Seriously, what the hell is wrong with those people? John Kerry has to be the least publicly available candidate, or at least appears to be that way, of all time. Mary Beth Cahill or whoever is running it pisses me off, and I could easily do a better job at it while completely intoxicated. I think that if the Kerry campaign actually stepped up to the plate for once, Kerry would clearly be in the lead.
So, rather than just bitching, I'll give a few suggestions even though it's late in the game. I sent some to them via email before, but they were ignored as well (realistically I wouldn't expect them to pay attention to one of thousands of emails they probably get in a day.) So here goes.
Ways to improve the Kerry campaign
- Put a calendar up. Bush has a calendar linked from his front page so you can tell where he will be and where you can go to support him. This basic thing should be easily done for Kerry. Why is Kerry's event search such a pain in the ass? The best their site offers is some random way for me to find Joe Schmoe who wants to make friends and talk about how much you hate Bush. While I'm glad to find like-minded people, that should be secondary to keeping people up to date on the campaign.
- The Swift Boat Vets Controversy. Really, could they have handled this any worse other than how they did it? The first step would have been to research the hell out of who those guys are, which was not difficult. It took me a few hours after finding out who the publishing company was, who the authors were, and even who funded it. Yet the Kerry campaign took weeks, and then gave a half-hearted decry stating that they worked for Bush. Good, but not good enough. They should have put more effort into it and released press releases to all of the major media with that information, but primarily showing how they had contradicted their own statements.
- The Democrats have to grow balls and get louder. Why haven't the Democrats been all over the media like the Republicans were during their convention? Why don't they give talking points out to like candy to hyperactive kids? They have to be more vocal, because they are failing this so far.
- The Democrats need "independent" focus groups like the Republicans have. MoveOn is seen as a whacko terrorist-sympathizer group. Michael Moore needs to go on a diet, shave, take a bath, and buy some decent clothes. We need respectable people and organizations associated with the Democrats who end up being invited to be on TV or to give their expert opinions. Where are the guys in suits who seem normal and can explain in one sentence why the Democrats are good? Where are the liberal thinktanks? Even Rush Limbaugh, the drug addict and right-wing pyscho shaves his face and wears a suit and tie in public.
- The Kerry campaign needs to do more than beg me for money. I get emails from them regularly, of which probably 90% are asking me for money. I'm fine with them asking for money, and I have donated. However, I'd like to see them ask for a little more realistic things for the majority of their supporters. They do ask for money, and they have a "volunteer center" which basically isn't anything but a scam to ask for money. They do have one thing that I had considered signing up for, where you can volunteer to go to a battleground state, but realistically the vast majority of people can't do that. I'd put things that people would be more likely to volunteer to do, such as going to "protest" (actually being positive and holding up signs for Kerry in public places), going to malls to hand out pamphlets and stickers, or just find ways to spend a little of your free time to inexpensively help the Kerry campaign.
- They need papers. We need PDF documents that we can print out and hand out to people. Give us resources that we can download. Guess what, Bush has this stuff, so why doesn't Kerry? This is another simple, but effective thing that the Kerry campaign has failed to do.
Anyway, I could list more, specifically about how to target specific groups of voters, but my wife is sick and I'm getting over the same cold/flu/allergies/whatever and I'm tired as well. In any case, it's clear that if Kerry loses this election, it's not because Bush would be a better president, but because Kerry's people have failed to live up to the urgency of the times with their efforts. I hope Kerry fires the lot of them and replaces them with good people, but at this point it may be too late. I do think there is enough time to turn things around, but I don't think that the Democrats are taking this election seriously, just like they failed to do with Al Gore in 2000.