Dean v. Kerry.

[rivka]

I've never followed a presidential race as closely as I'm following this one. When you look closely, the machinery really is quite visible behind the red-white-and-blue backdrops.

John Kerry, for example, never gives a quote about Howard Dean and his supporters without pushing one of two messages: ultra-liberal minority, and angry. Neither does anyone else on Kerry's staff. They quite literally never say a public word about Dean that's not on-message - even if the message doesn't make sense in context.

Take Dean's second quarter fundraising totals, for example. He raised $7.6 million - far more than anyone expected, and more than any of the other Democratic candidates. So Kerry was quoted saying that everyone knew Dean's support was deep, but the question was whether it was broad. On message once again: Dean supporters are a tiny radical fringe - he has no broad support.

Now the FEC's released the full second quarter details.[1] Dean had 73,000 individual donors in the second quarter. Kerry had 23,000. Kerry was arguing that Dean had less broad support in the same quarter that MORE THAN THREE TIMES as many people donated money to Dean.

I researched Kerry before deciding to support Dean. I went to his Senate web page (he didn't have a campaign page yet), and bounced right off it. It felt as if every sentence there was crafted to appeal to donors and voters - it was all so slick and opaque. And Kerry's speeches and press releases still read to me like Extruded Political Product. I don't have a clue about what he really thinks - I can only tell what the talking points are supposed to be. That bothers me.

Sure, I'll vote for him if he wins the nomination - I mean, against this administration, I'd pretty much vote for a yellow dog - but I wouldn't be happy about it. I've grown accustomed to more.


[1] (A fascinating breakdown of campaign finances can be found in an interactive chart here.)

Comments

[futabachan.livejournal.com]

For me, it's not Dean vs. Kerry -- it's Dean vs. Kucinich. And I know Kucinich -- and Dean opposes same-sex marriage.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Eh. Kucinich was pro-life right up until this year, when he started running for president. That fails to impress me.

But even apart from that, I can't picture him being an effective president. I mean, okay, a lot of his personal beliefs are similar to mine. But I'm not trying to decide whether to invite him over to dinner, I'm trying to decide whether he could push through broad policy initiatives on the national level. I just don't see him working the system effectively. Do you?

(Not to mention that I don't think he's got a snowball's chance in hell of winning the general election. And yes, I think that should matter. This administration has utterly disproved, a thousand times over, Nader's lie that there's no significant difference between Republicans and Democrats.)

Kucinich has been reading alt.poly...

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

From the Department of Peace section of his official site:

We can conceive of peace as not simply the absence of violence but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity.

He wants us all to be more highly evolved, and he knows just how to demonstrate it! It's all so clear now! :)

[jilesa.livejournal.com]

The more I see of Dean, the more impressed I become. Thank you for being the first to introduce him to me. It's good to see a candidate that I'll be able to vote for without having to hold my nose while I'm doing it.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm glad! You should come by one of the Meetups sometime. In your copious free time. :-)

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that Kerry's strategy of calling Dean "angry" might backfire. Sure, I admit that I might qualify as one of the "fringe" that he's talking about, but I really do think that it will take an angry, vocal candidate to make any kind of impact against Bush.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and it seems as though every day there's more to be angry about. I've noticed that the other candidates are also starting to pick up more of an outraged tone - which is good.

That said, I think it's very important to also have a positive message. I don't think we should be sweeping the disasterous effects of the current administration under the rug at all, but I do think that the Dems need to give people the sense of a real alternative, something to hope for, something to believe in. We don't want to be the party of bitterness.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

This was really interesting! Thanks for writing it up.

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. In retrospect, though, seeing how others have taken it, I'm not sure how well I got my point across.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Let me start by saying that I'm not a supporter of Dean, or Kerry, or any other particular candidate at this time.

Kerry was arguing that Dean had less broad support in the same quarter that MORE THAN THREE TIMES as many people donated money to Dean.

Yes, but number of donations doesn't give you any information about breadth of support.

Broad support is support from many different types of people. If you've supporters from all parts of the country, from all racial groups, from people of many different religious and economic backgrounds, and so on, you have broad support.

So, in order to say whether or not the candidate has broad support, you don't need to know how many people are donating. You need to know what kind of people are donating, and that question isn't addressed by the numbers you present. Instead, the numbers above more simply bring into question whether Kerry has enough support overall, whatever it's character.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Just to be fair, what has Den said about Kerry on a personal level? Has he got any negative things to say about any of the other candidates?

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course he does. He's taken hits in the press about it, too.

I'm not saying Dean doesn't criticize other candidates, and Kerry does - I'm saying that Kerry's criticisms sound scripted to me, like he's trying to align to a set of talking points.

Re:

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

This may well be more a matter of style than substance, in that case.