John Kerry to endorse Barack Obama

January 10, 2008

I’m generally skeptical of the notion that candidate endorsements, even from big-name figures, translate to a significant number of votes. But this one is nevertheless pretty interesting.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic Party’s 2004 presidential nominee, will endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president in South Carolina today, Democratic sources told Politico.

Kerry is flying to South Carolina for an event to be held shortly after 11 a.m. in Charleston, the sources said. Obama is holding a “Rally for Change” at the College of Charleston ahead of the Democrats’ South Carolina primary on Jan. 26.

Kerry’s endorsement message will focus on Obama’s ability to bring the country transformational change, the sources said.

Some media outlets have characterized this as a major setback for John Edwards, who, of course, was Kerry’s running mate just four years ago. But did anyone seriously believe that Kerry would back Edwards this year? The two were a relatively awkward pair in 2004, and when Edwards questioned Kerry’s campaign strategy after their narrow defeat, the two weren’t exactly on good terms.

Regardless, I look at this as a pretty significant boost for Obama, if not in votes, than at least in stature. Kerry is arguably one of only a handful of national Democratic leaders, and a member in good standing of the Democratic establishment, most of which is backing Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

I mentioned on Tuesday that most of the Senate Dems — 38 out of 50 — had not endorsed anyone in the presidential race, and to keep an eye on which direction the caucus went in. If Kerry is any indication, it might signal a shift in Obama’s direction.

Mike Allen added:

For Obama, this endorsement fills a particular need: in addition to winning the nomination in 2004, Kerry is considered a strong voice on national security issues and a respected elder of the Democratic establishment.

Neither of those factors would do much for Clinton, who is strong on both. But Obama needs to show donors, voters and activists that he can attract more traditional support and win over the decision-makers in the party. Thus far, he has succeeded mostly at bringing young voters and independents into the fold.

That sounds right to me. This, coupled with Kerry’s fundraising network, should pay dividends.

Stay tuned.

Wow!

And I just think of Kerry as the guy who lost to Boy George II in 2004.

I mean, actually lost, unlike Gore.

Looking for the Frankenstein vote are we?

  • Poor Obama, collecting endorsements from the wrong elements in the party.

    It’s Gore’s choice that might matter.

  • I would bet that Gore won’t endorse anyone. He is finished with the messy business of politics. I’m sure he’ll back the eventual nominee, but he’s not going to get his hands dirty before then.

  • Lance, Kerry barely lost to an incumbent who had a war on his side.

    jen f., Gore’s choice won’t matter if it’s not voiced in a timely way, like Kerry’s is.

  • Don’t forget, Gore did endorse Dean in 2004. It didn’t really help Dean much, but he isn’t afraid to do it.

    I only see Gore endorsing Obama or Edwards though. It is long known the Gores and Clintons don’t get along very well.

  • To add my two cents to this article, it’s interesting to see the break-down of those who supported each of the Democratic front-runners. Obama seems to be preferred by independents, and it’s interesting to see how women will continue to choose between him and Hillary. He enjoyed their support in Iowa, but they switched back to Hillary in New Hampshire. Check http://www.projectweightloss.com for an interesting and somewhat unusual survey of the characteristics of each of the Democratic candidates’ supporters.

  • That sound you hear is thousands of swift-boaters rubbing their hands together and chortling over the opportunities to tie Kerry’s baggage to Obama.

    Could be a preview of coming attractions, so I would watch carefully to see if more money begins to pour into the coffers of the swift-boat-type 527’s.

  • “I mean, actually lost, unlike Gore.”

    I think there are more than a few out in the world who would disagree with that comment and can point to at least some incriminating evidence.

    Yet Kerry did manage to receive more votes in a presidential election than any other Dem presidential candidate. I think even more than any GOP candidate other than GWB.

    The most important benefit of this endorsement is, as CB notes, access to Kerry’s donor lists.

  • David W. said: “Lance, Kerry barely lost to an incumbent who had a war on his side.”

    David, in 2004 everything that was wrong about this war was knowable for those who paid attention.

    And besides, we all thought we were going to win against BGII.

    So yes, Kerry’s claim to fame is that he lost.

  • And I just think of Kerry as the guy who lost to Boy George II in 2004. — Lance

    And given what Bush has been up to since, I imagine a lot of people are starting to regret that choice by now.

    And all this “Gore won the election, Kerry didn’t” is wearing thin. One factor that is never pointed out is that Gore won 48.4% of the popular vote while Kerry won 48.3% of it.

  • I mentioned on Tuesday that most of the Senate Dems — 38 out of 50 — had not endorsed anyone in the presidential race, and to keep an eye on which direction the caucus went in.

    Who are the twelve who have, and which way have they gone?

  • Just remember that anyone poo-pooing the Kerry endorsement of Obama is likely a Hillary supporter. Had Kerry stuck with the establishment we would have heard a very different reaction.

  • Remember also that Clinton has been endorsed by Walter Mondale and George McGovern. If Kerry was a failure, what do you call losing 49 out of 50 states, twice?

  • I mean, actually lost, unlike Gore. -Lance

    Certainly, they should have won in a landslide, but do you honestly think something fishy wasn’t going on in Ohio in 2004? And on a national level, thanks to Diebold?

    Until there is meaningful, national vote reform, the GOP will cheat.

    And all Gore had to do was stand up in the Senate, but he backed down, so don’t pretend that Gore ’00 is the same as Gore ’07. He picked Lieberman as a running mate and allowed Bush’s first unconstitutional power grab, via the Supreme Court to steal the election.

    Gore and Kerry both lost. Period.

  • 40% of the “delegates” required to capture the nomination are these endorsements, Senators, Congressmen, Governors, members of the DNC and some “distiguished” party members. Obama trails Clinton in total delegates right now but only because of these super delegates. To imply that they don’t count is to show ignorance of the process. Like it or not, it’s the system we are stuck with for this election cycle.

    Sure it’s possible a candidate could win the nomination with no “super-delegates” but why spot your opponent to a 40% advantage?

  • re: Anne @ 7… I think it’s safe to say those 527s were getting ready anyway. They’re going to throw garbage at whoever wins the nomination, regardless of endorsements, whether they’re black, white, female, male or howl at the moon.

  • After Edwards performance in the debates with Cheney last time, Kerry should of kicked Edwards ass!

  • Gore and Kerry both lost. Period

    Don’t forget Bill “Fairy Tale” Clinton’s contribution to Gore’s loss. His sleazy behavior in the White House hurt Gore badly.

  • I agree with what #17 Rick said. Edwards got creamed by Cheney in that ’04 debate.

    Frankly, I never understood why Kerry picked Edwards for VP. Edwards decided not to run for re-election to the Senate because HE KNEW HE’D LOSE! A freshman Senator who can’t even carry his own state cannot bring anything to the ticket. And when it became clear that he couldn’t even carry out the “attack dog” responsibilities traditionally required of a VP candidate . . . what good was he?

    On a side note . . . the growth region for the Democrats is the Mountain West. Whoever the nominee is this time (and I’m hoping it’s Obama) should pick a Western governor like Brian Schweitzer for VP, who can galvanize voters throughout the region, and whose straight-shooting personality can easily sack the Rethugs. Obama/Schweitzer ’08 sounds like a winning ticket to me!

  • My reaction to Kerry’s endorsement is: Who cares?

    I certainly haven’t been waiting breathlessly for him to announce his choice. And I admit that I hold a grudge against him for bad judgment in the 2004 campaign. With a better campaign he could have won enough additional votes to make the election impossible to steal.

    Does this help Obama? Or does it hurt him? I’m not sure.

  • Okie, I think it helps Obama because of what Steve mentioned– access to the donors. If Kerry’s backers help Obama outspend the Clinton machine, that is a definite positive.

    And, as Steve also pointed out, it hurts Edwards. (How come it seems that presidential candidates– or ex-presidents– never seem to end up on good terms with their VP’s? Clinton and Gore hate each other; Gore and Lieberman gravitated to opposite ends of the political spectrum; and now Kerry and Edwards are at odds. Maybe it’s a good thing– as is evidenced by Bush and Dick, it’s not good to be too close to your veep!)

  • Lance said “David, in 2004 everything that was wrong about this war was knowable for those who paid attention. ”

    Operative words: “for those who paid attention”… What does that say ??
    I also read that many are making an emotional (male vs female, first time African American, first time female) decision rather than a decision based upon who can do the job…. What does that say ??

  • Edwards (what he should say):

    “Obviously, I’m disappointed that my running mate in 2004 has endorsed one of my opponents. But John and I had significant differences in how the campaign should have been waged.

    I wanted to hit back harder and earlier at the Swift Boat lies, but John wanted to hold back and see what happened. I wanted to be more aggressive at pursuing evidence of Kenneth Blackwell’s interference in the Ohio election, but John wanted to leave it alone.

    I’m the fighter in this race — I believe that you don’t get people to the negotiating table by being nice to them. It’s all very well to be gracious, but you have to back it up with steel. There are powerful interests in this country who will come to the negotiating table only when they realize they Don’t Have Any Choice. I understand that. I’m not sure my opponent from Illinois does.

    The choice is the same — we all have similar goals, but who’s going to go to the mat for them.”

  • zmulls, Jen is right. You should be writing for Edwards, or whoever the eventual nominee is.

  • Phil t said:
    Lance said “David, in 2004 everything that was wrong about this war was knowable for those who paid attention.”

    Operative words: “for those who paid attention”… What does that say?

    It says that Kerry should have used his campaign to attack the war on all the problems there were with it. When the truth is there to be picked up, pick it up and show it to people.

    John Edwards is the only candidate who is doing that today…

    … well, and Ron Paul 😉

  • Lance, as I recall Kerry and others did tell the truth about the Iraq war. The problem is that it isn’t something that voters necessarily want to hear, which cut to Bush’s advantage of course as he was, as he loves to describe himself, the “commander in chief”. We’re not living in an ideal world where people really do live by the words “my country right or wrong, and when wrong to be set right.”

  • I’d go after the Kerry endorsement from a slightly different direction –

    *****
    Today, John Kerry endorsed Senator Obama as his choice to be the next president. I know there is speculation that this endorsement is a slap in the face to me, as his running mate in the 2004 election, but Senator Kerry has graciously said that he views all of the Democratic candidates as being eminently qualified for the office, and I know that that is something we can all agree on.

    Losing that election was a blow to all of those who had worked so hard to effect a change that would have – I know this in my heart – set this country on a much better, more honorable and small-d democratic course.

    It was in analyzing that loss that I truly had the epiphany that is driving me today – and that is that “nice” is not enough to make things happen. When I sat next to Dick Cheney in our debate and allowed him to make false statements, I was being “nice,” and it may have helped a man who has been a destructive force continue on that path. When John Kerry took the high road, choosing not to respond when the Swift-boaters tore him to shreds, he made the same mistake I did. When John made the decision not to contest the results of the Ohio vote, he walked away with his gentlemanly demeanor intact, but he walked away from the White House,and the promise of all that we might have been able to do.

    I made a promise to myself that I would never again assume that if I was just nice and polite, that that would be enough to make the kinds of changes we so desperately need.

    I will not give up. I will not walk away.

    *****
    He needs to tie these things together.

  • If Anne and zmull wrote for Edwards, his chances of getting elected would go up – if the news media bothered to notice him.

    Have I mentioned today how much I despise the pundits?

  • He might just be another one of the legions of guys who are trying to maneuver, or to drop a hint, to get an appointment in a Democratic administration / White House.

    Why pick out Obama instead of Hillary? Maybe because he’s a guy and all these men think he’s more likely to “get it” if they give him an endorsement without them having to go through the possible disappointment of actually overtly negotiating a promise from Obama? Maybe they think Hillary has too many close friends already, so that in a Hillary administration, all the appointees are people she basically would have picked out already (whether she even realizes it or not), so going to her or lending her an endorsement would likely be a waste of time and just an off-balance move if she turns out to lose the nomination anyway?

    I don’t think a lot of these individuals’ endorsements or conversations with Barack should mean a lot to the individual voter, especially if they aren’t accompanied by a really rational public statement, based on the endorsers’ professional expertise or personal experiences with Barack, explaining the support.

  • Why pick out Obama instead of Hillary?

    They have a really good relationship. For one thing, when Kerry came to Illinois to fundraise, he was amazed at Obama’s natural political talent, and when somebody mentioned that he had a bright future, Kerry remarked something like “I have an idea that’ll make the future now” or some such thing. It was Kerry who got Obama on the short list for keynote speaker at the convention, and in the end it was down Obama or Granholm IIRC, and its not clear who made the final call but there’s been speculation it was Kerry himself.

    That relationship supposedly has continued in the Senate, too. I understand they’ve met a few times and worked together on some bills, and I was reading an article about how Biden and Dodd seemed to be chumming up to Hillary early on, making Obama a bit of a pariah, and it included a little anecdote about how (before the Petraeus hearings, again IIRC) Obama find himself with an empty seat next to him, which was seen as kinda awkward, like he was being shunned. And then Kerry bounded over and sat down next to him and started whispering in his ear some such thing…it seemed to imply that they were close.

    Also, similarly anecdotal but I think interesting nonetheless, when I was researching in THOMAS on Obama’s “google for gov’t” transparency bill he did with Coburn, I found that all the myriad amendments on it (and there were a lot of long, dense, legally amendments on it, it looked like it was quite the project to construct) had at least 1 of 3 Senators attached to each: Obama, Coburn (obvious), or….Ted Kennedy. It was always Obama/Kennedy, Kennedy/Coburn, Obama/Coburn, etc etc. On every single one.

    So while the bill is called Obama/Coburn, it seems like Teddy did a lot of work on it to help usher it through, which at least implies a strong working relationship between him and Obama. Conversely, though this comes 3rd hand, a better-informed friend than myself claims that the child’s healthcare initiative Hillary has been taking credit for on the stump when talking about her record as a “doer” is a crock. The story I heard is that it was actually Teddy Kennedy’s baby, and Hillary actually nearly buckled under pressure from the GOP to kill it. Only by leaning on her hard was Kennedy able to keep the bill alive.

    Again, they’re only anecdotes and, what’s more, one of them is 3rd hand…but they paint a picture where Kerry has a strong relationship with Obama and, given that I know he’s got a good relationship with Kennedy as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how Obama and Kennedy ended up with what appears to be a very good working relationship. Meanwhile, it does seem at least from that 3rd hand story that Kennedy and Clinton don’t get along much at all.

    Perhaps someone more invested in Congressional research or knowledgeable on these sorts of things can shed some light.

    It’s also b/c of things like this that I expect, should Feingold endorse, that he’d endorse Obama. Those two worked hard to get their ethics bill through the senate, and each highly praised the other about it on their respective senate homepages and in press releases and such.

  • especially if they aren’t accompanied by a really rational public statement, based on the endorsers’ professional expertise or personal experiences with Barack, explaining the support.

    Kerry just stumped for Obama in SC. I’ll try to get you some good quotes in a minute; I read that he said something like, “Obama has the capacity to speak so loudly, Washington will have to listen”

  • Michael,

    So, yeah, I was right that Kerry might just want a more exciting and higher-profile job than “US Senator” and just be kissing up to Barack, more than just making a spontaneous and honest endorsement. He might think he has some “in” with Barack, so that’s why he’s trying to trade horses with him.

    And you can trust a class-act like Kerry to provised te statements- to give a really good endorsement. All else being equal, providing some substantive reasons make an endorsement look better, but it doesn’t mean that Kerry doesn’t know that, and is just trying to make the loyalty he’s offering Barack look good.

  • the only problem with what zmulls said is that i’m not sure it is factually true. what i heard from friends who, admitted, have the bias of being on the Kerry side of the Kerry/Edwards 04 campaign, is that when Kerry’s folks asked Edwards to play the traditional “attack dog” role of the VP candidate, he refused, noting his emphasis on a positive campaign.

    Edwards has a problem (although Anne really makes a nice run at addressing it) in that I cannot think of anytime a candidate has run twice as two totally different candidates and won. Edwards went from being the nicest to the angriest. where that leaves a lot of potential voters is wondering who Edwards really is – and leaves those who really liked him in 04 at a loss. This is not unlike Bob Dole, who for his entire Senate career had been a deficit hawk and not a supply sider, and then in his last gasp at the Presidency sold out to try and bring Jack Kemp’s wing of the party on board. Anyone who remotely followed politics knew that Dole had just pulled a 180; even those who didn’t follow politics that well could tell that Dole was half-hearted when he spewed the supply side rhetoric.

  • …and it included a little anecdote about how (before the Petraeus hearings, again IIRC) Obama find himself with an empty seat next to him… -Michael

    Why does all of this make me think of Congress as a big high school? Who are the cool kids? I’ll probably be sitting at the geeks table again, I’m sure, with the rest of the Superfriends!

    Now if Obama can get Al Gore to endorse him, as Gore did Howard Dean, he’ll have the nomination locked up. -Homer Hewitt

    Just like Dean did in ’04!

  • David W. said: “Lance, as I recall Kerry and others did tell the truth about the Iraq war. The problem is that it isn’t something that voters necessarily want to hear, which cut to Bush’s advantage of course as he was, as he loves to describe himself, the “commander in chief”. We’re not living in an ideal world where people really do live by the words “my country right or wrong, and when wrong to be set right.””

    Then there was absolutely no reason for Kerry to lose. He knew there were problems and he told people. He didn’t lose because Bush had a war, he lost because he SUCKS as a campaigner.

  • I appreciate the comments about my writing skills, whether or not the content is agreed to…*g*

    zeitgeist, it’s possible I’m wrong. My understanding was that Edwards wanted to fight the Swift Boaters earlier, and that Edwards wanted to contest Ohio — and that comports with what I’ve seen of him since then. I’ve never bought that he’s a sunny person — he turned to public service after this son died — he’s driven. And I’ve always thought of him as the one who would keep up the hard fight, based on his courtroom record.

    Anyway, his response was classy — I think there were a lot of ways it could have gone wrong. And some of the other commenters might have it right, that the Kerry endorsement will do more harm than good for Obama.

    I think Edwards still has a chance, as I’ve posted elsewhere. I see the “Edwards Comes Back” scenario playing out like this: There’s an inevitable Obama backlash — maybe even a mini-one — from the press and some of the public, after his near-deification in Iowa. Also, Clinton surrogates go negative and nasty (“shuck and jive?”) and hit hard. Obama either fights back (tarnishing his “above it all” image) or tries to stay above the fray (“what, he won’t fight back? no wonder Kerry endorsed him”).

    People get second thoughts about Obama (I think that’s inevitable), people see Clinton fighting dirty and are turned off, and everyone remembers there’s a third guy in the race who has the straightforward Democratic message in his DNA.

    Look at what happened to McCain — people came back to him after courting and rejecting a number of other candidates. Remember the deification of Fred Thompson? He was all that plus a ham sandwich with mayo. Now he’s just toast. Republicans simply projected onto Fred Thompson everything they *wanted* him to be, and when he didn’t live up to their dream-induced level, they backed off. I think there will be some of that for Obama — right now many people are projecting their dream onto him, and given more time they’ll realize he doesn’t match exactly what they were dreaming.

    It’s going to be a long, strange trip, that’s for sure…..

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