AKA, "What the hell was he THINKING? WAS he thinking?
ABCNEWS.com: Forget the South?: Kerry's remarks Saturday were so starkly antithetical to how many southern Democrats feel their party should campaign for the presidency, that a former South Carolina state Democratic chairman told ABCNEWS that Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., who endorsed Kerry last week, perhaps "ought to reconsider his endorsement." During a town hall meeting on the Dartmouth campus, Kerry noted that former Vice President Al Gore would be president if he'd won any number of other non-Southern states in 2000, including New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Ohio. "Everybody always makes the mistake of looking South," Kerry said, in response to a question about winning the region. "Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own." "I think the fight is all over this country," Kerry said. "Forget about those red and blue states. We're going to change that now, and we're going to go out there and change the face of America."
Leaving aside the fact that he's mathematically correct ... what does it serve him to alienate the South by declaring publically, in essence, "Eh. We don't need you. Screw you." And yes, it's entirely possible to win everything but the South and still carry the electoral college ... however, it's not terribly likely, now is it? Even if he's correct, simply articulating that position would make the party extraordinarily twitchy; it doesn't have terribly good luck with Northeasterners who don't run well in the South. (Mind, those same people tend to run badly everywhere but the northeast.) And while focusing on California makes perfectly good sense, paying more than token attention to Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada simply doesn't.
It's just dumb to dismiss the South out of hand. And doing so, however briefly and unintentionally, is likely to come back and bite Kerry in the ass.
Posted by iain at January 26, 2004 10:48 AM
