Walz dumps Kerry?
Posted at 8:45 AM on November 1, 2006
by Bob Collins
(25 Comments)
According to the Mankato Free Press, John Kerry has canceled his participation in a rally in Mankato.
He can't tell a joke, but he can still take the political temperature and his appearing in Minnesota right now is nothing but a huge albatross around any DFL candidate's neck so soon after his gaffe. And I'm sure they know it.
Are you can good at reading between the lines?
Walz communication director Meredith Salsbery said Kerry canceled his visit to keep the focus on the issues and away from Kerry’s comments and McCain’s response.She wouldn’t comment on whether Walz asked Kerry not to campaign for him, but said the decision was ultimately the senator’s choice.
If Walz didn't ask Kerry to pull out, then a campaign manager answers "no" to that question.
There's certainly a debate on what Kerry said he meant and what others say he meant, but right now John Kerry is radioactive to a candidate in a close race.
Comments (25)
Who on earth other than Rush Limbaugh, Drudge, Tony Snow and their usual band of faux news “reporters” and right wing bloggers (who will discount the very words they heard, stich their fingers in their collective ears and sing la-la-la when explanation is given) consider Kerry to be radioactive?
And if Walz’s Communication Director says that Kerry cancelled and Kerry says that Kerry cancelled, and all the evidence on the matter points to Kerry canceling, why are you suggesting that it wasn’t Kerry that cancelled? One can only imagine where we would we be if all the media exercised such cynical and suspicious behavior toward the people who actually have been running this country.
“Looking into things that really matter is just too much hard work, so let’s jump on John Kerry bungling a joke and repeat GOP talking points!”
Yes, that's what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that John kerry had some conversations that might've gone something like this....
Candidate: John, I appreciate your work and I understand what you were REALLY trying to say, but I think it's not a good idea to be on stage with you right now.
Kerry: OK, I'll cancel.
Candidate: Well that's your decision to make.
I'm suggesting that any Democrat who wants to make a stand against the lalalalalala you describe by bringing in John Kerry to show support for HIM, has got the playbook down pat for the disaster that has been the Democrats on Election Day.
Here's the point. It doesn't MATTER whether you believe John Kerry or you believe Tony Snow. the only things that MATTERS is thta SOME people believe John Kerry and some people believe Tony Snow and the issue is going to be on the front pages.
The best thing the Democrats can do is get it OFF the front page and the only way you do that is throw John Kerry overboard.
Is that right? Is that fair. It doesn't MATTER. For Democratic candidates like Walz, what matters right now is winning an election.
John Kerry made a HUGE mistake and it's not Walz' -- or any other candidate's - job to help him undo it. It's Walz's job to do what's best for the Walz campaign.
The fact that Kerry has canceled his entire day of campaigning should be a good sign for Democrats, since it shows that they're finally beginning to understand what's involved in winning elections.
Politics is a tough business.
People can make nice to John Kerry later. Right now -- today -- he brings nothing to a candidate and if he brings nothing to a candidate, there's no point.
Let' him stay home and dial for dollars.
Remember how the late P.W. Botha got apartheid off the nightly news? He banned TV cameras. If John Kerry retreats to Louisberg Square and doesn't come out, there's no pictures of him and no microphones and the story disappears.
For the Dems, this story needs to disappear.
Please, Mr. Kerry, stand away from the microphone!
Some people just don't seem to be able to understand they missed their chance.
Bob's right, but it is a shame....Kerry had kind of been on a mini-comeback and that's over now....I was glad that he came back swinging with his comments yesterday....maybe the Dems finally do know how to fight now.....where was that in 2004??
"For the Dems, this story needs to disappear."
And for the GOP, the story of 105 dead needs to disappear and I am disappointed that MPR seems more than willing to assist in making news about a bungled joke take the headlines.
MNObserver, you have decide what is important to you right now.
If it's winning an election -- and I assume it is -- then you have to concentrate ONLY on that race you want to win.
Want to argue Iraq? Fine, you don't NEED John Kerry to make your argument. Want to rehash 2004? Wait a few weeks and throw 2006 into the mix.
And by the way, MPR News hasn't done a single story -- at least one that's made it online as far as I know -- about John Kerry and his bungled joke.
In fact, I can find only one local script -- the 11 a.m. headlines (also availableonline in audio form) that mentions Kerry has canceled his Minnesota appearances.
THIS is what Kerry meant when he talked about a distraction. You've been distracted from whatever race you are interested in, to kick around what MPR is and what MPR isn't doing about Kerry's "joke."
As for Polinaut, yeah, I pointed out Kerry's joke because that what Polinaut does, points out.
You may not like it -- presumably because your guy is presently the target -- but that's what I do.
The news here is that the Democratic candidates that Kerry was to support -- presumably -- get that and smarter heads prevailed instead of spending the next 6 days trying to win another skirmish while losing the war.
If there weren't an election in 6 days, and thus more time for followup stories, an interesting "behind the news" analysis might explore the average education of our rank and file soldiers. In other words, is Kerry wrong to imply that achieving a good education will keep someone out of the Iraqi civil war?
Some did, Bri, although you may not like the source.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm
Your last sentence, by the way, suggests to me that you believe Kerry's comments were not a joke, but were a reference to the education level of he soldiers.
True?
"And by the way, MPR News hasn't done a single story..."
Bob, if you don't understand that as the politics blog you are part of MPR news, you probably still don't understand blogs...
Well, I'll add stupidity to my list of character flaws, Rew. Whoops! Wait a sec, I already had it on the list.
I've been pretty upfront with people since the day I started Polinaut as to what it is. A news report, it ain't.
What it is IS a look at political strategies and the behaviors of people consuming political news. As far as what's on it and what subjects I choose, well, that's me.
If you think I'm going to ignore one of the stupidest things ever uttered in the last days of a campaign...on the eve of a day in which the guy was to come to Minnesota to be -- at least for a day -- the face of DFLers in Minnesota -- well, how does that square with the Polinaut slogan of "looking for intelligent life in the political universe?"
The Kerry gaffe is a great chance to take the temperature of people. For example, do you think everyone in the crowd when he told his joke knew what he was talking about? Everyone laughed and clapped. What were they laughing and clapping at? Unscripted events in a world of scripted, poll-driven, polished, strategized events is exactly the kind of thing that reveals who we are and what we think.
Keep in mind, it's not my job to just write about stuff that helps one candidate or another. By next week, I will have -- oh, if only I could quote Peter Hutchinson -- (fill in verb here) every candidate in Minnesota.
Fine with me.
I'm guessing, though, that the bloggers who read Polinaut know the difference between a blog and a news report. Just a guess, though.
Bob says "Your last sentence, by the way, suggests to me that you believe Kerry's comments were not a joke, but were a reference to the education level of he soldiers.
"True?"
From the quotes I've heard, he encouraged kids to stay in school to avoid getting stuck in Iraq. I've also seen people claim that he was actually talking about Bush, not the troops, but the limited clips I've seen/heard don't reflect that context.
Have I been played by the media that hasn't given the whole context?
He was on Imus this morning just before 8. He said, "of course I botched the joke." And then MSNBC cut to some political show with two talking heads talking about what it means. Surprisingly, the Democrats thought it meant Bush. The Republicans thought he was talking about the troops. Go figure.
I'd have rather heard Kerry and Imus going at it, myself.
The heritage report seems to support the hypothesis that recruiting standards have fallen, in terms of education level.
"In previous years, the Department of Defense adhered to a policy of accepting no more than 2 percent of recruits scoring in Category IV on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT), the standardized test administered to all recruits to determine eligibility. Category IV indicates that the individual scored between the 21st and 30th percentiles. Congress accepted a revised policy of up to 4 percent to allow for flexibility in the current recruiting market."
Bob,
That was a little more defensive than I expected.
What I meant is - you're not a music blog or spots blog, you're a politics blog focusing on things that happened recently in politics. That makes you news. You aren't reacting to historical events, your are reacting to current events. Hence news. And you are on the MPR site. Hence, you are an MPR news blog.
The original allegation was, " MPR seems more than willing to assist in making news," the intent of which was to suggest some sort of institutional infatuation with the Kerry story, when -- in fact -- one person out of 500 employees -- or whatever the number is -- dared write about it.
In that allegation was one that suggested MPR was "making news."
I'm not very good at math -- or much of anyting else -- but let me try this
Me=MPR MPR=News News=What's happening What's happening= News story.
No news coverage emanated from my writing. Hence, MPR did not make news. And hence, I did not make news.
A more accurate statement would have been "Bob Collins is more than willing to assist in pointing out that John Kerry did a very stupid thing and Democratic candidates all over the country were slapping themselves in the forehead, screaming at the TV, "idiot!"
'cuz I think they were.
"The original allegation was, " MPR seems more than willing to assist in making news," the intent of which was to suggest some sort of institutional infatuation with the Kerry story, when -- in fact -- one person out of 500 employees -- or whatever the number is -- dared write about it."
No, the original allegation is that you still don't seem to understand that even if you are just one guy writing some stuff, and you are in complete control of everything that comes up on the site, that still doesn't mean that you aren't a part of the news media. Good blogs, bad blogs, independent or bought and paid for, little or big, if they cover current events they are part of news media.
I'm not in complete control of everything that comes up on the site. I'm in complete control of Polinaut.
But I don't assign stories or have anything to do with determining what stories MPR does. If I did, trust me, you WOULD have seen a story -- and perhaps heard one -- about how Minnesota candidates scrambled to delink themselves with John Kerry.
Heck of a good story, actually.
right. so you are providing alternate news, because MPR didn't cover it.
All I'm trying to say is like it or not, you (bloggers) chose what is newswhen they blog. A blog a medium for dispensing news.
//right. so you are providing alternate news, because MPR didn't cover it
Reread the last 5 words of that sentence and then tell me why you used those words when your original point suggested that MPR did cover it because I did?
See, now I'm just messing with ya, Rew. (g)
When I hear the radio announcer during the afternoon drive time on the news station hyping a blog written by folks from the news team and under the MPR domain and it deals with political happenings, then yeah, the blog does take on a quality of being an arm of the news team reporting that stuff generally called news.
As Bob would say, silly me.
The radio folks are "hyping" Polinaut? Wow. Cool.
But let me ask you this.
Is THIS conversation we're having right now news? Is it journalism? If you call me on the phone, is that news?
Clearly you have a different view of what a blog is than I do. I think it's a conversation. You think it's a news report. I view it more as the political version of Mystery Science Theater.
After next Tuesday, it won't be an issue as I won't be writing it anymore and it passes to the folks who think more like you.
One isn't necessarily better than the other. But as the thinking takes root that this is somehow journalism -- and I presume it will -- it will become far less interesting, imho, because there won't be conversations and you won't read anything you couldn't get somewhere else.
And people who "blog" will be afraid -- very afraid -- to write or say anything that departs the "norms" of a broadcast or "news".
Yeah, that's what we need. More of THAT.
MSM has a chance, in its blogs, to do something different than what it does in or on its core medium. But if the end result is just to take stuff that's over there and plop it down on a blog ...well.... it's just as well I'm not part of that because I think that's a terrible idea.
"I view it more as the political version of Mystery Science Theater."
So will we from now on, I guess.
And to the readers: I've never called Bob on the phone. But I've given - and I'll bet Bob's conducted - a good many interviews on the phone. I've also taken sobbing phone calls from my children, screamed at my spouse, scheduled haircut appointments, and conducted dicey negotiations over the telephone. Some are news, some are not. Why is the device of communication determinative of what's going on?
Because the medium is the message.
Besides, one has to recognize, I think, that the methods of attaining and consuming "news' is changing. Holding someone using one medium to a standard applied to another medium, seems restrictive and not terribly progressive.
People are getting their news from the Daily Show. They're getting their news via comedy and, frankly, I htink it's a legitimate source of news, partof which is the result of it being on cable, where some rules don't apply that apply to over-the-air.
I think the real issue here is the blogs have --a nd rightly so -- given a voice to people who don't have one or haven't had one... and there's, perhaps, a concern that if the major media also get s avoice in this medium...it will, again, drown out the previously voiceless.
I get that. But every other medium has and will be overrun by the major media. When major media comes to the blogs -- as they are -- do you want to have a voice and be part of a conversation? or do you just want it to be a one-way street?
"After next Tuesday, it won't be an issue as I won't be writing it anymore and it passes to the folks who think more like you."
Dang, Bob - first you leave the Bleacher Bums, now you're leaving Polinaut? What, are you some kind of clubhouse cancer?
(Kidding! Sorry, I botched the joke! It was a Marbury reference, I swear!)
Seriously, though, I'm a bit disappointed to hear it - I felt you were always the most interesting voice among the Bums in 2005, and while I haven't been a rabid consumer of Polinaut, I have swung by and enjoyed your take on things.
Here's hoping your next stop, wherever it is, is a good one.
David:
The Twins, frankly, bored me in 2005 (nice timing, eh?) and nobody wanted to hear about the Cleveland Indians.
I started Polinaut as an election year blog. I don't think anybody -- certainly not me -- thought it would be as popular as it's become. But it has. It's the most visited page -- other than the home page -- on what used to be the "news domain."
So we couldn't very well pull the plug after Election Day, even though I'm not that interested in writing about stuff that has nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of campaigns.
Fortunately, that's not a problem as Mulcahy (former of The Capitol Letter which will be rolled into Polinaut) and Tom Scheck are.
Assuming I'm still working here in late '07 -- and I'm surprised I still am after Polinaut -- I would expect to come back somewhere and blog about the '08 races.
Mike, Tom, and I have very different approaches to Polinaut, so after being away for a year, my guess is me returning would be a shock to the system for folks; probably too much for MPR.
In the meantime, I'm hoping to work on creating some new applications that we can use on the Campaign 2008 Web site (which I hope to have done by early summer) that takes us in a new direction of providing information in campaigns; that utilizes, but doesn't depend on ... radio stories for vibrancy and timliness.
Or not.
| November 2006 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | ||
Master Archive
Recent Entries
- Dayton suggests there's always OT for stadium solution
- January tax collections below forecast
- Dayton vetoes tort bills, rips GOP
- The Daily Digest (Dayton to veto tort reform laws, 17k in MN helped by Foreclosure settlement, House passes STOCK Act)
- Ellison helps launch Democratic campaign finance push
- DFL debt deeper than disclosed in December
- House passes STOCK Act with near unanimous support
- The Daily Digest
- Cravaack calls HHS birth control order "an act of federal aggression"
- Nolan wins DFL Straw Poll in Minnesota's 8th District
Categories
- 2011 Freshman class
- 2011 Shutdown
- 2012
- 2012 U.S. Senate race
- 2012 U.S. Senate Race
- Bachmann fact check
- Campaign 2008
- Campaign 2008: MN Legislature
- Campaign 2008: President
- Campaign 2008: U.S. MN CD1
- Campaign 2008: U.S. MN CD2
- Campaign 2008: U.S. MN CD3
- Campaign 2008: U.S. MN CD4
- Campaign 2008: U.S. MN CD5
- Campaign 2008: U.S. MN CD6
- Campaign 2008: U.S. Senate
- Campaign 2010
- Campaign 2010: Minnesota Governor
- Campaign 2010: U.S. House
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD1
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD2
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD3
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD4
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD5
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD6
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD7
- Campaign 2010: U.S. MN CD8
- Daily Digest
- Iowa
- Mark Dayton
- Marriage Amendment
- Michele Bachmann
- MN Legislature
- MPR in D.C.
- Pawlenty fact check
- Pawlenty travel
- PoliGraph
- Political parties
- Recount
- Recount 2010
- Redistricting
- State Government
- Tim Pawlenty
- U.S. House
- U.S. Senate
- Vikings stadium
About Poligraph
The feature examines statements made by Minnesota politicians and checks them for accuracy. Based on data analysis, document reviews and interviews with non-partisan analysts, statements are rated either true, false or inconclusive. PoliGraph is a collaboration between Minnesota Public Radio News and the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. MoreServices
In The Spotlight
-
Sound Learning
Looking for ways to ensure your students are doing quality research from credible sources? Sound Learning is a launching point to Minnesota Public Radio's content on the Web. -
The Current Music Blog
Your daily note for good music, news and pop culture. With attempted jokes.
- Become a Member
- Member Connect Accounts
- Leadership Circle
- Sustaining Members
- Member Discounts
- Become a Sponsor
- Tax Information
- Planned Giving
- Vehicle Donation
- Donate Stock
