the poor democrats, they just can't keep their feet out of their mouths on foreign policy, can they?

this is a little dated now but john kerry's grand canyon comment that he would still have voted to give the president authorization to use force in iraq reinforced (1) voters doubts about the demos ability to deal with f.p. issues, and (2) their doubts about kerry's alleged vacillation tendencies.

that is a rare thing, putting both feet in one's mouth at the same time.

the day kerry made the comment i saw my ex-wife at her house and said that i thought he had hurt himself. she is EXTREMELY partisan in this election and replied exasperatedly, "i don't know why, that's what he's been saying all along."

oh.

then i guess that i and about 50,000,000 other voters missed it. i and fifty million of my closest friends had thought we had heard kerry giving speech after speech for six months lambasting bush for the war.

kerry spent significant time in his convention speech trying to explain that the criticism of him, that his positions on issues are too "complex," was actually intellectual honesty and not triangulating vacillation. then he blows it at the grand canyon.

it's so frustrating because this needn't have happened. i don't know if kerry was playing to his base with his criticisms or what but he or someone in that campaign should have realized that the natural follow-up to those speeches was going to be "ok, so knowing what you know now, how would you have voted?"

kerry is a good man, the weightiest candidate on military matters that the demos have had in a long time. he voted for the force authorization resolution. he should have left it there and SHUT THE FUCK UP. he should have turned his focus onto economic issues, his, and the demos, natural strength.

the way for a democrat to beat bush this year is/was to be pretty quiet about f.p., say all the platitudinous things about "the war on terror" and COUNTERPUNCH when flight boy started making his comparisons to churchill.

here's complexity for kerry that even his complex intellect apparently can't grasp. most voters still view the decision to go to war as the right thing to do, even though they don't like the way the post-end-of-major-hostilities period went and the cost of the whole thing.

but iraq as an issue is pretty much dead. it's over. we've turned over authority to the iraqis and while voters don't like americans continually getting killed over there they accept that our presence there is needed and will be for some time.

now, since voters think all of those things, where exactly is the political opening for a candidate to criticize the war? IT ISN'T THERE!

the best thing for kerry to have done/do is to wait for bush to overplay his hand and then counterpunch. instead it was kerry who, for "complex" unknown reasons overplayed his hand.

now voters are left with these doubts about where kerry really stands and who he really is. they don't know if they can trust him with being commander in chief.

it's still early and kerry is a famously strong finisher and there apparently is going to be a shakeup in his campaign to develop a simple (i.e. not complex) message and stick with it. he can still pull this out but he's dug himself a hole and then stepped right into it.

the dumbass.



-benjamin harris