From the American Muckraker
All the coventional wisdom about Thursday being Kerry's last chance to salvage a nosediving campaign sounds like just so much horse manure to me.
In reality Thursday is Kerry's first chance to confront the boy king head to head.
And Thursday is not about scoring debating points. How do you debate an idiot pumped full of vague talking points and focus-group tested buzz words? It's like punching a pillow, there's nothing solid to hit. Thursday is about Kerry defining Kerry, and putting the lie to the most cynical, viciously negative presidential campaign in modern political history.
BC04 and their cohorts have already called Kerry everything in the book in order to drag him down: traitor, opportunist, fake war hero, liar, flip-flopper, wimp, elitist, the Osama bin-Laden candidate, you name it.
In politics if you throw enough mud, some of it's bound to stick. Some has. Kerry's negatives are up, and because he has not responded in kind, measure for measure, some people are wondering if he's got the right stuff to fight back and be the tough guy they want in the job.
To me there's no doubt Kerry has the stones. Kerry's not Dukakis. Kerry's not Gore. The question for Kerry has always been how and when to fight back. Obviously, and I believe wisely, he has chosen not to resort to the smear or the dirty trick.
Ironically, this has made him look weak to some while being hammered relentlessly by a wrecking crew of Republican thugs. And, of course, our feckless corporate media have promoted the view of a campaign in disarray, which hasn't helped.
But now Kerry has a chance to turn the wimp meme on its head, positioning himself as a resolute, determined, common-sensical commander in chief. On Thursday in a discussion of foreign policy, it won't be about who you'd want to have a beer with. It'll be about who you most trust to protect the country in perilous times.
Bush's weaknesses are his long list of failures in Iraq, his continuing inability to grasp the reality of the situation on the ground there, his mulish refusal to admit mistakes, America's dismal standing with its allies, the overstretch of our military, and the very real prospect that things won't get better unless we make fundamental changes.
Kerry needs to attack on this line. He has to link the failures of the Iraq debacle to the overall effort against terrorism--and show that Bush cannot claim success against terrorism at the same time he's creating more and more terrorists through an Iraq policy gone horribly wrong.
Kerry needs to seize the opportunity to show that staying the course means there will be no workable plan for making America safer; that four more years of stubbornly following the same policies will only make America more isolated; that without the strong support of our allies, the burden will fall entirely on us; that with our military tied down in Iraq, we will be unable to deal effectively with real WMD threats from North Korea and Iran; and he needs to tie the incredibly unpopular Dick Cheney to Bush every single chance he gets.
It is Kerry's first chance to directly show up George W. Bush for the empty suit he is. I'm betting he will.
Shameless self-promotion: see my other post on my blog, the American Muckraker