I just realized something about the Soros thread

[LittleClarkie]

"Soros Says Kerry's Failings Undermined Campaign Against Bush " just by reading the headline.

Soros is saying that the candidate got in the way of HIS campaign against the president?

Does that mean Soros saw HIS campaign as more important than THE campaign? Was THE campaign supposed to conform to HIS campaign? It just struck me that the statement is rather arrogant if taken that way.

Am I being to hard on Soros, or was indeed saying that the candidate should have gotten out of the way of what he was trying to do.

For the record, I think the AGAINST campaign was one of the problems of the campaign. Thanks for all the negativity, guys, and none of the blame. Plecgh.

[JI7]

1. that's taking it too literally, what he meant

was that Kerry did not run on his anti war record and according to Soros that is one of Kerry's biggest assets . and he feels if Kerry did run on it he would have won.

[LittleClarkie]

4. Do you agree or disagree with that statement

Do you think being more anti-war would have made Kerry more palatable. Or do you think that being more anti-war wouldn't have satisfied the "national security is #1" people.

I just think that Kerry is more of a hawk than Soros wanted him to be. He wasn't in good concience going to pretend to be anti-war when it came to terrorism. He didn't hide his anti-war past, but he didn't play it up either.

[JI7]

5. he wanted him to play it up

i'm not sure. i guess it depends on how it was done. if it was done by comparing it to the current situation while adding what Kerry did later in helping to normalize relations with Vietnam it might get people to see him as someone who knows how to fix things.

but more important was he should have talked about his work as prosecutor and Senator .

[whometense]

2. Interesting point.

Sometimes it feels like I spent the entire campaign arguing with other "dems" about their "support" for Kerry. A dead giveaway that there was an argument coming was when they'd say, "I'm going to vote for Kerry, but..."

It seems at times like the whining will never end. And now Soros is whining too. Good god. Look at what the repukes managed to line up behind. And we had JOHN KERRY. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard "He didn't explain his positions to me." or - "He didn't convince me" in the past year from so-called dems, I'd be a wealthy woman today.

I just have to stay out of those other forums, and keep muttering under my breath like a crazy woman, "there are only a few of them." It's true, you know. There are only a few of them - but they make a disproportionate amount of noise, and they stir up a disproportionate amount of trouble.

It's a question for the ages - will the dems ever manage to line up and SHUT UP? I mean, I was never a Bill Clinton fan, but managed to vote for him twice anyway and not whine about it. Doesn't seem like that much to ask.

[TayTay]

3. Circular firing squad not yet finished

Patience. Soros is a fairly good guy, he is just repeating what Errol Morris said in the NYTimes a week or so ago.

I think it was 9/11 that did JK in. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. Soros is a committed Dem. Firing squad is still up and aiming squarely at family members. So there you go.

[whometense]

Yeah. I know.

But it's hard work. :eyes:

[ginnyinWI]

6. Soros is aiming his fire the wrong way

You are so right, whometense. We had John Kerry, not some glassy-eyed--oh never mind.

It's the Democratic Party that he should blame. It has been weak, disorganized. People did not know what Democrats stood for. So here comes Kerry, a superb candidate, and he can only get half the votes because of the party he has to stand on. Meanwhile the Republican party was very strong and organized, and on that firm platform stood a little incompetent, so he also got half the votes. (Who actually won more is debatable to me).

I've said it before: JK had to carry that donkey on his back the whole way, rather than having it carry him to a sure victory. We've got to get it together before the next election, and there are some encouraging signs.

[whometense]

7. One of the craziest things to me

during the campaign was the media war. The dems get so little air time, and they'd waste it being agreeable. They should have had proxies on air as much of the time as they could manage it, armed to the teeth with talking points.

If the party had been doing its job backing Kerry up properly they could have handled the Swifties themselves. It seemed like all through the campaign Kerry had to fight battles on all fronts single-handed. It was infuriating. Wes Clark was a good proxy, but he should have been on tv 24/7. Why wasn't he? Why didn't they make more of a push to get all those generals and diplomats who endorsed Kerry on the air? Or the former Republicans?

[ginnyinWI]

8. exactly.

An organized party would have been far better at battling for media attention. The campaign could only do so much. We know that their rallies were always successful. Remember Madison, WI? 80,000 showed up! But TV is the way most people find out and decide about candidates. It doesn't do much good to just whine about the media--you have to play their game--give them good material, make them want to put your agenda on the air. The Repubs are good at this--we need to get good, too.
Since the election they seem to enjoy having Reid or others on the air who have some spine and can give them an interesting show. Another reason not to roll over for the repubs!

[CBHagman]

9. To be fair, we've got to balance several things here.

First, just to get it over with, we do have to learn from our mistakes. Kerry won an impressive share of the vote, forever killing off, I hope, the daft notion that Americans won't vote for a liberal in large numbers. But that didn't dislodge Bush from the White House, and that fact will hurt millions of people. We've got to find out which steps we should have taken to reach and win several million more voters.

I don't know that the antiwar record would have done it, however. There are too many people out there who mistake a pro-war stance for being strong on national security. Cheney, DeLay et all never dragged their lazy carcasses into basic training and yet get away with the phoney macho man bit. For that matter, it seems Schwarzenegger does, too. It's that "strict father" model that George Lakoff talks about. Being a bellicose and stubborn ass gets you a ticket to the Resolute Leader Club, even if you couldn't lead your way out of a wet paper bag.

Perhaps Kerry should have put forth his own resume a little more and emphasized his experience. I think Bush did get away with defining Kerry, which is rich considering how useless and coddled Bush has been virtually all his life.

(Am I bitter? Noooooo.)

Kerry could have also emphasized how Bush lied about nearly everything (fiscal matters, WMD, being a uniter), and he could have emphasized how rude and divisive Bush is. Carefully screened Bush supporters at stump speeches even hurled abuse at JOHN MCCAIN. So much for the nice-guy image for Bush.

And we also should have had more debates. Kerry was amazing in those.