John Kerry outshines Bill Clinton tonight

You get the idea that Kerry's still p.o.'d about having his head handed to him by the Republicans four years ago. Well, he should be -- and he's giving 'em hell tonight.

I don't see why. He let them do it, and gave them ammunition with his waffling on the war.

Oh, I agree, Derek. That's what I meant by if we had seen this John Kerry four years ago, the election might have gone a different way.

If Sen. Kerry had said something like the following in 2004 he would be President of the United States: "When I got back from Vietnam, I was very angry - a lot of us were justifiably angry, but I said some things that went too far. I generalized in way that was not fair to my fellow soldiers. But now is the time that we all need to come together and move past the bitterness of that divided time." Unfortunately, Sen. Kerry made his bones in the liberal establishment as an anti-war guy. He was too arrogant to humble himself in this way. He was the guy when he ran into a secret service agent skiing who said when he was asked about it "I didn't fall." It's really too bad because Pres. Bush has been especially bad in his second term. If I had it to do again, I would have voted for Vice President Gore in 2000, but even knowing what I know now I still would have voted for Bush over Kerry. Sen. Kerry is just too arrogant to be POTUS.

"So you don't think Colin Powell could have possibly won the Republican nomination had he ran in 1996 or 2000?"

No. The GOP is not going to nominate a pro-choice African American who acknowledges the significance of Affirmative Action. Unpossible.

That'd be quite possible. Alan Keyes (whose 2000 Republican presidential campaign t-shirt I happen to be wearing at this very moment) is just one such candidate.
Posted by: fbc | August 27, 2008 10:40 PM

Possible, yes.

Probable, not so much.

"No, but they damn well could nominate a pro-life African American who acknowledges the ruin wrought of Affirmative Action.

That'd be quite possible. Alan Keyes (whose 2000 Republican presidential campaign t-shirt I happen to be wearing at this very moment) is just one such candidate."

Having worked on the Keyes campaign locally in 1996 I can assure you that he stands as much chance of getting the GOP nomination as Colin Powell does...and maybe not even that much of a chance.

Not only is Keyes unacceptable to most white evangelicals, he has tremendous baggage from his Illinois Senate campaign and his numerous campaigns from Maine back in the early 90s and late 80s.

Here in Iowa the biggest obstacle we had in trying to get Keyes name out in public was not the media, nor was it the GOP establishment. It was the evangelicals within the party. Almost exclusively white, this group gave us every excuse known to man as to why they did not want to get behind a Keyes campaign, even though his positions were nearly identical on every point with theirs.

Even when we would talk with them and point this out to them, they would not come over to our side. Why? Many answers were given, but the most honest one that I heard was that they did not believe he could win because, "America is not ready for a black President."

More than likely what they meant was that they were not yet ready to support a black candidate for President. Blind polling conducted by the campaign showed that as people were presented with his campaign positions the positives increased, consistently growing to strong support, until the statement "this candidate is African-American" was made, then support dropped dramatically.

I won't even go into the problems Keyes had outside of his race (unpaid campaign debt from nearly 10 years prior, charges of carpetbagging, plagiarism, and flip-flopping on affirmative action). The race issue was more than enough to kill his candidacy in spite of his views.

Take Alan Keyes political positions, oratorical style, and fire, and put them in almost any white male and you have the next GOP nominee for President, no doubt.

"Also, it was a Republican president who appointed our first two African-American Secretaries of State, one of which is also a woman."

And both of them look to be Obama supporters.

I agree Pres. Bush is too arrogant. In eight years, Pres. Bush has not measurably improved as public speaker. The only reason is arrogance. Public is such an important part of the job and he has not improved. I don't think it is because he is stupid. He's just arrogant. We're trying to improve our situation and not get more of the same or worse, which brings us to my concern about Sen. Obama (more arrogance).