Last edited Mon Sep 5, 2016, 11:57 AM - Edit history (1)
After all elections - win or lose - everyone wants to set the narrative in a way that benefits them. In the case of Carville and many Clinton aligned people, the narrative pushed in 2005 and onward was that Kerry could not fight back -- and further that no one but the Clintons had succeeded in standing up against the right wing.
The fact is that polling, even before the election, showed that no one likely to have considered voting for Kerry believed the SBVT by November. What is true is that the SBVT did make his service controversial enough that Kerry's team did not use it in the run up to the election as much as they might have to define Kerry. (ie minimizing an asset, not creating a liability)
The gist of the Monday morning quarterbacking was that Kerry did not use scarce General election funds to put ads out in August when the SBVT first hit. The reason money was tight was that McCain/Feingold meant that Kerry had to stretch his money over the 13 weeks from his convention to the election, while Bush could use primary dollars until his convention and then use his general election money over 8 weeks. Had Kerry spent money and lost -- the complaint would have been that this was a big mistake and done because of his ego. In fact, the SBVT ads were less the problem than the media coverage given them and the media's allowing them to be caught in lie after lie without calling them discredited. Not strongly criticizing the purple heart bandaids at the RNC was essentially implying that Kerry somehow deserved that disrespect.
As to Carville, he was a big negative in 2004. As Kerry won the nomination, he and Begala spoke of Kerry as "anybody but Bush". They also made very snarky attacks on Bush that were cheered by the base here, but would have persuaded no one not already strongly against Bush. Never did either credit Kerry with anything ... other than contrasting his VN service with Bush's dereliction in the NG. Note that there were many things Kerry had done - as Senator and even Lt Governor that they could have spoken of. (One that is most ironic given that Carville praised SCHIP, which HRC importantly supported as First Lady, to the hilt in the 2008 campaign, ibut ignored the credit that Kennedy gave to Kerry for his work on Kerry/Kennedy, the precursor bill to SCHIP. Kennedy was the central person on this bill and he had worked with Kerry, who was on the Finance committee, to introduce a bill that was modelled after a MA program. Kennedy and Hatch greatly revised parts of that bill to get Republican support -- but large parts of it remained in SCHIP. Obviously, Carville thought SCHIP a major accomplishment, but somehow it wasn't important to him in 2004.
Additionally, in the general election, after he was excluded from the campaign, he was among the voices constantly complaining that the campaign was not following Clinton's advice and speaking of domestic issues. In fact, in September, the campaign's numbers improved after Kerry, taking the advise of his brother Cam Kerry, David Thorne and Teresa, gave speeches on both terrorism and Iraq - followed by Kerry really winning hands down the first debate on foreign policy. It was a national security/foreign policy election and Kerry had excellent credentials on these issues.
Compared to 2004, the Democrats, party people, pundits and politicians are FAR more out there for Clinton. My guess is that there really were some professional Democrats who early on had written 2004 off (Bush 2003 was at 60% favorability) and were happy to have Kerry, who was a good government/idealist and more liberal than Dean be the sacrificial lamb. Some likely thought that Kerry winning would mean that Democrats would be blamed for "losing Iraq" when Iraq did not become the glorious democracy that would influence all the Middle Eastern countries to follow in its footsteps. (In 2004, they likely would not have foreseen the 2008 market crash or Katrina) What they saw - and what did happen - was that the electorate would be very ready for change in 2008 ... when Hillary would run.
As to Bernie, I assume the Clinton campaign itself will dictate where he will speak. I assume that they will look at the dynamics of the states that he won and consider where he could speak to people that HRC and Kaine alone can't reach. Unlike many surrogates, Bernie needs to be used very carefully to preserve his value. He is seen as very honest and someone who says what he believes. His speech at the convention was a great example of what he can do. He made the case on many of his big issues that HRC had similar goals to him - they want to move in the same direction - and Trump wants to go the other way. Not mentioned were issues where they differed - like her more interventionist foreign policy. I believe Bernie when he said he will do everything he can to work against Trump.
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