Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Springsteen isn't the first rock star to open for Kerry, but he's the biggest. Patti LaBelle sang the national anthem in Philadelphia Monday, Sheryl Crow opened for him in Las Vegas, and Carole King performed before Kerry arrived in Rochester, Minn., Wednesday. Jon Bon Jovi travels from rally to rally on Kerry's chartered 757. After performing an acoustic version of "Livin' on a Prayer" -- it's better than it sounds -- he exhorts fans to make a difference in what he invariably calls "these United States."
Kerry played in a rock 'n' roll band as a kid, and his personal assistant, Marvin Nicholson, is responsible for hauling the candidate's acoustic guitar off and on the plane each time the traveling campaign stops for the night. Kerry rallies begin with a recorded version of Springsteen's "No Surrender," and they usually end with U2's "Beautiful Day." At a rally Thursday morning in Toledo, the sound man paid tribute to the Red Sox' World Series win, cueing up Boston's "More Than a Feeling" as Kerry finished speaking.
For all the excitement over the Springsteen appearance, the Toledo rally was actually Kerry's best of the week. The University of Toledo's Savage Hall may be the ugliest auditorium in America, but an electrified crowd lit it up. Kerry took the stage wearing a Red Sox cap and soon had a few thousand supporters screaming in a foot-stomping frenzy. The resulting rumble was so loud that Kerry likened it to the "rolling thunder" he once heard in Vietnam.
As with all his stops, Kerry's Toledo rally offered up made-for-TV sound bites and a localized pitch to the home-town folks. Kerry spent a few minutes reveling in the Red Sox' win -- "It's a great American story," he said -- and then vowed that he'd root for the minor league Toledo Mud Hens from here on out. In a slightly more substantive appeal, he vowed to return to Ohio for a jobs summit if he is elected.
For the national TV news, Kerry had a few fresh words but no new thoughts on the 380 tons of munitions missing in Iraq. Kerry aides believe the issue is playing well for them now, particularly on television, and they're going to keep pushing it. With the munitions story, the Democrats seem to have taken a page from the Republican playbook: Paint the story with big strokes, don't get bogged down in the details, and get all the surrogates -- from Joe Biden to Wes Clark -- attacking on the same points all at once. Six months ago, Kerry would have proceeded cautiously on the story, carefully documenting every question about his charges even as he made them. Not so now. "The bottom line," Kerry said Wednesday, is that "the weapons are not where they're supposed to be."
The Kerry assault has kept the Bush campaign on the defensive. Just as the Mary Cheney flap knocked Kerry's message off the air for several days after the third presidential debate, the munitions story is keeping Bush from getting his message out now. After checking in on the evening's news shows Wednesday night, a satisfied Mike McCurry told Salon: "We won the day."
Thursday wasn't looking much better for the Republicans. The Bush-Cheney campaign dispatched Rudy Giuliani to the morning news shows in the hopes of killing off the story, but Mr. 9/11 botched the job. He said any blame for safeguarding the weapons lies not with the president but with the troops on the ground. It was exactly the sort of "denigrating" of the troops that Bush had accused Kerry of doing, and the Kerry campaign pounced on it, immediately circulating a transcript and a video clip to reporters covering the race. The Bush-Cheney campaign responded by reminding reporters -- just in case they had forgotten -- that John Kerry voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it. In an e-mail to reporters, Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt said that Giuliani is a trusted leader in the war on terrorism, and he offered some advice for John Kerry: "Mind the stature gap, Senator."
Earlier in the day in Toledo, Kerry said Bush's response to the munitions charge provides a powerful argument for voting him out of office. In Pennsylvania Wednesday, Bush accused Kerry of making "wild charges" about the missing munitions and said that a "candidate who jumps to conclusions" isn't qualified to be commander in chief. Kerry responded Thursday: "Mr. President, I agree with you." He then applied what he called "the Bush standard" to judge the president's decisions leading to the war in Iraq. "George Bush jumped to conclusions about 9/11 and Saddam Hussein," Kerry said. "George Bush jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction, and he rushed to war. George Bush jumped to conclusions about how the Iraqi people would receive us. He not only jumped to conclusions, he ignored the facts that were given to him."
After his rally with Springsteen in Columbus tonight, Kerry will fly to Florida to prepare for a full day of campaigning there Friday. He returns to Wisconsin Friday night for what aides say will be the start of "intensive" campaigning through Election Day. Kerry aides aren't saying -- if they know -- where the candidate will be after Wisconsin Saturday morning. Safe bets are probably Iowa and Minnesota, where Kerry campaigned earlier in the week, and Pennsylvania, where a new poll shows the race tied but Kerry aides insist he's in good shape. Democrats are nervous about Hawaii, but such a long trip isn't in the cards with so little time left. Arkansas could appear on Kerry's schedule, and there is sure to be at least one more trip to Florida.
The only immovable objects on Kerry's schedule are the election-eve rally with Springsteen in Cleveland Monday and a "victory" party in Boston Tuesday night. Whether it's much of a party -- and, as Springsteen said, so much else -- depends on what happens between now and then.
