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I am dumbfounded by the assertion of some here that Bush and Co., with their smearing, insulting, prevaricating campaign tactics, are running a smart campaign that is superior to our own nominee's. I don't believe that the Swiftlies are enough for folks to hang their vote on, nor do I believe that Bush will succeed to pick up actual votes with his campaign barrage of personal, distorting insults. I refuse to acknowledge that anything Bush does has any potency or effectiveness. To assert that, to me, is a surrender to a hapless, counterfeit loser.
I don't believe that our candidate or his campaign should spend the bulk of their time parrying personal attacks with Bush. The Bush campaign strategy is to draw our campaign off message and into his petty war of words to divert and distract voters from discovering that John Kerry has a plan of action for America which would serve to draw attention to Bush's miserable record of failure and neglect, at home and abroad.
Yet, Bush's latest efforts have not tarnished the record of John Kerry. New polls show that the majority, 60% of the public believe that Kerry served honorably. What the public isn't sure of is just who John Kerry is and what he stands for. That should be the major focus of his next efforts: To complete the introduction of himself to the uninitiated,lay out his policy prescriptions, and of course, draw deep distinctions between his intentions and Bush's sorry record. Profile, policy, and pounding. In that order.
This is a national election. We should expect some restraint. The voters that we need to convince will respond well to a campaign which is, at least on the surface, positive. Negative campaigns tend to attach negatives to the percieved attacker and have the potential to foster cynicism and depress turnout.
Bush is well known and will bear the burden of a dismal four years of failure and neglect: Record joblessness, record loss of healthcare, lying and 'miscalculations' on our invasion and occupation of Iraq, abandonment of our veterans and soldiers, decimation and compromising of our environment in favor of logging interests, nuclear meddlers, and polluters, the abuse and eviceration of our civil liberties, the abandonment of our nation's poor in favor of giving our hard earned tax dollars to the wealthiest, the sham of declaring himself the 'education president' while refusing to actually fund his own inituitives, the snubbing of science in favor of political meddling and obstruction, the attempted use of our constitution to discriminate against our nation's gays and lesbians, the refusal to sanction anyone in his office responsible for the outing of a CIA agent, the reintroduction of new nuclear weapons and weapon's production . . .
Those pitiful republican smears have also served to draw attention to Bush's absense from duty and Cheney's refusal to serve. They have not actually affected the credibility of John Kerry among anyone who has bothered to look at the facts of the accusation and bothers to pay any mind to Kerry's actual campaign. When we get the spotlight back after the convention, our nominee will stand tall against the counterfeit losers in the White House.
Good luck to us.
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