infinite improbability

Fake tans, and other signs that John Kerry is his own worst enemy

By now, everybody with an internet connection or a tv set has heard about John Kerry's rather fake looking tan. With just over a month before the election, Kerry needs to be getting people to focus on the issues that he's the strongest on, not discussing whether on not his new skin tone is real or not, but this is just another example of Kerry managing to do something to get off message. Things like tans or his constant stream of sports-related faux pas are really quite irrelevant to the question of whether the guy should be president or not, but they're the sort of distractions that Kerry doesn't need.

However, those silly distractions are nothing compared with Kerry's real problem, which is the tactical error of focusing on his service in Vietnam, or even on the war, rather than the issue that he could win on--the economy. Kerry can't win on the war issue--when national security is the prime focus, Bush (even with the WMD stuff) is still the stronger candidate. He needs to focus on the economy, because despite the reality that the economy is fundamentally strong, what matters is not reality but the average voter's perception of the economy, and that isn't so good. Clinton won because he turned the economy into the central issue of the campaign, and if Kerry has any hopes of winning, he needs to do the same thing. Instead, his central theme is "Vote for me, I was in Vietnam," and while that angle may have worked for Max "Vote for me, I lost my legs in Vietnam" Clelland in the Georgia senate race, it's not going to work for Kerry.

Further compounding Kerry's problem is that I seriously doubt that he has a chance to win Florida anymore. The whole (phony) claim that black voters were disenfranchised in 2000 is nothing more than a too-little-to-late last ditch effort to counteract the well organized Republican efforts over the last four years to actively reach out to black voters in Florida. Even Miami-Dade, which went solidly for Gore in 2000 isn't a true Democratic stronghold--Jeb Bush won handily there in the 2002 governor's race. To top it off, the hurricanes have given Bush a chance do what he does best--show resolve in the face of disaster, while at the same time, Kerry's attack ads running during commercial breaks in the middle of the hurricane coverage just ended up looking trite and petty.

In short, I think that Kerry peaked at the convention and that his campaign is desperately in need of somebody to get him back on message before he manages to self-destruct completely.