Thursday, March 11, 2004

Kerry Implosion Watch

John Kerry today deplored negative partisan attacks on him by "crooked, lying" Republicans according to the Associated Press.

A Kerry campaign flack conveniently provided the talking points for this particular spontaneous show of outrage.

"He's a Democrat who fights back . . . The Republicans have launched the most personal, crooked, deceitful attacks over the last four years."


Appearently Kerry is still courting the Insane Dean Posse vote with the mistaken belief that anger is the same thing as sincerity. Angry Dean is entertaining. Angry Kerry is condescending.

It's also interesting that the phrase "A Democrat Who Fights Back" is deployed as often as it is considering that it implicitly draws unwanted attention to the Democrats' reputation as indecisive surrender monkeys.

And those "deceitful personal attacks launched over the past fours years," weren't those against our enemies overseas like Osama and Saddam? I don't recall any personal attacks against the thin-skinned senator from Massachusetts. If fact, I doubt most Americans had ever even heard of John Kerry before about a month ago.

I suspect candidate Kerry is about to peak a wee bit too early in his campaign.

Consider this. President Bush has endured three months of unrelenting negative press coverage (the National Guard AWOL thing, the David Kay WMD thing, a lousy State of the Union speech, a hopeless Meet the Press appearence, jobless recovery, and of course quagmire, quagmire, quagmire) and at the same time Kerry has enjoyed a couple of months of unstintingly positive coverage (every week another victory speech).

And after all that Bush and Kerry are running pretty much even in the polls.

There are eight months until the election and Kerry is already pulling out all the stops to keep the media focused on him.

The President makes news effortlessly . . . a politician running for election has to work hard to make news and then its pretty likely to be the sort of media attention you might not want. The coverage is already hinting at the seeds of Kerry's destruction -- the verbosity, the predictable invocation of Vietnam, the inability to give a straight answer, the whole "fighter" meme.

You can feel the whole thing about to tip over into mockery at any second. Like Dean all you need is one moment that captures the absurdity of a political campaign. And once people start laughing at you . . . you're sunk.

Of course, people have been laughing at Bush for a while . . . a very long while. He's immune to it by now. Kerry's not.

I feel confident enough now to predict that the Democratic convention will be a MelGibsonian spectacle of anguished buyer's remorse.

Couldn't happen to a better guy. Of course, John Kerry will always be popular in France like some other famous Americans.

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