Just when I think I couldn't possibly manage even MORE respect for John Kerry
Here is is, giving me all the more reason to find even more, in the reserve.
He is magnificent.
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...Diplomacy. 🇺🇸 That was a foreign concept for GWB.
Very proud of Secretary John Kerry! 
He efficiently conducted Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, helped negotiate a power sharing deal in Afghanistan after the disputed 2014 Presidential election, helped negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, and was instrumental in eliminating Syria's chemical weapons (and avert a possible U.S.-led military strike).
Now this.
Pretty good CV to date.
Proud to be a Kerrytraveler. 
You deserved it!
I worked hard, too (not as hard as you, though), but my most substantive contributions were early in the campaign, in the primaries, before the Iowa caucus. Unexpectedly (a friend gave me his ticket at the last minute because he was too sick to go), I landed a ticket for Kerry's Hardball college-tour appearance, in October 2003. Until that moment, I was just your average disgruntled Democrat appalled by W., with the vague notion that the time had come for me to really Do Something to help my party beyond voting and giving $. I knew very little about Kerry until that moment- but listening and watching him that evening, I suddenly thought -- I can still remember the feeling of shock --"wow, he's the Real Thing". I was totally in, from that moment on.
It was fun in those early days: small groups of people working the phones, paying no mind to the nay-saying pundits, people just helping someone they believed in.
(At the Democratic convention the next year, James Carville described Kerry's pre-Iowa political prospects in those early days): Kerry was "not only toast, but buttered on both sides"
.
But Kerry kept at it, anyway.
He's still got that persistence, and it is really paying off in his courageous diplomacy.
Thinking about my pre-Iowa experiences, and all the current Stuff , on DU and elsewhere, about the 2016 presidential candidates , it's a good reminder that , for 2016, it's still early days. Lots of stuff can happen between now and the Dem convention and the Nov 2016 election, and lots WILL happen. I keep using the metaphor of roller-coaster ride, but I think it will be wilder than that. A roller-coaster does after all have some predictability: for all the up and down, it DOES nevertheless ride on a track. Judging from events so far, this election seems like it will be wilder than that -- so far it feels like there's no track at all.
