Before last night I thought Edwards' chances of catching Kerry were close to zero. Now I'm not so sure. It's not just Edwards' strong 2nd place finish - after all 2nd place is still 2nd place. It was the speeches afterwards. Smartly, Kerry bumped Edwards off the media stage. He succeeded in shutting off an effective speaker, but unfortunately that meant making us listen to him.
MESSAGE TO OUT OF TOUCH DEMOCRATS -- We do not want to hear a laundry list of issues that your pollsters tell you Americans are concerned about - for the following reasons.
- It's boring.
- Americans are not that stupid. We know that someone who thinks they can promise every American great health care, a great education, a job for everyone in every industry, and good looking, well behaved kids is a liar and we don't like liars.
- For better or worse the Reagan revolution happened and the subtext behind the typical liberal laundry list "I'm going solve all your problems" speech is "I'm going to raise your taxes so gov't can solve all your problems" and even Bush haters don't want their taxes raised because the economy is tough right now for avg people.
Yes I want to know how candidates stand on key issues and I generally want to hear the opposite of how Bush/Cheney is going about it. But more importantly I want to know who you are, your basic values and principles, do I relate to you? Because deep down voters want to elect someone like themselves.
Gore should have won easily. He had 8 years of peace and prosperity behing him. He was a boy scout. He was the best of Clinton w/o the slickness. Though considered boring, he had a history of winning campaigns. But then he stood up at the democratic convention and gave his laundry list speech and continued giving it throughout the campaign. He opened himself up to the liberal charge and the boring charge, and even a pompous first born from a republican dynasty came across as the more populous, blue collar candidate. I see Kerry making the same mistake.
If you could do a "character" or "substance" catscan of the candidates, I think Kerry would show more density inside than Edwards. But if Kerry doesn't change his stump speech soon, I think the ABB crowd should switch to Edwards as our best bet.