First of all, Obama and Kerry on paper were/are essentially the same candidate. I'll probably be the only one you'll ever hear say this, but I liked Kerry better than Obama. Barack won me over during the campaign; I was ready to vote for Hillary during the primary until I saw more footage on Obama and Richardson(who I really liked) endorsed him.
Kerry would have won in 2008 and Obama would have lost in 2004. You could also flip Bush and McCain in the last 2 elections and gotten similar results, McCain I would figure outperforming Bush slightly in a given election. I don't think Kerry ran that bad of a campaign. He was dealt a bad hand with a nonfactor like Edwards as his running mate in addition to Iraq taking center stage. Biden proved to be more effective than Edwards. McCain also got a raw deal. I bet he was ready to kick Bush and Paulsen in the ass for that bailout business right in the middle of campaign season along with the fact that the electorate was mad as hell at the GOP.
So did I, strangely.
Me three. I like Obama just fine, but I would feel more comfortable with someone with Kerry's experience.
I somewhat agree too. Where I disagree is that I do like Obama better than Kerry. And Obama strikes me as a better manager and overall better politician.
But I liked Kerry just fine. And I think a lot of the post-2004 kvetching is a little unfair. I don't think Kerry's '04 campaign was anywhere NEAR as bad as people claim it was in hindsight. Yes, there was infighting in the campaign, especially around August and September of '04 -- guess what? That's typical in a losing campaign -- when a campaign is losing, people lose their cool and start fighting about what to do. Remember that the infighting stories stopped in October -- when Kerry beat Bush in the debates, closed the gap and seemed to have the momentum.
I wouldn't laud Kerry's campaign -- they made several mistakes. But overall, they did pretty well considering the climate. Yes, had they done a few things differently they could have won. But they also could have lost a lot worse. In the end, losing the PV by 2.5% and losing the electoral vote by one state (Ohio) isn't a damning outcome against a wartime incumbent president with a 50% approval rating in an okay economy.
And I also agree that there's a lot more similarity between Kerry and Obama than people realize. The two are virtually identical when it comes to ideology, and they have very similar political interests, both of them being primarily interested in foreign policy and multilateralism. They also have similar challenges -- both sort of fit the "wine-track" stereotype and aren't natural glad-handling types and are far more cerebral and detached. I remember one commentator on a blog I read commented in August that sometimes Obama actually seems like a better-speaker-John Kerry.
As for the subject of this thread: yes, Kerry would have won in this climate, although it would have been narrower. And it sort of depends on how he won the nomination -- is he a repeat nominee or a first-time nominee? A repeat nomination would likely have resulted in a low turnout election with depressed enthusiasm.
