July 30, 2004
Kerry Speech Reactions
Daniel Drezner thought the foreign policy critiques were solid and sane, although, as a free-trader, he has some problems with Kerry's rhetoric on out-sourcing.
Pejman Yousefzadeh wrote a long, thoughtful analysis of the speech and why he didn't like it, though he focused a bit too much on the style and the command for balloons.
John Joyner and Matthew Yglesias both "thought it was crap." Joyner also has a collection of other reactions at the end of his post worth checking out. Yglesias points though that his opinion doesn't matter.
Andrew Sullivan wrote a few posts about it where he derides Kerry for his personality, decides that the speech was decidedly liberal, but pleasantly optimistic.
Atrios says Kerry was "energetic, optimistic and persuasive" and, later, provides some labor union reactions.
Fabrice Rousselot writes that "I must say I was very impressed by Kerry's speech... he made himself look like a candidate who is completely presidential." Another French blogger, Pascal Riche, thought the speech was "the best of [Kerry's] political life, without a doubt."
Fafblog liked Kerry's plan to "hold true to our ideals with a thousand mighty robots."
Juan Cole gives the specifics of how Kerry's Iraq plan would work.
Michael Totten writes "[t]here has got to be some buyer’s remorse in the Democratic Party right now" as he compares Edwards's speech with Kerry's, which he says he'd "give.. a 50-50 grade on the content of his speech."
Over at Oxblog, Patrick Bolton did some live blogging of the speech.
Ezra Klein thought it was "the perfect speech for John Kerry. It addresses every slander against him and absorbs the vulnerable edges into positive portions of a great man. This is phenomenal."
Finally, Kevin Drum thought it was "not bad, but not a slam dunk killer either."
Quite a mixed reaction, to be sure. Averaging them all out makes me even more confident of the B+ I gave him.