|
|
|
« The War at Home | Main | Today's Question for Which There Is No Good Answer » October 31, 2006Sheer BrillianceI don't think that John Kerry's joke to students of Pasadena City College is really that big a deal. According to the report, Kerry told the students that "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Can that be seen as disparaging to the troops? Sure, but I don't really think that was Kerry's intent. I'm quite sure that his actual intent was to insult the President, which while still pretty juvenile, is par for the course in the Democratic Party these days. But given how tight next week's coming election promises to be, he really could have picked a better time to mangle his joke. (Note to Senators: you're just not funny. Learn to live with that. When you try to fight it, you just cause problems.) This feeds right into stereotypes about the Democratic Party and gives Republicans a great opportunity to pound the drum about a ridiculously minor issue in order to avoid important ones that don't redound to their advantage. Now the Democrats are going to lose a media cycle to dealing with a stupid joke. When Senator Kerry runs for the Democratic nomination in 2008, primary voters need to remember this kind of thing. Update: This is unlikely to help. Posted at October 31, 2006 02:18 PM
Comment policyI apologize for only allowing authenticated commenters, but comment spam overwhelms the site if I don't use those measures to prevent it. I reserve the right to delete any comment, although generally comments will only be deleted due to use of profanity or personal attacks on people. I have no objection to vigorous argument, but when name-calling begins, I'm putting a stop to it. In the immortal words of Eugene Levy, "People, people, let's stop this before somebody says something untrue!" If you want to call people names, I recommend you get your own blog. Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsWhen Senator Kerry runs for the Democratic nomination in 2008 Ack, say it ain't so. Even though I agree that he was almost certainly going after Bush and not the troops, here's hoping that this little faux pas helps to keep him far out of contention in '08. Posted by: kenb He needs to go away. That said, I think firing back was better than a non-apology apology. I'm heartened that the meta-narrative is already "GOP tries to change the subject on Iraq" Posted by: Pooh Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://andrewolmsted.com/nav-commenters.gif)