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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
On the road with Sen. John Kerry in must-win New Hampshire, as he fires his campaign manager, punches up his stump speech, and slashes harder at Howard Dean. But he's still trailing badly, and time is running out.
Nov 11, 2003 | Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, entering what he acknowledges are the "late innings" of a crucial primary struggle here against Howard Dean, made an impassioned pitch for support last week to employees at the headquarters of Liberty Mutual insurance company. He didn't talk for long. "I really want to have a conversation with you," he said. "I want all of you to look into my eyes and into my gut and make a decision if I'm different. I want you to test me."
Kerry hit the Bush administration for having the "one of the dumbest, most inept, most arrogant foreign policies" he's ever seen. Then he slammed Dean. "I haven't been flipping and flopping because I'm running for president," he said, derisively referring to his archrival. He asked for the audience to "judge him on his fights."
And then, in a private conversation with the event organizer, he quietly pleaded for something else: patience. "Yep," he said, nodding grimly. "We've got to get cranking a little bit."
But Kerry doesn't have much more time for patience. Trailing Dean by double digits in New Hampshire with just nine weeks until that crucial primary election, the Massachusetts senator is finally acting with some urgency, shaking up his staff, trimming his garrulous stump style, and launching daily attacks on Dean.
On Sunday Kerry replaced campaign manager Jim Jordan with Massachusetts-based Democratic activist Mary Beth Cahill, who worked for the women's group Emily's List and Sen. Edward Kennedy. The move is believed, in part, to be an effort to move the campaign's center of influence from Washington, where Jordan was based, to Kerry's hometown of Boston. But Jordan played a central role in building the Kerry campaign, and it's not yet clear how the staffers who are loyal to him will react to his replacement.
That move came amid major stylistic adjustments, including a punchier stump speech -- one that borrows from his Senate colleague John McCain (fighting special interests) and former Gov. Dean (standing up!) -- as well as an increasingly direct and personal assault on Dean's record.
While the Kerry campaign has sought to make its adjustments, though, the Dean campaign has been surging, racking up key labor endorsements and compounding an already sizable fundraising advantage by opting to withdraw from public financing in order to avoid spending caps during the primary. In addition, Dean continues to sign up new volunteers and donors at an extraordinary rate.
During that time, Kerry's fundraising has slowed, his polls numbers have lagged and his campaign has generally failed to live to its once lofty expectations. Hence the late retooling of the campaign, which will either be remembered by historians as the beginning of the Kerry campaign's miraculous turnabout, or the death rattle of the most disappointing campaign of the 2004 election.
In an interview between campaign stops on Nov. 7, Kerry described his late-in-the-game improvements. "We're getting close to the playoffs," he said, twisting around in the shotgun seat of his campaign van to face his questioner. "It's the end of the season and you've gotta jack your game up. I know crystal clear what my agenda is, and I'm speaking it hard and fast."
The newer, trimmer version of the Kerry appeal has a more populist theme: combating "special interests," repealing the high end of the Bush tax cut, and delivering affordable healthcare and lower tuition to the middle class. He is less modulated -- gone is the 20-minute explanation of his votes on Iraq. And his criticisms are more direct. But the most noteworthy change is the all-out attack on Dean, from his positions on taxes, healthcare and guns to, yes, his "values."
Kerry's backers say they see a changed candidate, and they're glad. "I think he's finally shifting into campaign mode and out of senatorial mode," said Fred Hochberg, a former Clinton administration official and a key Kerry supporter in New York. "He's a much different campaigner than he was even three months ago." Hochberg thinks the change in leadership will be significant, and that Cahill, along with the New Hampshire campaign chair, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, would make necessary adjustments. "Adults are managing the campaign now who really know how to manage people ... And I think now with Mary Beth Cahill managing the campaign, it's going to be a much better reflection of who John Kerry really is."
But it was less than two months ago that Kerry shook up his staff the last time, when communications director Chris Lehane left the campaign -- he has since signed on with retired Gen. Wesley Clark -- and backers said that, too, heralded a new John Kerry. It's unclear whether this is the big campaign shakeup Kerry needs. The immediate reaction to the shift wasn't positive: An Associated Press story said that some on Kerry's staff were angered by the way he made the announcement -- on a conference call where he reportedly mispronounced the name of a staff member, talked while he was eating, and downplayed the impact of the change as "a one-day story" -- and that some were threatening to leave.
While Kerry's delivery has clearly improved since the beginning of the campaign -- at a New York fundraiser in March he barely coaxed applause from an audience of his own donors -- he still isn't drawing the sorts of crowds attracted regularly by Dean. He's also attracting little in the way of new donors, who have been discouraged by the faltering position of the campaign.
And even as he's improved his standing in some public polls since Zogby showed him trailing by a stunning 23 points in New Hampshire, the most recent one still shows him training by 14. That's a jump, but it could be too little, too late.
The Dean camp, for its part, is taking a dim view of Kerry's attempted resurgence. "Everything John Kerry is doing reflects one thing only: desperation," says campaign spokesman Steve McMahon. "Everything he has attempted so far hasn't had the impact that he hoped it would have. But instead of looking in the mirror, he's looking to blame other people. That's the first sign of a failing campaign."
In particular, he said, the move to replace Jordan was a disaster. "Jim Jordan can change a lot of things," he said. "The only thing he couldn't do is make John Kerry a candidate that voters want to embrace. The problem here is simple: The dogs just don't like the dog food."
