Kerry's quip just before the November 7 midterm elections that those who don't study hard "get stuck in Iraq" not only forced him into isolation in the campaign's final days, it rekindled criticism about his failure to beat a war-plagued president two years ago. It also highlighted a shallowness to what he and his aides still considered to be widespread public support.
"The joke stopped that momentum in its track," said Jerry Crawford, a Des Moines attorney who was chairman of Kerry's Iowa campaign in 2004. "I don't think it was fair the way it was used against him, but it's nevertheless the reality. And it knocks him back to the place where he was shortly after the '04 election."
Crawford will be supporting Tom Vilsack, Iowa's outgoing governor, as he makes a run for the Democratic nomination in 2008. He said that is based on their longstanding relationship, not any falling out with Kerry.
Kerry dismissed the education comment as a "botched joke" directed at President Bush, who was two years behind him at Yale. He said Republicans inflamed the issue to try to curtail expected Democratic gains on Election Day.
Since then, Kerry has said it will be up to voters to decide what effect it may have on his presidential prospects.
"That was a slip-up of one word," he said Thursday on CNN's "The Situation Room." "I really think people have made much too much out of it."
Behind the scenes, Kerry apparently has been having doubts, calling current and former Democratic confidantes to inquire just how much his gaffe hurt his presidential chances, according to several Democrats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversations were private.
Kerry, who turns 63 next month, had been planning to announce a comeback campaign in December or January. He had thrown himself into helping his party reclaim Congress in the midterm election, campaigning for roughly 80 House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates.
He also has a political account of $14 million -- about the same as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.
Democrats' victory a factor
Two things have delayed Kerry's plans: fallout from the joke, and the Democrats' newfound control over the House and Senate.
As a member of the incoming majority party, come January Kerry will be chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee and the Foreign Relations East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee. He will be in attendance when the new Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, convenes hearings on the future of U.S. military action in Iraq.
These responsibilities will impede Kerry's ability to jet around the country, attending fundraisers and courting political operatives, as he did in 2002 and 2003 when Democrats were in the congressional minority and largely powerless.
"Everybody's clock's been slowed down by the move into the majority," said Edward Reilly, Kerry's top political consultant. "Clearly the election was about Iraq and people want change -- and this new Congress to deliver it."
Nonetheless, "We're still very much in a go-mode on this thing," Reilly said. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, hope to boost their public reemergence with a book about the environment slated for publication next April.
Please....for the love of God....just shut the fuck up and go AWAY already.
I just might have to leave the country for a while in April. Oh yeah....by then I'll be on a watch list because I like an aisle seat on airplanes. We menopausal women tend to need easy access to the airplane bathrooms. I guess that makes us terrorists.
At least the Mets will be playing again, which is good, because the second season of Dexter won't start till late 2007.
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