Town of Braintree

Yearning for the MudParty Platfo


Yearning for the Mud: The Kerry-Heinz Ticket and the Psychotic Party Platform
Listening to John Kerry whip out his plodding French to pander to the sad Haitian vote yesterday put me in a nostalgic frame of mind.

But when I consider what the Democratic Party's perverted primary process disgorged as their offering in this year's election, and when I listen to half of it spout execrable French and the other half denigrate mothers and librarians after a career of hunting billionaires to extinction, it brings out the French in me.

The Kerry Campaign is not some expression of deep American values and ideals, but an expression of the lowest realms of American Political life, something that has always been part of our politics -- the subconscious yearning for American defeat.
We see the same pasty anti-patriotism today in the doddering foolishness of Jimmy Carter and his ''one-world'' pap.

Indeed, if you cast about today for a carefully contrived political and marital career that paralleled this relentless rise of the underground mud to the surface, you couldn't do better than that of John Kerry. He's in the foreground or background photograph of every movement to defeat and weaken America that has been hatched in this country for the better part of forty years.




By Curious Minds ask Why Mr Kerry

Kerry?’s Dilemma how to lose an e


Kerry?’s Dilemma
Or, how to lose an election.

There is a good chance that no matter what Kerry says or does in the final two weeks of this election ?— barring some major catastrophe in Iraq, a presidential gaffe, or massive voting irregularity ?— he will lose. And he may well take much of the Democrats' remaining control of government down with him. After all, Putin wants Bush, while Arafat prefers Kerry ?— and that is all we need to know. But besides the obvious concerns of national security and Kerry's own failure in any honest fashion to offer a coherent and principled alternative course of action to defeat the terrorists, there are more subtle, insidious factors at play that will, I think, preclude his election.

I thought John Kerry clearly won the first debate, lost the second, and did worse in the third. Most Americans, however, apparently disagreed, since many polls showed that respondents thought Kerry won all three. We hear of mayhem daily in Iraq; news on the economic front is mixed; and an entire host of surrogates has defamed George Bush in a manner not seen in decades during a political campaign. Why, then, does Kerry gain little traction, trail in most polls, and perhaps even start to slip further? After all, he is a hard campaigner, has a razor-sharp memory, speaks well, looks statesmanlike at times, raises lots of money, and has a mobilized base working hard for his election.

At least six reasons come to mind that have little to do with issues or substance, but everything to do with style, character, and judgment. First, he comes across, perhaps unfairly so, as an unfriendly sort. He seems to confirm to flyover America that the Ivy League East Coast is a cold place of holier-than-thou privileged reformers who live one life but advocate another. Kerry is a pleasant man, but he nevertheless presents himself as a ponderous aristocrat. His oratory, for all his undeniable mastery of facts and classical rhetorical tropes, is too often humorless, condescending, and pedantic. His photo opportunities that showcase hunting vests or windsurfing look forced, and they lack the natural ease of George Bush on the stump, twanging with his sleeves rolled up. Thus while Kerry does well in debates, he in some sense does not do well, since Americans feel he is either their smug professor or cranky grandfather, peeved that he had to descend from Olympus to impart knowledge to the less gifted. Somehow most would rather be wrong with Bush than right with Kerry.

Second, Democrats should have learned after the Dukakis implosion not to nominate a Massachusetts ultra-liberal. Past voting records, affinity with a wildly unpopular Ted Kennedy, and blinkered assumptions that the Harvard-Boston nexus is synonymous with America marginalize such candidates ?— as we are now seeing with Kerry, who ineptly fights off the liberal tag, tries to adopt populist mannerisms, and only with difficulty curbs his references to the world of New England high culture. JFK barely pulled it off, but then he was a widely celebrated and nearly disabled war hero, had a stylishly coy wife, and projected a certain vigor that captivated friend and foe alike.



By All You Need Is Eyes In YourHead

Why Kerry is losing this electio

Why Kerry is losing this election

But here's the reality I see: Bush looking good enough in the electoral and leading the popular vote in half the polls by a substantial margin (beyond error factor) and leading just barely or tied with Kerry in the other (inside the margin of error). So I see a mass of polls whose collective judgment is ''Bush by a bit or just barely,'' and almost none that say ''Kerry by a bit.''

If the debates were like a huge touchdown drive to start the 3rd quarter and suggest a staggering Kerry comeback, what's happened since has been like a dogged but successful recovery of a fumble and drive to the 30-yard-line for a field goal that puts the Republicans just enough in the lead to run out the clock.
Where is my legendary optimism? Left it on too many tarmacs this week, and my general fatigue and feeling-out-of-sorts certainly contributes to this burst of pessimism, but don't simply write it off to just that.
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So, to an amazing degree, they supported the war in Iraq even as they are now deeply disconcerted and feel betrayed by the performance of our political leadership in overseeing the subsequent occupation. Why Bush will likely win this election is because Americans prefer the sense of steadfastness during difficult times, and they perceive that more in Bush than in Kerry, who insists on speaking about the ''wrong enemy'' and the ''wrong war,'' when Americans are watching videos of beheadings in the Middle East and instinctively understand that-no matter how we got to this point in the war-''those people'' certainly look like our enemies and our loved ones are dying in this conflict, no matter how some may judge the incorrectness of our battlefield choice.

Plus, the Republicans are waging an effective one-two punch with Bush's ''mission of spreading liberty'' (a bit over the top, but an appealing ''happy ending'' in the absence of anything else) and Cheney's constant harping about Kerry not being focused on his understanding of the threat/enemy/nature of the conflict. Kerry and his people counter badly on this, and it underlies their essential mistake in this campaign.

Now if this Administration could just learn that essential lesson in how they're running the occupation in Iraq, we'd actually be getting somewhere over there.
Instead of offering the happy ending, Kerry and Co. have chosen to lead with the two alternative approaches. Yes, you can try to firewall off America a la Richard Clarke and Steven Flynn and a host of other inward-looking books that encourage Americans to seek safety through hunkering down.
Bush and Co. did pander to our fears by creating the Department of Homeland Security, and guess what? That behemoth will largely go unattended over future years and administrations. It will be a huge budgetary sinkhole with of sound and fury and signifying almost nothing about a national grand strategy designed to win a long-term war on terror. So the outcome of that choice for Kerry in this election is that Bush got to harvest the feel-good bit many moons ago and now all the Dems get is the feel-afraid vibe for the election, without any accompanying happy ending to soften that fear-mongering message.


By A Republican Lapdog

Real Clear Politics Poll


RealClearPolitics Poll AveragesSM


2004 Presidential Race - 3 Way
PollDate Bush/Cheney Kerry/EdwardNader/
Camejo Spread
RCP Average 10/14 - 10/21 48.5% 45.7% 1.5% Bush +2.8
Zogby (1212 LV) 10/19 - 10/21 47% 45% 1% Bush +2
TIPP (792 LV) 10/18 - 10/21 47% 46% 2% Bush +1
ABC/Wash Post (1248 LV)* 10/18 - 10/20 51% 45% 1% Bush +6
AP-Ipsos (976 LV) 10/18 - 10/20 46% 49% 2% Kerry +3
Marist (772 LV w/leaners) 10/17 - 10/19 49% 48% 1% Bush +1
FOX News (1000 LV) 10/17 - 10/18 49% 42% 2% Bush +7
Pew Research (1070 LV) 10/15 - 10/19 47% 47% 1% TIE
NBC/WSJ (LV w/leaners) 10/16 - 10/18 48% 48% 1% TIE
Harris (820 LV)** 10/14 - 10/17 49.5% 44.5% 1% Bush +5
CBS/NY Times (678 LV) 10/14 - 10/17 47% 45% 2% Bush +2
CNN/USAT/Gallup (788 LV) 10/14 - 10/16 52% 44% 1% Bush +8
Time (865 LV w/leaners) 10/14 - 10/15 48% 47% 3% Bush +1
Newsweek (880 LV) 10/14 - 10/15 50% 44% 1% Bush +6
Click Here to See All 3-Way Polling Data | Graph: RCP Historical Poll Average

2004 Presidential Race - Head to Head
Poll Date Bush/Cheney Kerry/Edwards Spread
RCP Average 10/14 - 10/21 48.4% 45.3% Bush +3.1
Rasmussen (3,000 LV) 10/19 - 10/21 49% 46% Bush +3
TIPP (792 LV) 10/18 - 10/21 45% 45% TIE
FOX News (1000 LV) 10/17 - 10/18 48% 43% Bush +5
CBS News (678 LV) 10/14 - 10/17 47% 46% Bush +1
CNN/USAT/Gallup (788 LV) 10/14 - 10/16 52% 44% Bush +8
Time (865 LV w/leaners) 10/14 - 10/15 48% 48% TIE
Newsweek (LV) 10/14 - 10/15 50% 45% Bush +5
Click Here to See All Head-to-Head Polling Data



By A drunken Kerry supporter