Reply #45: Did well going up against a sitting President during a war

[Dr Ron]

Clearly there were errors--and Kerry admits there were errors and is demonstrating he has learned from them. This does not mean it was not a good campaign. After the fact it is easy to criticize. It is much harder to come up with the right decision every time something happens during a campaign.

It is easy to call the campaign a failure as they did not win, but running against an incumbent President during time of war is difficult. Most likely other candidates would have done worse than Kerry did under these circumstances. Consider races such as McGovern versus Nixon.

While obviously we would have preferred a victory, Kerry left the race with Democrats in good position to pick up support this year. A really bad campaign could have actually given the Republicans that "permanent majority" they claimed to have won despite an extrememly narrow victory.