Reply #22: He did not run as far as possible

[karynnj]

which would of course be not to mention it at all and not to support it. (Look at all but the 13 who voted for it) As, to 2004. if you looked at any polling in 2004, even amoung those who thought we should not have gone in - the majority were against the idea that we should just leave. In 2004, mentioning that some troops might leave as early as 2005 was gutsy.

Kerry's NYU plan came as close as possible - he also did think it would still be possible if he won to bring a measure of stability through an immediate summit. That, to me was the main think he said. The Republicans said Bush was for the same thing - yet the SFRC Senators, including some Republicans, were speaking of the absence of diplomacy as recently as last month. If it would have worked, things would be much better. If it didn't, Kerry would likely have done what he said in Oct 2005 and April 2006.

Kerry's goal was to win - if parsing the words differently than you would do made it more likely, then he did the right thing.

I did not lay out "nice assumptions", the NYU speech, that the Kerry campaign labelled as their definitive Iraq speech, exists - I think I fairly extracted reccomendations. The media did repeat Republican statements that Kerry's plan was Bush's - Bush did not have a speech to explain his. They were not the same. The only conjecture I made was that the Republicans did this to minimize the differences. (I think they tried to hide Bush's real plan and to make Kerry's seem less acceptable to Kerry's base by saying they were the same.)