Reply #14: I thought [View All]

[WilliamPitt]

it was maybe the best speech I've seen him give. From the article that is coming out later today:

The speech delivered on Saturday by Senator Kerry was as important for its timing as it was for its content. Kerry is by far and away not the first Democratic politician to demand a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq; indeed, he has with this speech joined a long and important line of officeholders who have worked for more than a year to apply pressure on the Bush administration regarding this issue. He is, however, the highest-profile Democrat to do so.

As for the timing, it can be argued that Kerry chose the perfect moment to speak as he did. Every poll on the planet has Bush’s popularity scraping historic lows, the chief millstone around his neck being his handling of Iraq. A number of the falsehoods that were used to trick the American people into war – the uranium from Niger claims, the biological weapons labs claims, the attacks upon whistleblowers – have been widely exposed in the last month. Previous attempts by Democratic officeholders to push the issue of withdrawal have withered on the vine, but given Kerry’s high visibility and the timing of his remarks, a breakthrough on this discussion may have finally been achieved.

All of this, of course, remains to be seen, and Kerry’s ability to motivate the base after the 2004 election remains suspect. Many within the Democratic grassroots are leery of anything having to do with this particular Senator. Resentment lingers over his ‘Yes’ vote on the Iraq War Resolution, and much of the base still simmers over his decision to concede the 2004 election even as reports of widespread irregularities and fraud flooded out of Ohio. If he does choose to run for president again in 2008, he will find a good portion of the Democratic activist base eyeing him with suspicion.

Senator Kerry said, in an interview conducted after his speech on Saturday, that he has learned from the mistakes of his 2004 campaign. The jury will be out on this for some time to come, but it is possible that we are witnessing the actions of a different man than the one who campaigned so cautiously and accepted defeat so rapidly. At a minimum, Kerry has bolstered the drive towards an accounting on Iraq, and has pushed the widening demand for a withdrawal of US forces, for the time being, to the forefront of discussion. This, in and of itself, is worthy of note.