JFK, Clinton: They knew how to win. Does Kerry?

[dumpster_baby]

Some excerpts from a long salon magazine article on the effectiveness of the Kerry campaign:
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"The response to the Swift Boat controversy was not at a level it should have been," says Paul Alexander, director of "Brothers in Arms," a new documentary about Kerry's Vietnam days. "The question should be, what about Bush's military record? That's the response. Not that there were 12 bullet holes on the side of Kerry's boat in Vietnam. The only way to beat Karl Rove and that level of viciousness is to hit back harder. If Democrats don't understand that ... well then, you can finish that sentence."

Frustration also simmers around the press, and the double standard it seems to have adopted toward the candidates. "Bush has run the most issueless, negative campaign in modern politics," notes Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network. "Yet nothing is written about the fact that a sitting president is offering no agenda for his second term. He should be getting fucking skewered in the press for the kind of campaign he's running, but there's nothing. Republicans are held to a different standard."

Nowhere has that that double standard been more apparent than when contrasting the way the media have covered the two parties' conventions. Compare the coverage of Bush's colossal blunder on Monday -- telling NBC's Matt Lauer that he didn't think the war on terror was winnable -- with Teresa Heinz Kerry's trivial "shove it" remark during the Democratic Convention in Boston last month. So far, Bush's gaffe has garnered far less coverage than Heinz Kerry's.
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much more here:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/01/kerry_media/index.html

You have to click through an ad....

[dumpster_baby]

1. one more great quote

That's one reason some Kerry supporters remain anxious about the potential power of the Republican attack machine. "I'd give Republicans an A" in 2004, says one prominent Democratic strategist. "The Bush campaign is more adept than the Kerry campaign at playing the game. The game is, the press only covers four things in a campaign: polls, scandal, mistakes and attacks. And the only one of those you can control are attacks."

[Lefty48197]

2. I think he does. Remember when his campaign was "over" last December?

Talk about a "comeback kid".