May 12, 2004
GET YOUR PICKS IN:
Kerry a no-show when it counts (Boston Herald, May 12, 2004)
A Democratic election-year favorite - extending federal unemployment benefits for six months - went down the drain yesterday by one vote.And guess who wasn't in the Senate chamber to put the measure over the top?
Proponents needed 60 senators to support the procedural move to get the extension considered. It failed 59-40.
That's a very good thing. The unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent last month. Employers added nearly 300,000 new jobs. Almost 900,000 new jobs have been created so far this year. This is no time to discourage those on the unemployment rolls from looking for work.
The problem for John Kerry is you sure can't run against President Bush on the ``jobless recovery'' issue when the recovery is no longer jobless. And it's even harder to castigate Bush and the Republican Congress for blocking benefits for the unemployed when you're a no-show.
Be sure to enter the BROTHERS JUDD 2004 KERRY RESIGNATION PROGNOSTATHON quickly. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 12, 2004 8:45 AM
Heh. That said, the Boston Herald isn't considered the top of the media chain. It will take articles in the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc. to convince Kerry to resign.
If Bush is smart and gets wind of when Kerry is going to make his announcement he would come up with a big announcement of his own (his VP change? foreign policy change?) to offset positive media coverage of Kerry's resignation.
Kerry and his campaign seems determined to learn nothing from Dole '96, and an eagerness to add new stupidities as well.
If the Republican had any smart leaders, they'd keep bringing up votes like this for him to miss.
Maybe what they learned from Dole is that wartime heroics don't beat incumbents with good economies, and Kerry wants to keep his day job.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 13, 2004 1:53 AM