Jill Filipovic: “If everyone is a sexual predator, then no one’s history of misdeeds matters (or, at least, no one needs to be held accountable).”
“MAGA Republicans seem to be having their own #MeToo moment, except here, a growing cohort of men is essentially saying: Oh, another man accused of sexual predation? #MeToo—and so what? Being accused of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is no longer disqualifying; on the right, it has been normalized. It may even be an asset.”
An Access Hollywood video clip from 2004 has reemerged showing Donald Trump voting by mail, despite recently claiming it leads to fraud.
The Washington Post reviews Donald Trump Jr.’s new book, Triggered, and notes it “fails as memoir and as polemic.”
“Its analysis is facile, its hypocrisy relentless, its self-awareness marginal. (The writing is wretched, even by the standards of political vanity projects.) But the point of Triggered is not autobiographical, literary or analytic, and it should not be read or evaluated on such grounds. Rather, the book is most useful as a preview of a possible Donald Trump Jr. 2024 presidential campaign, the contours of which grow clearer the deeper one wades into these pages.”
Jill Biden writes in her memoir, Where the Light Enters, about when a group of Democrats were trying to convince her husband, Joe Biden, that he could beat George W. Bush if he challenged him in 2004:
“I was sitting at the pool in my swimsuit. My temper got the best of me. I decided I needed to contribute to this conversation. As I walked through the kitchen, a Sharpie caught my eye. I drew NO on my stomach in big letters, and marched through the room in my bikini.”
Mark Murray: “As another presidential election begins to take shape in this Internet Age, Saturday marks the 15th anniversary of Howard Dean’s famous ‘scream’ heard around the world, a moment that almost instantly became the butt of late-night jokes and the epitaph for his failed presidential campaign.”
“But it was also much more: the ‘scream’ was one of the very first viral moments in American politics and a forerunner of how politics is played today.”
“Coming just two weeks before Facebook was created, a year before there was a YouTube and two years before there was Twitter, it was arguably the first meme in politics, long before that term entered our vernacular.”
“Yeah, yeah, I realize how badly Shrum screwed me.”
— John Kerry, quoted by the New Yorker, on how strategist Robert Shrum had restrained him from hitting back against the Swift boat attacks during the 2004 presidential campaign.
“People like Bernie are always attractive, as I was. They speak truth to power. The problem with candidates like that — and like me — is that as you get closer to election time, you’re more careful about how your vote’s going to be used. You’re going to tend to want to see somebody who you think looks presidential as the nominee of your party. That’s one of the things that sank me.”
— Howard Dean, in an interview with the Washington Post.
Howard Dean gave some good advice for this cycle’s presidential candidate recalling that his effort to evolve from populist insurgent to plausible president was “really hard,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Dean: “The hard part was that internally you get sucked into being adored by thousands of people who just hang on your every word and you’re trying to dial it back. I found myself reaching back for the fiery applause line that I knew I shouldn’t be doing because the crowd, it would just light ‘em up. That was fine in the room, but it wasn’t fine for the country, who wanted to vote for somebody who looked like a president.”
Dean noted that his inability “to maintain the control necessary to present himself as presidential material, along with a disorganized campaign and intramural squabbles, torpedoed his effort.”
“I feel comfortable, and I feel free. I feel completely liberated. But, you know… I was a lot better senator after I ran for president because I had done it. I had run. I came within 59,000 votes in one state, so for three hours I was president.”
— Secretary of State John Kerry, quoted by Vogue.
Boston Globe: “Just three months after losing his campaign to be president of the United States, a politically wounded and weary Sen. John Kerry took a routine fact-finding tour of the Middle East. It was one of countless overseas trips Kerry had taken in his two decades in Congress. But this time, those accompanying the Massachusetts Democrat noticed something was different…”
“The 2004 presidential campaign had significantly raised Kerry’s profile around the world, an international stature that helped Kerry climb out of the darkness after his defeat at the hands of President George W. Bush and allowed him to reset the trajectory of his public career.”
Michelle Cottle hopes the news about John Edwards linked to a prostitution ring isn’t proven.
“I want to believe this latest Edwards monkey business isn’t true — not because I harbor a shred of fondness or respect for him, but because I find it unnerving that a man this reckless, this self-indulgent, this irretrievably stupid came within a thousand miles of occupying the White House.”
“Imagine if Ohio had gone blue in 2004. If being a failed VP candidate turned Edwards into a narcissistic fool, what would winning have done to him?”
Amazingly enough, Mitt Romney’s role in George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign was to call challenger John Kerry a flip-flopper.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.