Of course, all the DC consultants that Kerry has probably ignored during the last months spew their venom. No big surprise here.
Two names only, and no surprise in any of them: Crowley from TNR and Lockaert. Guess who they support.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2623018&page=1
"John Kerry is not a very good politician," said Joe Lockhart, a senior adviser to Kerry during his presidential campaign. "Politicians who succeed and do well have great internal instincts and have a great ear for what works and what doesn't. John Kerry has neither. He's not a funny guy. He's not a natural guy. He is not someone who can pick up on the nuances of a daily political battle."
Lockhart says that Kerry, "like a lot of highly educated people," has trouble coming to terms with the fact that "something as important as electing a president or electing a Congress can turn on something so trivial, like a word left out of a joke."
"They take themselves and the process so seriously they have trouble dealing with the rest of the system, dealing with it in such a trivial, half-assed way," Lockhart said. "That's the reality of the situation. Does it make him somehow less of a person? No, I think it makes him more of a person. Does it make him a good politician? No, it doesn't make him a good politician."
That said, Lockhart added, "John Kerry is a good man, and that's why he has gotten as far as he has in politics. So when he says he was telling a joke, everyone should believe him."
"The Swift Boat attacks reshaped John Kerry's view of politics," Lockhart said. "I think he thought that politics was a cerebral business, where if you made an honest, just case, people would believe you, and he found out that politics is an emotion-based business where facts and fiction often get mixed up and good fiction often trumps good facts."
Since then, Kerry has been determined not to let that ever happen again, not to be "Swift Boat"-ed.
"He has since that campaign kind of been like a guy in the weight room, training and building up his muscles, spoiling for the next fight," Crowley said. "It explains why when there's a faint whiff of something similar in the air, he wants to go out and get it right. But the problem is I think now he's overreacting. He's overcompensating."