Kerry needs to get back on message.

[searchingforlight]

Move.on needs to put out one ad with all of Kerry's military support telling the truth, including soldiers that are coming back today knowing that the honor that their country has bestowed on them is useless

THEN

Kerry needs to get back on message. The war, the economy, the plight of jobless people are not even on the radar scope. This is Karl Rove's plan. Make Kerry use all his funds to refute this charge and then Disney Commercial George's way into the pResidency. There is no pressure on GWB or the RNC going into this convention and that needs to stop.

[Trajan]

1. Kerry needs more than the positive message he is promoting ...

He needs to confront the SBL's full force and in full view of the electorate ...

One benefit of the overexposure of the SBL's insults, is the access it provides the Kerry camp in the media to respond .... EVERY claim by the SBL's has with it an avenue of ATTACK which the Kerry campaign can exploit ....

This is a golden opportunity for Kerry to not only defend his record, but to bring Bush and Cheney's military records out of the shadows, and into the glare of the superheated media frenzy surrounding the SBL's accusations ....

[Warpy]

4. A libel suit would do that.

He needs to get on message and let lawyers handle those lying sacks of unpatriotic shit. He's got a great case against them: not only are they liars, the paper trail backs him up 100%, and he can easily prove malice on their part.

A big fat libel suit is just what he needs to file. Until then, it's just he said, he said, and he'll spend all his time being defined by that human garbage on the far right.

[klook]

2. Agree

Joe Klein was saying the same thing on today's Tavis Smiley show, and in his Time magazine column:

Kerry in a Straitjacket
George W. Bush is throwing curve balls and Kerry keeps swinging
By JOE KLEIN

John Kerry suffered a small embarrassment last week that illuminated a big problem in his campaign. The embarrassment involved the not exactly riveting issue of troop redeployments. George W. Bush announced last Monday in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) that he wanted to bring around 70,000 troops home from Germany and North Korea over the next 10 years. In principle, that is not very controversial. The military and foreign policy priesthoods have favored that sort of restructuring since the end of the cold war. And yet, when Kerry spoke to the VFW two days later, he attacked Bush's position, using an argument with some merit but of microscopic import in the midst of a presidential campaign: he said it was a "hasty" and "political" plan and certainly not a good negotiating tactic to withdraw troops from Korea while we are trying to get the North Koreans to drop their nuclear program.

But oops. Some two weeks earlier, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Kerry had taken a different position: "I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just but ... in the Korean peninsula, perhaps, in Europe, perhaps." As you might imagine, the Bush campaign quickly pointed out the inconsistency.

The stumble raises two basic questions about Kerry's campaign. First, is he a latter-day Ron Burgundy—the idiot 1970s anchorman of Will Ferrell's recent film who would read anything that appeared on his TelePrompTer? Did Kerry not remember what he had said to Stephanopoulos? No, it was, apparently, yet another Kerry nanonuance: he is in favor of redeployments, just not now. The second question is far more dire: Why is Kerry wasting breath on such periphera? Why isn't he hammering Bush on his conduct of the Iraq war and the larger war against Islamist radicalism, which is the most important issue in this election?

The answer is politics. His political consultants don't want him to do it. Their focus groups tell them that the public wants an "optimistic" candidate who offers a "positive plan" rather than a "negative" candidate who criticizes the President. Of course, "every focus group in the history of the world has wanted a candidate with a 'positive plan for the future,'" says James Carville. Unfortunately, focus-group members are also human beings. In a roomful of strangers, they present their most noble selves. They hate political attacks—but not really. They have obviously responded to the scurrilous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Kerry's war record, which is why he was forced, finally, to counterattack last week. The Swifties' ability to dominate the news with incendiary nonsense is, I believe, a direct result of Kerry's unwillingness to dominate the news with tart, controversial substance by challenging the President on Iraq.

More: http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,685961,00.html

[rocktivity]

3. I sent this to Bartcop a couple of days ago

...the mainstream media (are) not only kicking Kerry's ass, they're using HIS shoes!

...the grass-roots aspect of the campaign has been a success, and no doubt the reason why is because it's so POSITIVE. People are enjoying going to the rallies without being searched or signing oaths, and hearing about the good things that can happen once he's in office. But just because that's effective locally doesn't mean it will also work nationally...

...Kerry's lead should be wider. It isn't, because he's helping the media to plant seeds of doubt in the undecideds, which is turn is starting to destabilize his base...it's time for him to do some "house cleaning" with his campaign staff--either he's got some incompetents, or a GOP mole!

http://www.bartcop.com/kerry-problem.htm

[Warpy]

5. Who needs GOP moles when we've got the DLC on our side?

[rocktivity]

6. No wonder Barack Ombama has nothing to do with the DLC!

:headbang:
rocknation