in most states.
I’ve been in favor for some time of a “parliamentary experiment” in one or two states, perfectly permissible under the Constitution, and such a move might give Greens a chance at pulling in 20% or so of the vote to making themselves a state power-broker. But, nationally, we’re stuck with two parties, so we can either be purist or we can be practical.
It’s true that the Democrats (or rather the Dem leaders) are no different on some issues than Republicans, marginally different on others, and very different on still others. A damned imperfect situation for those of us on the social, cultural and economic left. A wider ideological gap, a stronger opposition strategy, a better long-term vision would suit me far better than what the Dems offer now. But this mantra that there IS no difference rings hollow because it is untrue.
purist ….???
Give me a break… hell, I’ll be a “purist” any day of week if that means standing up for civil rights and liberities…
I think it is really funny when folks around here call other folks “purist” I guess that think they are the opposite of a “purist”:
adulterated, alloyed, carnal, coarse, common, dirty, impure, polluted, contaminated, corrupt, debased, defiled, desecrated, diluted, dirty, doctored, filthy, foul, gross, grubby, immodest, immoral, indecent, infected, lewd, loaded, mixed, nasty, not pure, obscene, polluted, profaned, smutty, squalid, sullied, tainted, unchaste, unclean, uncleanly, unrefined, unwholesome, vile, vitiated, weighted, wicked
Why are you over here preaching to me about keeping the party together….Why aren’t you preaching to your buddy DHinMI? It is folks like that who are pulling apart the Democratic party by trying to make it into GOPII… not me.
I think movement progressives who have a view larger than the Democratic Party need to take over the party platform and nominating processes for the express purpose of establishing multiparty democracy. Everybody who’s currently working for the Green Party or any other small party left of center needs to direct their energies toward including multiparty democracy as a key point in any Democratic agenda. It costs nothing in the short term, and in the long term it frees up Democrats to find their own voice (however far left or right it wants to be) while still being part of a winning coalition nationwide.
That agenda could even attract right-of-center votes for the Democrats from economic libertarians who would like the option of ditching their marriage with the religious right within the Republican Party to vote for the Libertarian Party. Independents who complain about lack of choices could also be persuaded to vote for Democrats based on this agenda.
There are several obstacles to this.
First, too many in the Democratic Party put the party before policy or principle, and that’s true of many in the blogosphere and not just party conventions. Some of them are simply self-defeating, while others are agents of corporate interests who are afraid of an effective center-left coalition in this country. Those people tend to be those who have the most experience in the party, so they can’t just be supplanted with movement progressives. Some number of them will have to be persuaded that electoral reform is the right thing to do.
Another major option is the feasibility of reforms. The Constitution provides for the use of the electoral college for president and direct election for Senators statewide. Changes to Senate elections would require Constitutional amendment, so that’s not a good place to start. Clever reworking of state laws could change election procedures for president without challenging the Constitution. For presidential elections, a state could require that its electors be selected based on a system of choice voting (instant run-off or Condorcet). The state would select the electors nominated by the state convention of the winning candidate under the choice voting formula. States could also choose a proportional electoral vote system, but that dilutes the individual power of each state and so is unworkable.
States could also change how they district. The Constitution requires representatives to be elected by a portion of the population, not a geographic area. Any state could take some or all of its Congressional seats and apportion them by proportional representation. The drawback of this is that it creates representatives who are at large, and constituent services and attention to local needs are likely to suffer. So the right balance is necessary.
Anther reform that might pass constitutional muster is some form of fusion voting, as in New York state. That way, Democrats could get votes through other party lines, which over time can build third parties. At the local level, where ballot processes are usually less constrained by constitutional barriers, there’s even more that Democrats could do.
My problem is that I’m not a people person and though I can get myself elected at precinct level to represent a presidential candidate in the primary at the district and county level (every time I’ve tried since 1988), I don’t have the personality or skills to organize beyond that first level, and I’ve found party events to be mostly dispiriting. (Nonetheless, a fellow introvert and computer geek keeps trying to get me to sign up as Democratic PCO and join him in his bureaucratic misery.) The key is to get the good ideas into the hands of people who do have these skills. There’s a disconnect between ideas and power in the party.
A multiparty system also provides breathing room for non-electoral movements to link up temporarily in political coalitions at election time. The disconnect between the electoral and street politics of the American left is huge, and there’s a great opportunity to turn things around.
…it happen. Long, difficult road to make it do so.
I do wish the hierarchy of the Democratic Party were more interested in the well being of our country than pacifying it’s powerful elite, and would put forth a candidate we could actually elect. I fear a HRC candidacy and how it will shatter any possible Democratic unity. I’ve heard too many Dems say they won’t vote for her.