The AP has a story headlined "Kerry Association Hurting Some Democrats." Excerpt:
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle hugged President Bush from one end of South Dakota to the other this summer. In his own campaign commercials.The brief embrace might seem an odd claim on re-election for the man Republicans depict as obstructionist-in-chief for the president's congressional agenda. But Daschle is one of several candidates with a common political problem as Democrats nurse fragile hopes of gaining Senate control this fall.
From the South to South Dakota and Alaska, they are running in areas where Bush is popular - and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry not so much....
South Dakota holds the marquee Senate race of the campaign, and polls show a close race between Daschle and former GOP Rep. John Thune in a state that Bush carried by 22 percentage points in 2000.
The hug - two or three seconds in length - is a videotaped image of the embrace Daschle gave Bush when the president spoke to Congress shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Daschle's spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, said the ad's message is that he "will work with the president when the president is right but oppose him when he is wrong." Daschle's latest commercial criticizes the administration for failing to provide adequate drought relief, while faulting Thune for not standing up to Bush on the issue.
The Republican Party demanded unsuccessfully that Daschle stop airing the ad, arguing it left a false impression.
Thune's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, says Daschle "is running from the arms of Michael Moore to the arms of George Bush," referring to the liberal filmmaker whose name was heartily booed at the Republican National Convention.
No, Wadhams was referring to Daschle attending the premiere of Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and the subsequent furor over the report in Time magazine that Tom Daschle hugged Michael Moore there.
Here's a picture of Daschle eagerly rushing to get to the premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11," ticket in hand.
The Reuters picture below was taken March 11, 2004, at the conclusion of a press conference in which John Kerry refused to apologize for calling President Bush and his advisers “the most crooked ... lying group I’ve ever seen.” Tom Daschle didn't take the opportunity to decry the "startling meanness" of Kerry's comment, and instead shook hands with Kerry and mugged for the cameras.
Recent Comments