Ron Walters, who runs the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland and worked on Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in the 1980s, concurs: "[Kerry] needs to quickly affect a transition from a primary campaign format to a general election one. When you win, all of a sudden you have to deal with a national constituency. You need to bulk up and put people in place who can mobilize those constituencies. And they need to be people of stature so you know they can deliver."
And More From the Kerry Front
By now the pattern is clear: Bush administration officials go on the Sunday morning talk shows with a coordinated plan of attack on Kerry. By Tuesday, the Kerry campaign is fully up to speed in response mode. By Thursday, the story has sort of evened out, with both sides having had their say. By Friday, the issue begins to fade as everyone looks forward to the next week.
What's consistent here is one thing: Bush is playing offense, setting the agenda for the week. Kerry is on defense, with his agenda playing second fiddle to Bush's.
This is not a prediction of doom for Kerry. It's way too early for that. But considering the momentum Kerry was carrying coming out of the Democratic primaries, and the horrible six weeks the president has had on Iraq, some Democrats are beginning to quietly grumble about deficiencies in the Kerry camp's strategizing.
No, you’re not going to get a lot of people saying this on the record as all of the Democratic operatives and strategists in Washington who count will be depending to some extent on being in Kerry’s good graces through November, and even more so if he wins.
But I've been talking to Democrats both small and big, influential and not, and many of the sentiments are the same. In finding himself on the defensive even on issues where he should be strong—like military service—Kerry is coming off as reactive rather than proactive; weak, rather than strong.
This week was the latest example as Republicans began with an attack on what he did with his Vietnam war medals when he returned to the states as a young anti-war activist. Republicans kicked off their message of the week just as Kerry was kicking off his "Jobs First" tour through four key battleground states and as the Bush camp was anticipating another tough week of media coverage on Iraq, the joint Bush-Cheney 9/11 Commission appearance and the Supreme Court hearing on Cheney's energy task force.
The Bush campaign "is kicking Kerry's ass every damn day," one well-known Democratic operative told me this week. "Kerry hasn't owned one day in the news yet. Not one day!"
Another told me: "You've got to give [the Bush campaign] credit for their precision. There's not one place I go to where you see [Kerry's] position right smack in the middle of the paper. But truth be told it's still a close race. John Kerry is still in the game. I call the month of April a draw. But it should have been an easy win for Kerry."
Another prominent Democrat who worked on both the Clinton and Gore campaigns said this: "The Bush people get up every day and have a plan for the week, and they pound, pound and pound it. It's almost like John Gruden, the coach for the [Tampa Bay Buccaneers] who scripts all of his plays for the first half, and then the entire team goes out and executes. You just don't see that sort of approach from the Kerry campaign."
This person continued: "What you need to do at this point in the race is two things: Be out there every day defining yourself, saying something positive about yourself. Bill Clinton offered an alternative agenda. He had a middle class tax cut, defined himself as a different kind of the Democrat... You need to have an overarching new messages as well as a negative story line that you're pounding every day. Is he a liar? Is he too radical? Is he a puppet of the special interest?"
Is anyone panicking? No, other than the Village Voice perhaps. Democrats, including the folks I talked to, were particularly heartened by a new New York Times/CBS poll that had the race basically at a dead heat, even with Ralph Nadar in the race.
"The Bush campaign has spent $70 million on ads, and Kerry is up in the polls and they have nothing to show for it," said Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) in a DNC conference call yesterday.
True enough. Bush has paid a high price to essentially stay even in the polls. Bush has used his money advantage to blitz Kerry with negative ads and stay in the game. But the president's approval in the Times/CBS poll was a measly 46 percent, which does not portend well for November.
"I think it's nonsense," Kerry spokesman David Wade said of the intraparty griping. Then, repeating Jones's line almost verbatim—proof perhaps that the Kerry folks might be getting better at coordinating message—he added: "George Bush has spent $70 million on ads and there you have on the front page that John Kerry is leading in this race."
He continued: "Now the White House has to answer questions about the president's National Guard service. It's the White House that's on the defense."
True, to some extent. Kerry has shown a penchant for fighting back. He's not going to be another Michael Dukakis, who let Republicans walk all over him, or even George H.W. Bush, who failed to answer Clinton's criticism of him on the economy.
But the key word there is "fighting back." Although defending yourself -- as Kerry did this week when he criticized Bush and Cheney for avoiding Vietnam -- is better than not defending yourself, it's not the same thing as playing offense.
