John Kerry Admits 2004 Election Sellout
With many people convinced that John Kerry sold out the American people in 2004 by not challenging the clearly fraudulent and pivotal Bush vote in Ohio, Kerry's reported comments to Afghan president Karzai are troubling to say the least.
The Associated Press reports:
A senior American official briefed on the meetings by Sen. John Kerry gave The Associated Press details of the negotiations with Karzai... [Karzai] needed several more hours of convincing, including a long walk with Kerry on the Presidential Palace grounds.During the extended stroll, the official said, Kerry opened up to Karzai, telling him about his own difficult decision not to challenge the vote count in Ohio on election night in 2004. There were allegations of voting irregularities in favor of incumbent President George W. Bush, and Kerry told Karzai that he knew he could have held up a final outcome for weeks by filing a challenge.
Perhaps it would be better phrased that a challenge was: "not in the interests of the power elite in Washington". Comments by John Edwards the day after the election had given hope to Democratic activists that Kerry was standing firm against election fraud:
"John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that in this election every vote would count and every vote would be counted. Tonight we are keeping our word and we will fight for every vote. You deserve no less."
But the Kerry campaign's subsequent actions seemed to me to be less than a full commitment to challenge the result. The policy looked like one of appeasing activists with weasel words, while not really delivering.
John Kerry has made a mockery of democratic politics and is hardly the person to advise Karzai about disputed elections. Or maybe it would be better to say that one of the 'John Kerry's is making a mockery of democracy. After all there seem to be at least two people wandering the world stage calling themselves John Kerry.
The first of the John Kerry's was involved in some duplicitous maneuvers in the controversial aftermath of the 2004 Presidential Election.
I wrote a story about this on Christmas eve 2004, even as lawsuits over the official outcome in Ohio were working their way through the courts. When Daniel Hoffheimer, the lawyer representing the Kerry campaign in Ohio made a statement which made it look like there was determination to mount a strong challenge, I pounced on the comment. My aim was to force the Kerry campaign off the fence of ambiguity and into the battleground of Ohio's fraud-ridden vote:
Kerry Preparing Grounds to UnconcedeBreakForNews.com, 24th Dec, 2004 23:00ETby Fintan Dunne, Editor EXCLUSIVEIf you haven't been following John Kerry closely, get ready to hear of surprising developments. The vote-defrauded, potential president-in-waiting has just indicated through his lawyer that the validity of George Bush's reelection is no longer a given....In early December, when the Kerry Campaign joined a suit by Green and Libertarian party candidates seeking a recount in Delaware County, Daniel Hoffheimer said Kerry wasn't disputing President Bush's victory in Ohio. The aim was to make sure any recount was "done accurately and completely," Hoffheimer said.Now MSNBC 'Countdown' reports the same Hoffheimer, in comments on their imminent filing in the Ohio recount, concluding their call for a scrupulous recount with this caveat:"...Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush/Cheney warrant the public trust."That's the first time the Kerry Campaign has impugned the legitimacy of Bush's reelection......
My highlighting of the Kerry lawyer's comment ripped through the Democratic party activist community over the Christmas weekend. And by the following Monday 27th December, 2004 the Kerry campaign was forced off the fence --and onto the wrong side of the issue.
That was when everyone finally realized that Kerry and Edwards were not really challenging the Bush/Cheney alleged victory.
The letdown came via an official statement on Keith Olberman's Countdown show that night. Olberman made a veiled reference to my article, partly calling me a 'conspiracy theorist', but also partly acknowledging that I was actually right to hold the Kerry campaign to account for the statement made.
From Olberman's comments and the Kerry campaign response, it's clear that he had sent them my article, seeking a response:
Last Thursday night, his lead attorney on the ground in Ohio, Daniel J. Hoffheimer, issued a statement that constituted the third or fourth eyebrow-raiser from the Kerry camp in the post-election period.In announcing that the Kerry-Edwards group would join the bid in Federal District Court in Ohio to preserve all "evidence" from the election and recount there, Mr. Hoffheimer said, on behalf of the senators, that such preservation was necessary because, "Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust."This evening, after several Web columnists and bloggers joined me in questioning the bluntness of the phrase (one even wildly claiming this was a precursor to a Kerry "un-concession"), Hoffheimer changed his tone.Mr. Hoffheimer advised us by e-mail:"I would caution the media not to read more into what the Kerry-Edwards campaign has said, than what you hear in the plain meaning of our comments. There are many conspiracy theorists opining these days. There are many allegations of fraud. But this presidential election is over. The Bush-Cheney ticket has won. The Kerry-Edwards campaign has found no conspiracy and no fraud in Ohio, though there have been many irregularities that cry out to be fixed for future elections. Senator Kerry and we in Ohio intend to fix them. When all of the problems in Ohio are added together, however bad they are, they do not add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards. Senator Kerry's fully-informed and extremely careful assessment the day after the election and before he conceded remains accurate today, notwithstanding all the details we have since learned."The problem is, of course, that it was not some great, conspiracy-based, tin-foil-hat, piece of linguistic gymnastics, to infer from the conclusion to Mr. Hoffheimer's Thursday statement, that the Kerry-Edwards campaign did not believe that "the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney" warranted the public trust. It is, in fact, to use Mr. Hoffheimer's phrase, "the plain meaning" of the first statement.How do I know that? To borrow Chairman Sam Ervin's answer to that same question, as posed by John Ehrlichmann at the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973: "Because I can understand the English language. It's my mother's tongue."The Kerry campaign spent much of 2004 being accused by its critics of trying to be all things to all people. It seems poised to continue to wear the bull's eye well into the New Year.
Apparently it's vital that the Afghan people have confidence in the validity of their democratic process, but it's perfectly alright for the American people to be denied their democratic mandate in 2004.
One John Kerry thinks that every vote should be counted. Another John Kerry reckoned in 2004 that Bush unquestionably won. A John Kerry half-challenged the result in Ohio. And finally, a person reputed to be John Kerry has now advised Karzai that the American people were too politically weary to bother them with issues like theft of elections.
Will the REAL John Kerry please stand up?
Probably not.
I would like to be seeing President Kerry on television now, and I think there were issues in Ohio, but I fully understand that Senator Kerry would not have had the backing of the party nor a majority of the American public in his pursuit to count every vote. After Gore/Bush the people had had enough of long drawn out elections. And, besides the voting results weren't even close enought to make it look legitimate. I truly believe that when Kerry conceded the election he did it in the best interests of this country. I hold no malice towards him.
ReplyDeleteEven if he challenged the election, it would have merely delayed the outcome of the election. We still would have been stuck with Bush. Kerry was right to concede, as it would have accomplished nothing. And, yes, it had to hurt but it was the right thing to do.
ReplyDeleteGood summary and analysis. Kerry has told at least two people I know that he knew the 2004 election was stolen. The first time this was publicly reported, Kerry turned around and denied that he had said this.
ReplyDeleteCliff Arnebeck
"I would caution the media..." I wouldn't take that lightly since he did not say "please." But maybe it's plain lawyer-eez in which they always come off sounding like things are done with impunity.
ReplyDeleteKerry is a Navy man and the scion of one (or more) of America's oldest and most powerful families. He and his "opponent," GW Bush, were both members of a tiny secret society called The Brotherhood of Death (popularly known as Skull and Bones).
ReplyDeleteIn the 2004 race, GW Bush's business partner, George Soros (you can look it up), publicly made an $8 million payment to the Kerry campaign, ostensibly to support a Kerry victory.
Kerry DID NOT SPEND a dime of this money on his campaign. In fact, he held back $51 million in donations, not buying TV time, not hiring organizers, not doing the many things that people do when they are actually attempting to win an election.
It doesn't take a particularly suspicious person to conclude that Kerry was never actually running, and that the 2004 election was a staged fraud.