If you were John Kerry's campaign manager in 2004...

[hcallega]

Told him to vote for the $87 billion dollars before he voted against it and then made sure that he didn't refer to Lambeau Field as Lambert Field. Oh and knowing some of the Red Sox players wouldn't hurt because I remember him naming ppl who hadn't been there in a few years. My point being not that baseball and football are more important, but that Kerry needed to be in touch with the ordinary Americans much more than he actually was. He seemed and still seems to have this mentality that politicians are on a higher level than the voters and that it's ok to say one thing and then another as if the audience won't catch on. President Bush was more like the common man and it showed on election day. He didn't over simplify economics or over complicate defense. Bush simply said what he meant and meant what he said and was constant on his positions. Kerry came across too as a walking contradiction that was out of touch with average families.

Are you telling me that there was nobody named Manny Ortiz that closed games and wore the number 9 for the Red Sox? Didn't he wave the ball fair?

[Mr.Phips]

Would have told Kerry not to hesitate to call Bush a liar and attack him for being incompetent enough to let 9/11 happen. 

[pbrower2a]

1. He should have had a more aggressive, beat-the-cheat strategy as Obama used. I concur that he bet everything on Ohio, figuring that the ravaged economy would be enough to win the state. Such was a mistake, particularly when the Secretary of State was also the President's  state campaign chair and had promised to "deliver" Ohio.

2. Having picked John Edwards, then a competent and admirable politician, he could have used him better in some likely swing states in the South -- Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.  He was then a fiery speaker capable of getting his point across. But if he wasn't going to so use Edwards at his supposed geographical strengths, he should have selected someone who might have worked better in other parts of the country -- like the West (AZ, CO, NV, NM).

3. He let himself go on the defensive. Challengers dare not do so. Kerry did exactly that.

4. Muzzle his wife. She was simply too exotic for Americans to figure out. I forget whether she sounded like Eva Gabor or Andrea Huffington... Many Americans think that cosmopolitan sophistication is suspect.

5. Expose the hypocrisy of the Bush personality -- that even if Dubya  might create a down-home image he was still a patsy for fat-cats.

6. Clearly affirm his Roman Catholic faith, and show consequences of that faith in public policy. The Roman Catholic Church is quite liberal on economic matters.