Parsing Today's (ABC News) Note

[markus]

Here's the content of the "Note Is Ready" email, with my own reponses in italic, for discussion. What do you think of these "Oh, Yeahs" and Oh, Nos"?

Here's what's going on inside the brains of the senior party and presidential campaign strategists for both sides:

Republican "Oh yeahs!!"

1. It appears as of today that John Kerry might never have a message.
Sadly, true. And (as I saw in NBC's First Read, Busy may be mastering the Clintonesque mini policy initiative).

2. How easy it is to goad Kerry into making mistakes on the trail.
Ouch. How many long-service Senators have ever been elected President? Kerry (like Dean before him) needs to remember that he is always under the spotlight, and his every arch of the eyebrow or ommission of a word will be parsed in a way Bush's never will.

3. The press blithely accepts the nonsensical GOP patter of "this election is about who has the best ideas for the future and/so let's talk about John Kerry's life 30 years ago."
The Liberal Media. Need I say more?

4. Oregon, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
I don't go track polls that often, but I have to think we can win Wisconsin and Oregon. Especially Wisconsin (along with Minnesota). Pennsylvania, what with Toomey's sudden resurgance out of the nauseating swamp of the far right, looks very funny right now.

5. Bay State gay marriages starting May 17.
Substitute Gay Marriage for the Clenis. Who cares, except people are already voting for Bush.

Republican "Oh no's"

1. July 1st.
I have a secret plan for peace in SouthWest Asia.

2. Right track, wrong track.
As the economy goes "up" (in a way that is meaningful only to people who get regular statements from their broker), most folks don't notice and Iraq does to hell in a handbasket.

3. Ohio.
Don't know enough to comment, but I do know that Bush dropped his steel protection plan, which is what got him Ohio in the first place.

4. Neither the press nor the FEC seems willing to stop the overlapping personalities of those flush-with-cash 527s.
Bring It on.

5. Toomey and McCollum.
Is Toomey the result of some sort of ugly cloning experiment involving Santorum? Face it: Toomey and Santorum both come off as charactures of a bad ass prosecutor in a bad TV drama. I don't see his appeal outside of people inclined to take Limbaugh and Hannity seriously. But then again, Santorum got himself elected, didn't he? Can't speak to McCollum knolwedgeably.

Democrat "Oh yeahs!!"

1. The least dysfunctional presidential candidate-DNC operation in a generation (which is not to say it isn't dysfunctional … ).
Been there. Done that. Got all the leftover Dukkakis paraphenalia in the basement to prove it.

2. ACT and Cecile Richards.

3. All that (easy) money.
It's nice to have friends in high places. But this is at the same time a problem post-November that we have with all of the corporatist careerists in Congress.

4. The solid Blueness of California, Illinois, and New York.
Bring It On MegaDitto

5. John Sasso has started his new job.

Democrat "Oh no's"

1. "My Life."

2. Fear of the boogeyman: where has all the GOP soft money gone?
This one is really scary. It's all out there somewhere and waiting in ambush. And this is why Bush gets to spend and spend and spend and make sure he goes into his convention penniless with a wounded opponnent,a nd not care.

3. West Virginia, Southern Ohio, Florida.
Sen. Byrd must, if he does nothing further in service to his country, carry us West Virginia (provided Kerry doesn't get all solar-panel-ly, fuel-cell-ish on us at inoportune moments). Can't speak to So. Ohio. We won Florida last time. We must win it this time. How many of the "new" voters moving in are 1) retirees who will feel threatened by the GOP and 2) foot-loose, job chasing yuppies who will vote more independently than any other group. This latter group could care about Gay Marriage, and is more likely to be pro-choice than note.

4. Liberal speakers at the Boston convention.
I say Ted and Dennis need to agree to have laryngitus, or at least speak an TV inconvenient times. This should be the Sen. Byrd Festival of Righteous Anger.

5. It appears as of today that John Kerry might never have a message.

What were these guys doing while the Senator went skiing. They should have had a better message plan by now. What we are getting is tired, old re-tread playbook. Probably a playbook left over from the Carter-Mondale years. Certainly not (from a message perspecive) from the Clnton year.