The headline to me is hilarious. High level Kerry staffers overheard plotting in Iowa hotel. So? Don’t campaign people plot things? Apparently, what they’re doing here is trying to figure out how they can out-Dean Dean. That’s been Kerry’s problem all along. If this was the result of their strategy session it was a failure, because the Kerry strategy all along has been, “What is Dean saying? We have to agree with it. Only we’re going to try and go a little farther.”
The staffers at the hotel bar in Des Moines talked about doing an ad where they would contrast Kerry’s anti-war activism with Dean as a draft-dodging ski bum. Over the weekend Howard Dean admitted that he did have some sort of an injury that got him out of the war. He didn’t want to go to Vietnam, and this injury might have been overplayed because he was out skiing after failing his military physical. The Kerry staffers also talked about the possibility of doing a documentary on the campaign, like the one Spike Jonze did with Gore. Look at the role models here! They’re going after a bunch of losers. Dean’s never won anything that matters other than Vermont (Sorry Vermont, but you have to be real.) And Gore lost. Gore is in such bad shape he’s making fun of himself about how rotten his life has been since this election.
According to Drudge, “The advisors carelessly talked about how thick Kerry’s accent used to be. ‘Kerry did the thick accent when cameras were around to sound like JFK,’ laughed one senior staffer.” And Drudge says that, “in the spirit of the holiday season,” he’ll not reveal the name of those in attendance. It could not have been any housekeeper, my friends, because this story appears to be true.
