UPDATE: Kerry has released an official statement:
As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.
I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.
It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I dont want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.
Hear, hear. If he’d have said that yesterday, this story wouldn’t have blown up in his face. But whatever — he’s said it now, and it’s done. [end update]
That’s right. John Kerry apologized for screwing up his lame joke. Everybody should now be happy.
From Don Imus:
IMUS: It was my inclination to try to defend you in this, and I said, I think I know what he meant, I mean its clear what he meant. But I had to acknowledge in my conversation with Charles that thats not what you said.
KERRY: Of course it isnt what I said. I left out one word, I left out the word us. They got us stuck. Instead of that, I said they got stuck. And theyre taking advantage of it. And heres whats wrong.
IMUS: Why not apologize for the misunderstanding?
KERRY: I did, I said it was a botched joke, of course Im sorry about a botched joke. You think I love botched jokes? Its pretty stupid.
Why he couldn’t have said this yesterday is beyond me. But whatever — he’s done it now, it was the right thing to do, and let’s hope the media can move on from what is now a total non-story. Even Tony Snow has pretty much admitted that Kerry has now done what he needed to do:
“Sen. Kerry may have botched the line, but what he said was insulting to the troops, and what he ought to say is, ‘Look, I botched the line, but I’m sorry for giving offense,'” Snow said on CBS’s “The Early Show.”
Snow, of course, wants more. But the fact is that Kerry has apologized for his stupid joke, and let’s just drop the whole stupid thing and move on, for God’s sake.
David, this is gold.
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It’s the PERFECT chance to shift to Iraq. You really need to read Stoller’s latest peice on strength; he really nailed it.
… whom I like a lot:
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I fear no Republican backlash. These guys are so hollow, you could tie strings to ’em and play a sonata.
…and three cancellations of campaign stops, and Big Dog saying no replay of 2004 – but FINALLY our Senator has apologized.
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How gracious. How sincere. How his expensive caps must be grinding away.
You know what? John Kerry’s mistake was based off a dumb line anyway.
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The original script said this “I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”
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Was his screw-up a big deal? No. Important enough to headline the news for two days? Absolutely not.
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HOWEVER,
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Does his consistently poor performance on matters of national importance annoy me? Yes.
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Should John Kerry stop pretending to be a national voice for Democrats, step aside, and let someone else take the spot so we have a chance of winning in 2008? Absolutely yes.
whatever John Kerry does or doesn’t do about it. The only question is when Kerry will finally recognize that he’s not going to get another chance…
well so I give Kerry the benefit of the doubt, I believe he ment to add the word “Us”, but I still don’t really get the joke. Bush and Kerry both went to Yale and from the reports I can remember Bush received better grades and better SAT scores than Kerry, so I don’t really understand him saying Bush isn’t smart. Granted Bush isn’t the brightest bulb around, but frankly based on grades, SAT scores etc… I don’t really think Kerry has shown to be the brightest guy around as well…
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Now my second point is, lets pretend he meant what the Republicans are trying to spin this as; That members of the Armed forces aren’t the brightest members of society. Is that neccessarily not true? granted a former Pres. nominee and current Senator should not say this, but based on the facts, is this not true?
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Please, Kerry, for Massachusetts sake, stay home and re-appear after Nov. 7th…
John Kerry voted for this stupid Iraq war 2?
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grrrr, he really bothers me most of the time…
but not reappear. Time for him to retire. I’m so damn tired of him. He lost the ’04 election and now he might just help us lose another. If anything good comes of this, it might be to give him enough bad press that he just goes away.
The MSM is now paraphrasing his comment to read:
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I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted < omitted>to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.
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They have no intention of letting this go, they will mangle his words for all it’s worth. At least Kerry’s mistake was a slip of the tongue, the right-wing attack machine that is the MSM, are mangling his words on purpose.
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BTW, did Rumsfeld ever apologize for saying, “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.
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Well, I guess that < omitted > thing didn’t work above. Let’s hope that the bolding does work. What is in bold is being left out.
As a highly decorated combat veteran, I want to say to anyone who isn’t nuanced enough to understand that what I meant was different than what I actually said, and to anyone who mistook what I said to be what I actually meant, and by their own mistake, took offense at what they thought I meant, which was what I actually said, but didn’t mean. By all means, I apologize.
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Oh, and did I mention that I’m a combat veteran?
except for the combat veteran part. When are we going to realize that being a combat veteran doesn’t make you a good candidate? George McGovern was a combat veteran (and a fine man, too) and was also a flat-out disaster as a candidate. Draft-dodger Bill Clinton beat out George H.W. Bush (WWII combat veteran), draft-dodger George W. Bush beat Vietnam vet John Kerry…Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter (who at least served in the Navy…I think Reagan spent the war making movies)…
Even if he had told it correctly, what on Earth possessed Senator Kerry to make this kind of a joke a week before the election?
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First of all, the Dems have an opportunity in this election that they haven’t had since 2000. The Repubs had handed the Dems so many gifts (drawn out war, bloated overspending government, the Foley thing, etc.) that gaining seats should’ve been easy. Kerry’s ridiculously bad judgment will hurt them. (Before people jump on me and say that’s way out of proportion, I’m not saying that it’s a big deal to me at all — I actually think it’s just a dumb mistake but not that bad overall — I’m saying it’s going to play huge in many parts of the country.)
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And second, God bless the poor Senator, but he’s just not funny. At all. He really should not try to make jokes. It’s cringe-inducing.
I love Sen. Kerry as a senator for our state, period. I think that Howard Dean should slap him in the face, call him a block-head, and promptly move on. I know exactly what Sen. Kerry meant, we all do, and it was WICKED stupid. But who cares aside from mindless Republicans? The real question is who the hell cares whether Mitt Romney thinks that Sen. Kerry’s apology was good enough? Mitt, you sound like an idiot. Don’t forget you are talking about a decorated Vietnam veteran and United States Senator.
…and he points it out at every opportunity.
This is about nasal, patrician, Brahmin tones ringing out – I apologize to No One – for almost 48 hours. And the national GOP saying – if they take back the House/Senate, this guy could be a Committee Chairman.
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Is this sort of condescencion reflective of YOUR ideals? YOUR values?
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No wonder he lost three campaign appearances.
By all accounts he is doing so. He had his response to the White House who smeared him and I give him credit for that. But truth doesn’t matter. Snow already backtracked today, but tomorrow his job is to not talk truth. His job is to keep the story in the news cycle. So he’ll have some kind of asinine remark to try to keep it in the papers.
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Then you have the talk shows and those smear merchants are going to ride this lie for the next week. Again, screw the truth, forget about our soldiers dieing in Iraq. Forget about the Shiite extremists telling our troop to stop searching for an abducted soldier and leave. PM al-Maliki had a video conference with George Bush and we packed up and left. Forget that we’re okay with Iraq giving terrorist amnesty if all they did was kill Americans. Forget that, the problem here is John Kerry didn’t use the word “us” in a sentence!!!
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Any appearances at this time would be harmful.
end of presidential aspirations. period.
Don’t see how he could have been a candidate again.
Look at the media focus on the campaign trail in Iowa, Tennessee, Virginia and Mizzu. No more questions or talk about winking playboy bunnies. No more questions about works of fiction by a Virginia paperback novelest/admiral cum Senator. They, the D challengers, are all answering questions about Kerry’s stupidity and IRAQ! The answer all have given is that they think that Kerry was way out of line but the point is that the R party’s Iraq policy has been a failure.
No one, not even Rush and co., thinks Kerry meant to impugn our soldiers. They think he’s a stiff, unfunny dope that is still fit-to-be-tied about ’04. The D politicians are separating themselves from Kerry, with that message as the lede, and then talking about Iraq. Yesterday they were responding to whatever message of hate and fear the Rs had spent $250,000/minute presenting to the electorate. Today it’s Iraq and the failure of the Bushies.
Kerry’s delay in apologizing has been an opportunity to talk about Iraq for another day and to wipe the smear campaign off the pages for two, maybe three days. While the national MSM and the blogosphere gets all hot and bothered about what Kerry said, why he didn’t apologize and how dead he is for ’08 (he’s dead), the local media in the key races is back to talking about Iraq. And that ain’t good for the Rs.
I think the response to this incident is illuminating: There are a lot of people here with a monkey on their back. This monkey is bald and wears glasses and a perpetually smug expression and has an office in the white house. The people with this monkey on their back — the monkey that is beating them senseless with it’s gonads — are more concerned with their own frustrations than with focus and determination: win/win for Karl.
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You’re mad at John Kerry? John Kerry should be mad at you. I’m mad at you. You’re Karl Rove’s little unpaid mouthpieces. A little more focus and a lot less smug emotionalism and we win. Instead, y’all just wanna whine about how John Kerry isn’t perfect! Y’all just wanna bemoan the fact he’s not ruthless, mean and low-down dirty like the other guy. You all just want to wallow in a thoroughly Republican description of an honorable near-miss as a despicable defeat… I tell you this: some day, some lamentable number of years from now, you’ll look back on your thinking now and will feel a burning shame. It’s the shame that Nixon voters feel today. There are a thousand secret shames in American politics and it cannot last much longer: a vote for some vaguely discriminatory proposition; a vote made in pique for no other reason than your own sense of entitled juvenalia; a few shouted epithets at a rally; some carried away arguments followed through more aggressively than merited by conviction…
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It’s very very simple: if people think we win and, what’s more, THEY WIN TOO. We all win. Yea us!
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But if you continue to wallow in the stupor of your self-pitying regard for the republican talking points, only Karl Rove wins.. You can take seriously the things that need to be taken seriously, or you can play Karls game… Choice is yours.
petr: “But if you continue to wallow in the stupor of your self-pitying regard for the republican talking points, only Karl Rove wins.. You can take seriously the things that need to be taken seriously, or you can play Karls game…”
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Nicely put.
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I do believe that people are going to look back at this era as a time when we were all somehow caught up somehow in “Karl’s game.”
…Your post would have been a lustrous pearl of wisdom.
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Leaving aside the obvious (how is a call to a win/win situation for all concerned somehow ‘partisan’?) I’ll simply note that your implied proposition is entirely false: taking sides against deeply rooted partisanship isn’t, de facto, partisanship… much as you would like it to be otherwise, somebody has to be the good guy…