Perry avoids falling into the easy traps of either believing Kerry to be marvelous because he's 'anybody but Bush' (in fact, there's a good overview of Kerry's unattractive characteristics) or of assuming the Bush team is totally mad, stupid and invincible.
DRM
..
Excerpts below -
50,000,000 Kerry Fans Can't Be Wrong Can They?
by Steve Perry
http://citypages.com/databank/25/1210/article11875.asp
<snip>
Can such a dowdy, narcissistic Brahmin keep on burning for the people through November, or will he turn to ash at some point and rise again as Al Gore the Second? In a normal year the answer would be obvious: For a generation now, the Democratic Party has played me-too politics and unswervingly followed Republican leads. But 2004 is not a normal year. The party has caught the scent of Bush's weaknesses--that is, they have finally learned that a good deal of the public sees those weaknesses and despises Bush personally on top of them. Establishment elites in both parties have been heard to fret about Bush's recklessness and his brazen political style.
But the most critical reason for the Democrats' change of heart is material. Among the executive class and the not-so-idle rich--that one-tenth of 1 percent of the population that makes 83 percent of the political contributions in America--Bush is God, or at least Santa Claus. In the Clinton era, the Democrats became adept at drinking from the same corporate fountains as Republicans. But as Alan Murray wrote in the Wall Street Journal on January 27, "those days are over. If any Fortune 500 CEOs are backing John Kerry, they are keeping quiet about it."
Thus the Democrats, for the first time in modern memory, find themselves forced to sing to the people in the cheap seats for their supper. It's noteworthy that DNC head Terry McAuliffe, Bill Clinton's principal fundraiser and one of the architects of the go-along, get-along DNC, recently took up an attack on Bush that the media had already branded scandalous and absurd when Michael Moore voiced it at a Wesley Clark rally: the lingering matter of Bush's non-service in the Vietnam-era National Guard. McAuliffe was hardly delicate about it. He stopped short of terming Bush a deserter, but called him "a man who was AWOL in the Alabama National Guard."
<snip>
Democratic partisans and Bush haters of every stripe will rightly retort that Kerry's sins are far less egregious and consequential than Bush's, but that's not the point. Karl Rove saw the numbers of "nontraditional voters" giving money to Dean at the start, and he has no doubt noticed the record numbers turning out for primaries and caucuses. He's not stupid. The eventual Republican endgame will be to stifle public interest in the whole mess and depress the number of voters that turns out in November. Between the lines the Bush campaign will be saying: You may or may not like us. Okay. But John Kerry--you think John Kerry is something new under the sun? Come on. He's business as usual and this whole process is business as usual. We hope you're on board with us, but don't kid yourself. You can have us or someone else like us. Just remember that a vote for John Kerry means your son will grow up to marry the boy next door.
In short, the White House will labor to present Kerry as just another self-seeking political pro. There's no saying how damaging it will prove; much depends on the tenor and temperature of Kerry's campaign. But it's impossible to think the rap won't stick in some measure--it is, after all, true. And the more it adheres to Kerry, the closer the election will come to a pure up-or-down referendum on Bush.
Interesting times. The White House is clearly off-kilter from all the sudden volleys. Its first line of attack on Kerry, according to the New York Times, will be the Dukakis card: He's "just another Massachusetts liberal." I can't believe they expect to ride this very far. If they do, they will likely learn that the old labels liberal and conservative don't have the same hot-button appeal anymore. The public has begun to see that left versus right is not the name of the game. "Left" and "right," after all, have not had a consequential public disagreement in many years. The split that is inflaming the public mood is the one between insiders and outsiders.
[...]
full at -
http://citypages.com/databank/25/1210/article11875.asp