Reply #12: Nah... Moore's comments didn't make that big a difference

[Jai4WKC08]

Oh, they hurt him politically, especially in SC, TN and VA, where Clark had hoped to do well. But ultimately, it was skipping Iowa (not that he had much choice) and Dean's fall that spelled the end.

I know this is ancient history, but bear with me a minute...

If Clark had competed in Iowa, if he'd had the money and time to do so, he might have cut Kerry's lead and slowed the momentum enough to make a difference.

Even without competing there, if Dean and Gephardt had emerged the leaders, in either order, as almost everybody expected until days before, Clark would have likely come in second or a VERY close third in NH, and blown 'em both away in the South. That was the plan. He didn't see Kerry coming. Heck, if he had, he probably wouldn't have run in the first place.

Back to Moore... MAYBE if Clark had been a more experienced politician, he would have somehow screened what Moore planned to say, or barring that, have worked out a different, less open-ended vehicle for the endorsement. I say MAYBE because it's just not the way Clark works. He believes so strongly in free speech, in unfettered discussion and debate, he is loathe to try and censor anyone. How naive--to actually think that Constitutional rights are what he's devoted his life to preserve. (/sarcasm)

I do think Clark's campaign staff sort of let him down by not engineering a better solution. But that said, some of the responsibiiity lies with his opponents and the media. If Clark hadn't been so vociferously attacked as "really a Republican" perhaps his staff wouldn't have been as desparate to validate his credentials as a liberal. Perhaps his actual policies and plans, the work he'd done to support liberal causes, all mostly overlooked, would have been enough.

But in the end, it really didn't matter after Iowa. Nothing did. So even tho I was never a big Moore fan, I don't think we can hang it on Michael, who really was trying to do what he thought was right. And bringing some media attention to Bush's (non)serivce record was the right thing to do, even if not at the time and the way he did it.