DUPE

[kskiska]

Sunday, September 12, 2004; Page A01

(snip)

She was thorough, wonkish. She talked about universal health care for children, "wellness" programs, affordable prescription drug plans and other ideas she said her husband, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), would carry out as president. When she finished, pushing her auburn waves from her face to flash a smile, the 80 people who sat so still for her stood and applauded.

The event received little notice. But a comment Heinz Kerry made later that afternoon to a Lancaster newspaper sure did. "Only an idiot wouldn't like this," she told the newspaper, speaking of Kerry's health care plan. "Of course, there are idiots."

So goes the dilemma of Teresa Heinz Kerry these days, not to mention a nervous Kerry campaign. Harrisburg was no fluke. The scenario repeats itself on nearly all the solo campaign trips Heinz Kerry makes these days, usually with friendly audiences in Rust Belt swing states such as her adopted, beloved home of Pennsylvania. Heinz Kerry conducts health care seminars of a sort, with other panelists, that are often 90 minutes to two hours long, including question-and-answer sessions. Afterward, the crowd is always hers. Most anyone you ask in attendance -- Democrat, independent or Republican -- will use words such as "impressed" and "charmed" in their reviews.

But then there are those "only an idiot," "shove it" moments.

Much of the public that knows of Heinz Kerry -- and polls suggest that at least a third of the public still does not know much about her at all -- knows of her from looping cable news sound bites. That public knows a woman who told a columnist before the Democratic National Convention to "shove it." (Though many people may still not know that the columnist writes for a Pittsburgh newspaper owned by conservative Richard Mellon Scaife, who not only spent millions of dollars trying to discredit the Clintons but also spent years attacking Heinz Kerry's late, first husband, Sen. John Heinz (Pa.) -- a Republican -- who Scaife found too liberal.)

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14611-2004Sep11.html

[Rose Siding]

1. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=819979&mesg_id=819979&page=