PhotoDude.com

Sat. Apr 23, 2005

Don't Kerry On

Frankly, this is just sad:

The flap was touched off two weeks ago when Clinton spoke at a Minneapolis Democratic dinner and Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) told the cheering crowd that he was introducing “the next great president of the United States.”

Two days later, Kerry came over to Dayton on the Senate floor “with daggers in his eyes and said, ‘What are you doing endorsing my 2008 presidential opponent?’ ... He was very serious,” Dayton told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Clinton’s office declined comment but a friend tut-tutted: “Boys will be boys, even when they are senators.”

Kerry spokesman David Wade tried to make light of the story, claiming “some lines must have gotten crossed in his retelling of this particular conversation” — and insisted they were mostly “joshing” about hockey.

But Dayton’s office says the “daggers in his eyes” report was accurate and Dayton has no quarrel with it.

Dayton was also quoted as offering a blunt explanation — not very flattering to Kerry — about why he favors Clinton for 2008 after backing Kerry last year: “As Winston Churchill once said, I’d rather be right than consistent.”

NY Post: “Jealous Kerry Fumes As Dem Boosts Hill”

Gosh, was Al Gore offering up daggers to Democrats after he lost in 2000? And in 2003 and 2004, did John Kerry offer complete party deference to the man who’d last gotten the nomination? Lest we forget, this was a man who mortgaged his house to stay in the race.

Furthermore, in 2003 and 2004, does anyone recall even a double digit percentage of Democrats calling for the return of the man who almost beat George Bush? No, Al Gore was an anathema for Democrats, and he saw it well enough for himself that he decided he’d had his shot.

Now. John Kerry got beat worse that Al Gore did. Did some of the beating all by himself, too. And in a close race that went down to the wire, Kerry finished with over eight figures of campaign funds leftover. He has since then blamed his loss on both Osama bin Laden and “trickery and intimidation.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have “moved on,” and when we hear talk of 2008, it’s mostly about Hillary, and rarely about Kerry. And I guess that’s really getting under his skin. Though I personally think her negatives are too high to be overcome in a national election, and anticipate an unpredictable and fractious fight for control in both parties in 2008, people seem to be talking like the nomination is hers to lose at this point.

But let’s also remember that the Very Early Conventional Wisdom in the last election said that it was Kerry’s to lose. When he met that early expectation, the Slightly Later Conventional Wisdom was that Howard Dean was unstoppable.

Need I say more?

Maybe by 2007 or so, John Kerry will have had enough time for his scarred ego to have healed a bit, and he can offer the next nominee some advice about why he lost that isn’t so self serving. But first he’s got to get past this fantasy that the next nominee is going to be him.