The Kerry Campaign has made two major changes in the last week {9/25/04}. First they decided to pull scheduled ads in 4 battleground states, off the agenda. Second, they have decided to go on Anti-Iraq War Rhetoric All the Time-Every-time. It signals a new goal for the Campaign. Clearly they have given the middle ground up to President Bush. Their Aim Now --- Don't Get Defeated Too Badly! ie shore up the base {very very very late in the game to be doing that} so this doesn't turn out to be the worst debacle in history.
The kerry campaign seemed to me to be troubled from day one. First of all, he allowed the RNC to define him early on as a new england liberal, he didn't answer most of the poorly constructed attack ads, and by ignoring them he has cemented some laughably poor misdirections as being true in a lot of american's minds. Early on he focused on trying to show people who he was personally in biographical ads, which in my opinion are politically worthless. He didn't develope a clear strategy to counter bush's policies early enough, and most people don't know which way he stands. He was accused of 'waffling', which in an age of more Jeffersonian direct democracy would seem to be an almost good thing, but since 9-11 there has been a radical shift towards Madisonian democracy and now we expect a leader that leads. Lastly, he hasn't totally ripped bush a new asshole at every turn, and i can't really believe that, i mean if you just found clips of every dumbass thing he has said or did over the past 4 years you could make a good arguement that bush really isn't qualified for the job. I don't know, this whole two party system is really starting to destroy everything that is good in american politics. Instead of having a nuanced body of government that accurately reflects the views and dreams of america we have two ideologically water-downed corporate owned corrupted and center grabbing throwbacks to the nineteenth century. Sigh, i guess i'll just have to sit here and dream of the day when i could vote for a center-left member of parliament that isn't just the lesser of two evils. Oh, and the thing about 'swing voters' is that they comprise a very, very small part of the electorate while people who can vote but don't comprise about 50%. Basically its come down to whoever can get the most supporters into the booths wins this year.
