September 4, 2004
AN ICEBERG?:
Worried Democrats Urge Kerry to Start Revving Up Campaign (ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN, 9/04/04, NY Times)
President Bush roared out of his New York convention last week, leaving many Democrats nervous about the state of the presidential race and pressing Senator John Kerry to torque up what they described as a wandering and low-energy campaign.In interviews, leading Democrats - governors, senators, fund-raisers and veteran strategists - said they had urged Mr. Kerry's campaign aides to concentrate almost exclusively on challenging President Bush on domestic issues from here on out, saying he had spent too much of the summer on national security, Mr. Bush's strongest turf.
As the Labor Day weekend began, Mr. Kerry appeared to be heeding the advice with an aggressive attack on Mr. Bush's economic leadership. But many supporters also said they wanted to see Mr. Kerry respond more forcefully to the sort of attacks they said had undercut his standing and to offer a broad and convincing case for his candidacy.
There's some good advice: answer the attacks on your fitness to lead the war; don't talk about the war. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 4, 2004 7:42 PM
Oh, but while you do that, Senator, we need to spend Labor Day weekend obsessing about Bill Clinton and a hurricane.
Posted by: David Cohen at September 4, 2004 10:27 PMThe fundamental problem Kerry faces is that a tough stance on the War on Terrorism is the threshhold that must be crossed before the voters will listen to him about anything else. A wimpy stance on al-Qaeda, for example claiming that we must fight a more sensitive war, is as much a disqualifier as a wimpy stance on the Soviets during the Cold War.
Posted by: Bart at September 4, 2004 11:00 PM