{"id":326,"date":"2004-02-04T07:50:39","date_gmt":"2004-02-04T11:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=326"},"modified":"2004-02-04T07:50:39","modified_gmt":"2004-02-04T11:50:39","slug":"kerrys-gravitas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=326","title":{"rendered":"Kerry’s Gravitas"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to a USA TODAY\/CNN\/Gallup Poll<\/a> [among others<\/a>] Kerry would defeat Bush if the election were held today.<\/p>\n

Readers of the Daily Kos<\/i>, where every Bush job approval poll is currently showing deteriorating support, discuss a Tom Dachle briefing<\/a> to Senate Democrats during which he claimed that if elections were held today the Democrats would retake the Senate.<\/p>\n

A less optimistic Kos allows that “Democrats are currently benefiting from the intense and prolongued Democratic primary battle<\/i>.” <\/p>\n

That may be, but what some candidates, in particular Kerry, are also benefitting from is a minutiae of negative feedback from the mainstream press.<\/p>\n

Consider the adjectives describing Kerry in the lead-in to this Washington Post<\/a><\/i> article this morning:<\/p>\n

Sen. John F. Kerry excelled as a scrappy underdog in Iowa and as a tough-talking combat veteran since then. Now comes the hard part, Democratic officials say: transforming himself into a steady and unifying front-running presidential candidate who can avoid the errors of his political past. <\/p>\n

Coming off last night’s victories, Kerry is planning to present himself in the days ahead as the undisputed leader, according to his advisers, fighting it out in every state instead of cherry-picking as his rivals do. “Now we carry this campaign and the cause of a stronger, fairer, more prosperous America to all parts of our country,” Kerry said last night. <\/p>\n

Some advisers envision a quick-kill strategy, with former Vermont governor Howard Dean going down in Wisconsin Feb. 17 and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), the candidate they fear most, dropping out soon after.<\/p><\/div>\n

Certainly the WP<\/i> journalists are utilising Kerry team descriptives here as they go on to clarify. Yet absent are strong criticisms of the strategy or the man and includes this opinion on why Kerry is being treated differently than Gore:<\/p>\n

Doug Hattaway, a Boston-based consultant who is neutral in the primary contest, said Kerry’s stumbles through the fall reminded him of the staff turmoil and spotty performance of Gore and his team in 2000. But this time, Hattaway said, it appears Kerry has “internalized those lessons” and put in place a highly disciplined team led by Mary Beth Cahill and former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen. <\/p>\n

After changing his campaign style, often appearing looser and less scripted, Kerry has been riding a wave of positive views about his electability to the top of national polls. He also benefited greatly from the decision of every rival except Dean to run an upbeat, often attack-free, campaign, party strategists said. This allowed Kerry to run a markedly positive and Bush-focused campaign over the past few weeks.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kerry personalising his stump speeches can’t account for the turn about in the treatment he’s been getting from the press. When did popular support, i.e. polls, cause them to shift gears on Gore? <\/p>\n

Even William Safire is relatively subdued in this mock-up interview of Nixon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Q: How did Kerry manage to turn it around? <\/p>\n

RN: You want me to say “electability” like all those jackasses yakkin’ it up on cable. That’s what Rockefeller tried on me, but only the hacks and the hot partisans put electability first. It’s one element, but it can get loused up in fluctuating mano a mano polls, and it vanishes as an asset when the election campaign begins. No, Kerry came back because he’s an homme serioux ? that’s French for a man with gravitas ? which is what people want, and it doesn’t matter that he has a face like a horse.<\/p><\/div>\n

Who’s left to tear Kerry apart if these mavens of mediocrity continue to treat him kindly. Ann Coulter<\/a>? The rabid rousers seem to be gearing up to give him a Clintonesque airbrushing, yet they’re preaching to the choir. <\/p>\n

Kerry’s ‘new popularity’ would need to be knocked down by the same journalists who skewered Gore, and for some reason, generally speaking, the opposite is occurring.<\/p>\n

Has word come down from the front offices? <\/p>\n

If indeed that’s a factor, would George’s “record-breaking war chest that may top $200 million<\/a>” be enough to out-fox non-support from the ‘other’ news rooms?<\/p>\n

I’ve long held the belief that elections are a crafty collusion designed to give casual observers the impression an informed populace actually decides who gets elected to high office in the U.S., so I’m not sure what to make of the love-affair the press seems to be having with Kerry these days. I simply doubt it’s anything John Kerry alone has done.<\/p>\n

If it’s a combination of his revamped campaign and Bush’s disastrous record, why has the press suddenly decided to give gravitas to the latter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a USA TODAY\/CNN\/Gallup Poll [among others] Kerry would defeat Bush if the election were held today. Readers of the Daily Kos, where every Bush job approval poll is currently showing deteriorating support, discuss a Tom Dachle briefing to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-5g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}