The Seattle Post-Intelligence called it a variation of “the operation was a success but the patient died,” others weren’t so nice. They were referring to the upbeat assessment of the ill-fated 2004 campaign for the White House given by Sen. John Kerry during a 34-minute speech to 750 members of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

In what might be part of an effort to try again for the presidency in 2008, the Massachusetts Democrat stressed to a national gathering of Democratic state legislators the importance of rebuilding the party by having it strengthen its grass roots “and fight even harder for what we believe in.”

“We don’t need some great lurch to the right or lurch to the left or redefinition of the Democratic Party. The last thing America needs is a second Republican Party,” Kerry told the luncheon audience of 750 state lawmakers at the Westin Seattle Hotel. They are here to attend the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The former presidential nominee was short on naming shortcomings of his failed 2004 bid but long on saying what it did right, saying the party ran “the strongest grass-roots effort in the history of the Democratic Party,” gained 10 million more votes than any previous Democratic presidential campaign, and “actually exceeded our own targets in every precinct in America.”

In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Kerry was asked about his possible 2008 presidential plans:

“I don’t have a timeline. I’m just going to go out and see what we can do about ‘06 (midterm congressional elections), try to be as helpful as possible, and then begin to make some judgements.”

He drew a standing ovation when he remarked:

“The president said the other day that we ought to be teaching ‘intelligent design’ in our schools. I think we ought to be getting some intelligent design in our policy in Iraq.

Independent Sources isn’t sure the reaction that Kerry’s next statement got, but to us it sounded like another classic Kerry moment:

“We have to improve the ground operation and understand what the stakes are.”

Is Kerry implying that in the 2004 Presidential election the Democratic Party didn’t know that the stakes were?  

Notwithstanding the coverage of the speech in the mainstream media, Independent Sources prefers Wizbang’s summary, which we will paraphrase:

Sadly, from the comments made by people like Sen. Kerry and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, it appears as though the Democrats have no interest in being an opposition party that has ideas of its own outside of knee-jerk obstruction and opposition to everything the Republicans do. 

…as well as GOP Bloggers description of today’s Democratic Party:

[A] rag-tag collection of super-rich lefties held aloft by conspiracy-theorist left-wing screwballs.

Update: Kerry implies Terrorism distracted voters from focusing on Democratic Party issues.

technorati: kerry 2008 election

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 20th, 2005 at 9:24 pm by Insider and is filed under Election 2008 Live Team Coverage!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.