Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
September 17, 2004
Kick Ass

New Blood at Heart of Kerry Campaign reports The Washington Post. The media echo on the Kerry campaign is slightly better now, so this may have been the decisive. At least there are some punch lines:

“Dick Cheney got $2 million. What did we get?” the ad’s narrator says. “A $200 billion bill for Iraq, lost jobs, rising health care costs. It’s time for a new direction.”

“You deserve a president who will not play politics with national security, who will not ignore his own intelligence while living in a fantasy world of spin …”

Still Kerrys speech style is terrible.

Sentences – too long, thought chains – too long, wording – pompous. This will not win Joe Sixpack and Larry Lawnmower over Bush´s good/evil – with us/against us style. Campaigning is marketing, not an Oxford debate.

Explain Kerry´s position on Iraq in three short sentences? Impossible. What the f… is the campaign staff doing? Is Kerry listening to them?

All Bush enemies try to help

  • The CIA sends an unrequested National Intelligence Estimate to the White House and leaks the content to the press.
  • Annan emphasizes the war was illegal
  • David Kay saying “we were almost all wrong” and the final reports come without WMDs in Iraq
  • General Conway accusing the administration to have screwed the marines in Fallujah.
But this is still not enough and it is uncoordinated.

On the other side the messages stick. Next week Prince Allawi (or as koreyel suggests The Thug (formerly known as Prince) will address Congress and the UN. Rove will make sure that the right 10-seconds-points are made on TV. Only a real big incident in Iraq could spoil their effect. Then comes the October surprise – Iran? Syria? A terror incident? Who knows, but for sure there is an ace somewhere.

Kerry is much too presidential. ´ay man, set the champagne glass aside and grab a beer. Kick ass!

Comments

Kerry must learn to lose the gentrified, eastern establishment patrician meter and phraseology, while still showing that he armed with a vocabulary and is not afraid to use it. I don’t know why his “handlers” haven’t worked on this with him so that it’s evident now. It’s very simple. They need to tell him to stay smart, quit “booming”, and “talk” to people as he would talk to someone sitting in his “family room”.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Sep 17 2004 23:26 utc | 1

Kate,
Your exactly right. In the midwest he needs to say a few ahhs. Like how have you been ahh?
In the corn belt he needs to learn to chew and talk about soy beans and corn. He sounds to much like Bushes father, that Northeastern stuffiness. Someone should pull that stick out of his ass.
He has to do something, I can’t take four more years of Bushie.

Posted by: jdp | Sep 18 2004 0:42 utc | 2

put this on the end of a thread a few days ago still would advocate going this far.
Well I could’nt agree more, like the bartender once said “fight fire with fire”. A firm measure of decisive, in your face, clearly thought out, and dispatched like a freight train indignation would work wonders at shattering the flip/flop liberal elite woose the rePugs have so carefully painted over him. Clearly– he needs to shock the American people to their senses, that, 4 more years of this — is four more years of this in an unknown quanity, plain and simple.
And if fear is to overshadow all issues and all sense amongst the sheeple, then give em’ the old LBJ mushroom cloud vision, economic collapse, full scale war in the mid- east, Iran, North Korea, and the looming spector of facism right here on mainstreet.
People need to be scared shitless — and then givin a clear alternative — cause it could all happen.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 18 2004 0:58 utc | 3

One of Bernhard’s links is to a must read Guardian piece.
In case you can’t find the time… enjoy this snip:
———-snip———-
“An army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea” was the criticism applied to speeches by Warren Harding – one of only two senators to make it to the White House. The aphorism, unfortunately, applies to too much of Kerry’s rhetoric.
———-end snip———-
Kerry lurches along sonorously–totally tonally atonal.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 18 2004 2:00 utc | 4

@Anna Missed:
He needs to call in Rude Pundit(ASZ got a link to him over there). Most all flame throwing work needs to be done by surrogates.
Then the debates for the final eviseration and vivisection.
Just thoughts.

Posted by: Subotai | Sep 18 2004 2:06 utc | 5

What could happen if Kerry resign, for any reason?.
Would be possible to change the prez candidates?

Posted by: curious | Sep 19 2004 19:00 utc | 6

What could happen if Kerry resign, for any reason?.
Would be possible to change the prez candidates?

Posted by: curious | Sep 19 2004 19:01 utc | 7