General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Rice under fire from left as Kerry's name won't go away [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)He wouldn't tolerate any bring-the-troops-home language in the platform and wouldn't let people hold up peace signs and banners at the convention-all of which was pointless in political terms, because he already KNEW that nobody who still backed the war agreed with the Democratic Party on anything by then...that support for the war was strictly right-wing at that juncture.
Being "humble" on a trip to Pakistan hardly makes up for that. It's not as though having troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan was somehow progressive so long as they were kept there by a president who didn't act like "a viceroy".
He could have won as the peace candidate, but he wouldn't let the American people have that choice. Being a "humble" hawk is sort of like being a nice axe murderer. And "we can do it better" isn't "stop the war".
All John Kerry had to do to win in 2004 was to be the man he'd been in 1971...but he didn't have the guts to do that anymore. He just caved in to the status quo.