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Kerry Campaign blames Clintonistas for DOOMed Campaign
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| speedracer_mec |
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Kerry Strategists: Clintonistas Torpedoed Our Campaign
Top strategists with John Kerry's presidential campaign are blaming his crushing defeat last week on bad advice from Clinton operatives who took over the campaign after Labor Day.
"When [James] Carville and [Stan] Greenberg tell reporters that the campaign was missing a defining narrative, they forget that they were the ones insisting we had to keep beating the domestic-issues drum," complained David Thorne on Thursday.
Thorne - a brother-in-law from Kerry's first marriage to Julia Thorne - was one of Kerry's closest advisors throughout the campaign.
Thorne told political gadfly Arianna Huffington that because of the misguided Carville-Greenberg strategy, "We never defended John's character and focused on his leadership with the same singularity of purpose that the Republicans put on George Bush's leadership."
Kerry's brother Cameron agreed, telling Huffington, "There is a very strong John Kerry narrative that is about leadership, character and trust. But it was never made central to the campaign."
Tom Vallely, the Vietnam War veteran whom Kerry tapped to lead the response to the Swift boat attacks, told the columnist: "The Clinton team, though technically skillful, could not see reality — they could only see their version of reality. And that was always about pivoting to domestic issues."
Reports Huffington:
"In conversations with Kerry insiders over the last nine months, I’ve heard a recurring theme: that it was [Bob] Shrum and the Clintonistas [including Greenberg, Carville and senior advisor Joe Lockhart] who dominated the campaign in the last two months and who were convinced that this election was going to be won on domestic issues, like jobs and healthcare, and not on national security."
The failed strategy apparently originated with ex-President Clinton himself, who trumpeted the domestic issues mantra in repeated calls to Kerry.
Writes Huffington:
"Behind the scenes, former President Clinton also kept up the drumbeat, telling Kerry in private conversations right to the end that he should focus on the economy rather than Iraq or the war on terror, and that he should come out in favor of all 11 state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage — a move that would have been a political disaster for a candidate who had already been painted as an unprincipled flip-flopper."
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Wow, Democrats are really eating each other like cannibals now.
 | quote: | | Top strategists with John Kerry's presidential campaign are blaming his crushing defeat last week on bad advice from Clinton operatives who took over the campaign after Labor Day. |
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| JM |
you've gotta be kidding.
Kerry really didn't have a chance to win anyways... It wasn't his campaign, it was the media that screwed it up for him, incl. Dan Rather - C-BS news.
>JM< |
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| Ondrayce |
This guy didn't help too much either. When you want to lose an election, make Bob Schrum your campaign manager. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
You honestly expect any other outcome from the party that lost the Presidency and seats in both the House and Senate? Would it have been any different if the Conservatives had lost Ohio?
Go ahead, you can say it.
And to be honest, I think ol' Arianna has a good point - the Dems. need a fresh start with some fresh new thinking. Wouldn't you agree? If not, then why have you continued to state, or at least imply that if the Dems. continue with their old tricks they will continue to lose seats?
Can't win this both ways, Speed - the Dems. need a new direction, and listening to these folks that were brought in to appeal to undecideds while at the same time being addicted to the polls and focus groups, as Arianna states, clearly doesn't invoke a winner. This wasn't a sound winning strategy, so what's wrong with trying to find a new one?
To be sure, there are a number of issues that need addressed by the Dems., but this was most certainly one of them. |
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| policerobots |
| If you look at some articles, the dems hired a lot of help, whereas a majority of the republican effort was done by volunteers. everyone who went to a bush/cheney rally that entered the security checkpoint had to register to vote to enter. Damn smart idea. No wonder he's the architect. |
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