JK on the blogs - abbreviated edition
There have been many candidates in the last week for another JK on the blogs roundup which is coming, I promise. But today, I want to call your attention to a tour de force diary by AllDemsOnBoard at dailykos.
This in-depth review of JK’s life’s work is worth the time and I’ll guarantee you’ll learn something you didn’t know.
For instance, there’s the in-depth review of the 1991 Iraq War resolution debate and then there’s the insight into the Pepperdine speech. Then there’s MTD—you’ll definitely want to check out the definition of MTD.
So go enjoy this diary and then come back here and let us know about other items you’ve been reading in the blogosphere that the rest of us should check out.
7 Comments
New comments for this entry are closed.
This is a great diary. What struck me was the part about BCCI and Iran—how all the problems we have today were predicted by Kerry in 1991, when funds from Iran had gone to AQ Khan’s BCCI account.
Fantastic job, AllDemsOnBoard!
The diary is a valiant and scholarly achievement and it well deserves every recommendation. MTD should become part of the American vocabulary!
It is this kind of research, smarts and dedication to the truth that makes the blogosphere an essential tool of contemporary democracy.
This is the truth about John Kerry and it must be told every minute of every day by every one of us if we are to get the word out through the MTD interference.
A salute to AllDemsOnBoard and to the JK Blog for recognizing excellence in blogging.
Beautiful diary, allDemsonBoard. The facts, all the facts, laid out in elegant array. Beauty is truth, truth beauty: this diary is the ultimate example. An excellent reference, and model, for all of us.
We need to get JFK to reconsider and run for President in 2008! The other possible candidates are no where near his stature. Don’t let the “Swiftboat” tactics work again!!
Tom,
The Senator’s made his decision. It hurts more than I thought it would (I was kind of expecting this, for some reason). But, much as it pains me to lack his expertise and generosity in the upcoming race, it *is* his decision, and he’s made it, and there’s no going back.
This decision is gaining him political capital on the left, absurd though that is, because everybody’s so grateful to him for not running because he supposedly would have been such a bad candidate. It’s maddening to watch people on my own side getting manipulated by propaganda (I mean, if Senator Kerry was such a poor candidate, *why* were people panicking at his prospective run? I thought Joe Biden was a poor candidate, and I hardly wasted a keystroke on him. If the person in question is a bad candidate, they won’t win the primary, particularly in a year with numerous candidates, particularly if it’s somebody who’s already run. The whole “Oh, my God, Kerry might run and if he does we’re DOOMED” narrative was irrational at its heart, and clearly propagandistic, even if one granted the premise that the Senator wasn’t electable.) Which I didn’t.
When I think that he may well have given up his last chance to be President, that hurts a lot. Particularly since I believe a majority of us did choose him, and therefore he *is* President in my eyes and in the eyes of God—and in the eyes of the law, if those hadn’t been put out. But it’s possible that he—and we—might get another chance—and whether we do or not, he’s still our leader, and we still have work to do together. We still *are* together. I’m hanging on to that.
Peace,
Nobby
That Daily Kos diary by AllDemsOnBoard (which was, by the way, cross-posted at Democratic Underground where it reached a different subset of political bloggers as well) was a truly impressive piece of work—an extended omnibus collection of quotes, dates, facts, and analysis as broad, deep, and detailed as Mr. Kerry’s long career in the Senate itself.
And therein lies the rub, alas. Senators rarely end up getting elected president, or so goes the conventional wisdom, because the nature of the Senate requires that they address complex issues full of nuance and detail. The longer one serves in the Senate, the more one’s record of service gets freighted down by complicated and sometimes controversial votes.
It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. Legislative rules and procedures in the Senate can be quite arcane and confusing to outsiders (and to insiders, for that matter). The only way to have a voting record in the Senate that is short, simple, and not subject to easy misinterpretation by those who weren’t privy to the inner workings that produced it is to have no voting record in the Senate to speak of at all.
When it comes to national-level politics this conundrum tends to favor those with short and/or meaningless Senate records—Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards come to mind here—and it tends to aid those who seek to spin and distort their opponents’ voting records in order to twist public opinion against them. It’s an irrational and easily-manipulated system in many ways, but it’s the one we have and our duly-elected senators have to work within it.
That’s why such an impressive assemblage of information about Senator Kerry’s political history as the one that AllDemsOnBoard put together is important, because that level of detail can be necessary to refute the spins and distortions of those who would agitate against him based on his long record in the Senate.
That such a level of detail would be necessary to refute those spins and distortions in the public eye, though, is as inevitable as it is unfortunate. A career in the Senate that is any kind of a substantive career at all will invariably end up with plenty of baggage and barnacles piled up along its periphery.
The only way to do nothing in the Senate for which you can be blamed by somebody is to do nothing in the Senate at all. And since Mr. Kerry is not now and never has been the kind of man who can or will do nothing at all when he knows that action needs to be taken, well…
This is OT—but I haven’t seen what Senator Kerry’s position is on the Warner-Levin resolution. If he supports it, I’d like to know why. There is a fair amount of dismay among the netroots about it. I’m open to the idea that there is a good reason for supporting it. But Russ Feingold brings up some really good points against it (see his diary on DKos.) Especially disturbing is the way the resolution appears to say Bush’s Iraq policy, minus the surge, is just fine.
It looks, on the surface, like after tapping into our passion and commitment against the war, our dollars and our civic labor, the Democratic party is once again ignoring us.