|
The more I think about it, the more I'm beginning to believe that the Bush team is going to have some problems with a Kerry matchup. Their standard playbook line, "he is your typical elitist, out-of-touch Massachusetts liberal" isn't going to play very effectively, and I'll tell you why.
Kerry has a very effective campaign weapon working in his favor right now -- a group of very loyal veterans who served with him in Vietnam. These veterans are going on the attack, saying things that Kerry himself won't even say. Here's an example from Richard Cooper, a former sergent: "Senator, both of us served in Vietnam in a very unpopular war and the record shows that George Bush avoided the draft like the plague. The thing that bothered me the most as a veteran was when he played Steve Canyon coming out on the aircraft carrier."
The vets who gather for Kerry regularly remind anyone who will listen of inconvenient facts confronting the Bush administration — not only the president's own choices during the Vietnam years but also the five draft deferments Vice President Cheney received during the 1960s.
A "liberal" with a uniform, a war record and a regiment of veterans marching with him is not what the GOP ordered up from central casting.
If Kerry is indeed the dem nominee, I'll be very interested in how the campaign strategy plays out.
|