I'm Not Supporting Kerry Again in the Primaries - a few reasons...

[Peter Frank]

Kerry dropped the ball. He could have handily beaten Bush (and beaten the curve of election fraud) if only he'd learned from the most successful and obvious model in modern times.

Clinton learned well from the Republican dirty tactics pulled in the Bush/Dukakis race (e.g. Willie Horton) -- that you don't let the impressions left by negative sound-bites linger in the ears of voters. He had a war room whose sole purpose was to study the negative ads and give him the ammunition (on an hourly basis) to debunk the elephant dung slung at him. It worked superbly.

Kerry made the perfect blunder (by Republican standards). He let the Republican crap to steep in the minds of voters way too long. He didn't have to reinvent the wheel to overwhelm Bush's political machine (and Diebold voting machines) when the Clinton model was already there.

He dropped the ball early on when he failed to address accusations in real-time. He acted conservatively and decided to buy most of his air time only after the smear-mongers' message had taken root. If he'd had gone all out in the beginning and defined himself -- Kerry wouldn't have later been forced to defend himself so much, while trying to get out a nuanced message that didn't lend itself well to a handful of sound-bites.

I can't trust that Kerry's learned his lesson here. Also, there's the fact that many voters are still brainwashed by the Swiftboat mentality. Add to that, I've heard many times from moderate Republicans that they would have voted for a stronger Democratic candidate in '04.

Kerry's a great man. I supported him from the day I heard him speak in Iowa. He's a great force in the Democratic Party; but there's too much at risk to have a repeat of '04. I'll be supporting someone else.

edit for sp.