the Greater Nomadic Council

Yeah, Kerry took a lot of flak for that earlier in the primaries. It seems that, at least for the Iowa caucus-goers, that's no longer an issue. Perhaps he's been forgiven? Or maybe the voters found him more attractive than Dean despite it? Either way, it's really only an issue in the primaries. Once the general election rolls around, his vote won't be a liability except when it comes to bringing around the hard-core leftists to vote for him. Even then, I think they would hold their noses and vote since the alternative is even worse.

That's all assuming he wins the nomination, of course. :)

For my part, it does reek of political calculation and is one reason that he's not my favorite candidate, but it's rather impractical to use a vote for or against the war as a litmus test at this point. Also, I find the insistence on consistency rather annoying. If someone changes their mind, they should be able to just say so and not get roasted for it. Not that Kerry has done that. He's just tried to evade the issue, which is rather weasely and not a good trait for a presidential candidate.

If you read the profile of his Vietnam time in this month's Atlantic, you'll be even more disturbed by his vote for the war. They publish some of his journal entries from his time as a boat captain there, including his sorry over the pointless (aren't they all?) death of one of his good friends in the fighting. He was able to see, at ground level, in its worst form, the exact sort of hypocrisy and foolishness that we were dealing with in the runup to Iraq, and he did nothing about it when he was in a position to.

I meant "sorrow" over his friend's death.

Just wanted to say "...and then we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the capital! HEEEYAAAAA!"

Anderson Cooper has been roasting Dean all day for that.

A lot of people have been. Because, you know, politicians must script all their emotions.

I finally heard the clip on NPR tonight . . . in fact, it occurred to me, I actually heard Dean's voice for the first time. It helped me understand the whole "Old people are afraid of him" thing. He's very rough-hewn. The speech, though, was actually pretty weird. Anyway. I'm drunk. I'll probably post to my site about it tomorrow.

Part of the political analysis that came out of Iowa was that Dean did badly because he was so anti-war. Kerry would be smarter to stay on domestic issues.

Really? I hadn't heard that. Do you mean that the caucus-goers thought that would hurt in the general election? I can't imagine them holding Dean's anti-war stance against him on philosophical grounds.

Mallarme,

I disagree about the voters forgetting Kerry's IWR hypocrisy--Rove will shove it down their throats until everyone is convinced he's another equivocating Clinton/Gore. Kerry's problem is that he's tried to have it both ways--attacking Dean for opposing IWR while pointing out Dean's support for Biden-Lugar. At the same time he has been painfully inconsistent over whether he supported the desicion to go in. He declared in the early debates he was glad, while saying in interviews we wouldn't have gone in (at all!) if he'd been president, and then he called attention to his 'correct' vote after Saddam was captured.

This is a potential disaster and one of the reasons why I think that despite Kerry's obvious strenghs, he has major liabilities. I find Edwards' IWR vote just as intellectually unacceptable (perhaps more so since he was on the Intell. Commitee with Graham and Durbin), but at least he has stuck with it, and in an tough interview with Tim Russert he said very clearly that although he probably wouldn't have decided to invade when we did, he would rather have had Bush's invasion than no invasion, which is clear enough. At the very least, Edwards has political intelligence, realizing early that flip-floppsing was out of the question on such an important issue. Furthermore he hasn't (irresponsibly) tried to use the issue for political gain and I believe like Kerry has (though Kerry was defending against Dean as the frontrunner and had more to lose than Edwards, but that's still no excuse for Kerry's hypocrisy and percieved flip-floppery on the issue).

Clark is also vulnerable on the issue, but I've read some of the incriminating documents and although he was obviously sucking up to the Republicans, his position of not wanting to go in when we did is pretty clear. But he will have to explain his "I would have never voted for this war" bullshit when it seems clear he would have.

And though according to exit polls Kerry and Edwards apparently recieved more "anti-war" votes than Dean did, it does seem the Democratic electorate is either more pro-war than we thought or pretty much indifferent to it now.

From Newsweek: "Arguments about the past: Dean stressed that Kerry and Edwards had voted for the Iraq war resolution; Gephardt tried to nail Dean for his old position on Medicare. Neither worked. Iowa Democrats were tired of fights about who was where on the war and when" It wasn't so much that they did not like his anti-war position but the voters did not care and were more interested in a candidate who was looking foward.

Cal, I think that Newsweek article is largely correct. The voters want the best candidate now, not based on their IWR vote.

Scott, I don't see how Rove could possible critique Kerry for his war vote. He might try and spin him as being insufficiently hawkish, but his vote is on the record as supporting the war which is what Kerry and others would focus on to defend him from those sorts of attacks. Anything more complicated is going to be too nuanced to fit into a good soundbite and hence, ineffectual. As for Kerry's naked political calculation, yes, that is a problem with him. It's one of the big reasons he's not my number one choice for the nomination. His claims that he was mislead by the Bush administration are completely disingenuous. If I, as a civilian, knew that the claims were bogus before the war, certainly Kerry did as well. He gambled that a "yes" vote would be more politically valuable than a "no" and may have lost.

It is reasonable to think that Kerry may have believed there were WMDs at the time but has changed his mind in the aftermath of the war and lack of WMD evidence. Bush would never have made the WMD claim if he had thought it was not true.

Perhaps... :)

Mallarme,

It's not Kerry's war vote, it's the contradictory and hypocritical ways he has spun it since then. There are plenty of sound bytes from speeches, debates, and interviews. Rove will use them.

Kerry's problem is not too much political calculation--it's shallow and confused political calculation.

Kerry's equating joining the National guard with going to jail or running to Canada should sit well with the military.What an Ass!