REPORTING FOR DUTY
Sen. John Kerry and his Massachusetts minions
insist he has not decided on whether he will run for president
again. But actions speak louder than words, and when one does
things like set up leadership PACs, and take time away from holiday
celebrations to hang out with campaign volunteers and state
fundraisers, one’s intentions ring loud and clear.
Last weekend saw Kerry in New Hampshire thanking his statewide
campaign staff and meeting with Democrat officials. This coming
weekend finds the Man from Mope in Des Moines, Iowa, for yet
another party with his supporters.
Kerry advisers and staffers say the events — paid for out of
Kerry’s campaign coffers — are nothing more than a candidate
showing appreciation for the hard work Granite and Hawkeye Staters
did for him.
“And besides, the Senator has to make a stop off on his way to
Idaho, so stopping off in Iowa just made sense on so many levels,”
says a staffer. Sooo many levels, indeed.
Kerry is off to Idaho for some pre-Christmas skiing and
snowboarding and holiday frolicking with his multi-zillionaire
neighbors in Sun Valley.
“Actually, Senator Kerry didn’t want to go to Des Moines to
avoid the very thing you are trying to do,” says a former campaign
staffer. “This is not about 2008. It’s about bringing closure in a
proper fashion to 2004.”
Kerry, however, isn’t closing all doors. He has already made the
decision not to bleed out completely his presidential campaign
fund, keeping it up and running for at least two more years,
according to sources. Moreover, he still has his Senate re-election
PAC, as well as his new leadership PAC, to keep him busy and
rolling in political influence.
BACK TO SQUARE ONE
Outgoing DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe, badly
burned by his 2004 Democratic primary plan to compress the election
calendar, thereby narrowing a window by which the Democratic
electorate could get to know the party’s candidates, is once again
forming a commission to re-evaluate the nominating calendar for
2008.
McAuliffe, according to DNC sources, has selected the members of
the group and will announce them on Friday. The announcement is yet
another embarrassing chapter in one of the darkest periods for the
Democratic National Committee.
McAuliffe touted the 2004 plan as the best way for Democrats to
select the strongest candidate in the least amount of time,
ensuring that the winner would emerge with plenty of time to
fundraise and perhaps with the makings of a war chest already in
hand due to the short primary calendar.
Instead, they ended up with a flawed candidate who won the
primary based less on his own campaign’s successes than on the
failings of his competitors and the fickleness of the mainstream
media.
McAuliffe, who spent months ridiculing the unemployment figures
of the Bush Administration, now faces going down as one of the
worst electoral leaders in DNC history, having created countless
new jobs for Republicans. Under his watch Republicans regained full
majority control of the Senate by a 10-seat margin, widened their
majority in the House, and won the White House twice. All of it
nice work Democrats couldn’t get.
QUITE CONTRARY
U.S. Civil Rights Commission Chairman Mary Frances
Berry continues to insist that her term runs through
January 2005. The White House, and just about every other sensible
person in Washington, believes that the term expired on Sunday,
December 5.
At press time, Berry was refusing to leave her post at the civil
rights offices, sending out Democratic House member John
Conyers to crib from talking points Berry supporters had
provided his office.
Conyers apparently knows so little about the situation that CNN
caught him on camera on Tuesday fiddling with his glasses while
trying to read the talking points on air.
Berry might be defiant, but her refusal to leave may provide the
Bush Administration with a watershed moment to reinforce the notion
that the President means business.
According to White House sources, staffers at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue met last Friday to discuss how best to handle the Berry
situation. “We knew that she was out. We had the interpretations.
We knew we could move on her and unseat her,” says a White House
source. “But there was concern about how to best get her out of the
building. Because her term expired on a Sunday, we knew it would
carry over into this week. We expect this to get ugly real fast,
but we don’t care. She has served her term. We will thank her, and
she will be expected to leave. Now.”
And if she doesn’t?
“That is one reason why they have U.S. Marshals,” says the
source. “And we have been told that if we need to use them, we can.
We will not allow this woman to hold this Administration
hostage.”
A forcible removal of Berry would become a rallying call to
conservatives, who long have suffered under Berry’s overt disdain
for Republicans. In January 2001 she even conducted a post-election
campaign against George W. Bush’s win in Florida, belittling the
President, Gov. Jeb Bush, and Katherine
Harris.
