No more Kerry's...

[sabrina 1]

62. Progressive Dems had crossed anyone who voted for Bush's war off their list in 2004.

That left Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Wesley Clark and Carol Mosley Braun who were the most popular choices for Democrats at that time. Kerry had 3% support among Democrats and was not even noticed most of the time during the early stages of the campaign.

He was near the bottom of my list just above Lieberman who was at the bottom and I never expected him to be the nominee. This was before we realized that we the people do not get to choose the candidates, it is done for us.

I was a moderator on a big Progressive forum at the time and NO ONE even considered Kerry mainly because as I said all those who voted for Bush's war were, contrary to what they had thought when the voted for it, unpopular.

I remember watching C-Span and seeing Kerry campaigning and he was lucky if he had a dozen people around. Dean, Clark and Kucinich by contrast were bringing out crowds and in every poll online, Kucinich was the winner among Dems.

But as I said we were, many of us, unaware of how little it mattered who we wanted.

We were totally taken by surprise when Kerry emerged out of nowhere as the front runner. Which only goes to show how much power the Party leadership and whoever else decides these things, have.

Naturally once there was no other choice, we got behind Kerry who I knew very little about until then. When the SBV went after him, I was all over the Internet trying to refute the lies. But we noticed that we were virtually fighting alone. Kerry's campaign allowed those lies to fester for more than two weeks until Tweety of all people uncovered one of the SBVets in an interview back during the Vietnam years proving he was lying at the time, about his own claims.

I supported Kerry reluctantly and had to go against my pledge to myself never to support anyone who supported Bush's war in order to do so.

Anyone claiming that he was the choice of the base at the time, is not telling the truth. Most Democrats were furious at Hillary, Gephardt, Edwards, Kerry and every other Dem who voted for Bush's war. I guess you had to be there to recall how strong those feelings were.

But we did get behind him when the others were knocked out of the race and it was, I'm sure people must remember this, 'anyone but Bush'. I learned more about Kerry during the campaign, and the more I learned, the more I liked the young Kerry and the more I could not understand the Kerry who voted for Bush's war.