[lbo-talk] thoughts about kerry and the election

[Seth Ackerman]

1)  Nathan, you say Kerry's position on the war has been clear and
consistent. He was for removing Saddam but against Bush's refusal to exhaust
diplomacy and build an alliance. But go back to the start of the war -
Feb-March 2003. Kerry didn't declare that this is a bad idea because
diplomacy needs more time and we should first have allies. He could have
done that and nobody could later accuse him of changing his position.
Instead, he said Saddam has lost his last chance to disarm and now time's up
and I'm glad we're going in. Not only that - at the time, Holbrooke was
berating the French for being unreasonable and obstructionist. How does that
fit into the "build alliances" position? His whole position has been
calculated to build in maximum wiggle room and bow to (it turns out,
miscalculated) political winds. The fact is, Bush barrelled into an invasion
at a time when it was quite unpopular and then constantly jawboned it to
build support - which was appalling but at least smacks of "leadership" -
whereas Kerry's rhetoric has indisputably vacillated between standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush and accusing Bush of screwing everything up.
If you were running Bush's campaign, wouldn't you be happy at how easy it is
to characterize Kerry's position as flimsy and almost scholastic -- being in
favor of the "essence" of removing Hussein, while blasting the "conjunctoral
choices" (retrospectively).

2)  I doubt Kerry could gain anything now by being forthrightly antiwar. Not
only would he be even more of a flip-flopper, but he would probably alienate
more votes than he'd win. The fact is, the time for educating the public
ended a long time ago. You can't reeducate 300 mil. people in 6 weeks. Had
Kerry and the Dem leadership denounced the war - or even just the way Bush
fought it - *at the time it started* , and then stuck to it, they would have
gotten much more credit once the the "anti-war" posish (or "anti-this-war"
posish) became vindicated  Instead, the mess in Iraq ended up hurting Bush
without making the Dems look much better.

3)  It's true that the Freepers are more on-message than us, but do we
really want to be like them? We're a bunch of leftists talking to each other
on email. There's no need to rehearse the talking points here, who are we
trying to persuade?

4)  The idea that Bush's lead shows America is an irevocably conservative
country doesn't make sense. A month ago Kerry was leading in all the polls.
The question is, why has Bush taken the lead? The answers, I think, are: (1)
Swift boat and (2) Bush's convention. The real question is why was the right
so successful with those two, especially first, which could easily have
backfired. And could the Dems replicate that kind of thing, and would they
want to?

Seth