This afternoon, John Kerry was on Blog Talk Radio, along with Heading Left's James Boyce and Nate Wilcox, plus MyDD's Chris Bowers. The entire show lasted an hour (JK joins at 19:52), but if you just want to listen to John Kerry's powerful, forceful, even angry 12 minutes and 43 seconds, you can click here. I strongly recommend it! Meanwhile, here are some highlights from Kerry's remarks. Please note that this is just a rough transcript/summary, as I wanted to get this out here quickly so you could all hear what Senator Kerry had to say. Thanks.
James Boyce asked Kerry "How did we get here again when you can ask the question, 'How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?'" And "what do we do now?"
John Kerry responded to the first part of the question, roughly as follows:
We're here again because of the arrogance of leadership that willfully chose to close its eyes and ears and minds to the lessons of the past. It's a disgrace that people have so just stubbornly and willfully resisted historical lessons that were staring them in the face...wiser people of their same party (Scowcroft, Powell...) warned them of. They nevertheless chose to go down the neocon, right-wing, certain, holier-than-thou point of view that they knew something that everyone else didn't know, that we were going to be received like victors, that they were going to throw flowers in the paths of our soldiers, that this would be a cakewalk, that they didn't need 200,000 troops...I mean, outrageous assumption upon assumption, all of which were wrong. That's how we got here: arrogance and stubborn ideology.
Kerry then responded to the second part of the question by advocating "applying commonsense and courage to the decisions we have to make." Also, Kerry specifically noted that we needed to leverage the Iraqis by "real benchmarks and real expectations." Among these, we have to:
*"set a date, about a year from now"
*"have a series of benchmarks on provincial elections, constitutional changes, administrative accountability..."
*"provide for a fundamental political reconciliation, diplomatic reconciliation in the region through a summit."
Kerry also emphasized that we have to get a million signatures in support of his legislation. The American people need to send a message to members of Congress that they expect us to take action.
On a non-binding resolution, Kerry argued that it "obviously is not enough." However, he stated that "it's a first step," and at least gets Congress "expressing their opinions publicly and that begins to change the dynamics around here."
Kerry noted that "we only have 51 votes...only 50 because Tim Johnson is in the hospital. Joe Lieberman brings you down to 49 votes. You need Republicans to get anything done in the Senate. We need to win a bigger margin. You've got significant exposure of Republicans who have to be held accountable for their votes."
Great stuff, check it out here for the Kerry portion of the show and here for the whole thing. Enjoy!
And yesterday on the Chris Matthews Show, Joe Klein said he think it's actually likely that Lieberman will caucus with the GOP later this year giving them a 50/50+Cheney majority. I don't think that makes sense though because, for one thing, Conn. will hate him for it. Also the Dems will probably pick up seats after '08, so he'll be right back in the minority.
So even if Lieberman decides to formalize his abandonment of the Democratic party; it won't have any impact on committee chair assignments. At least that's my understanding (not 100% certain).
Great news about Senator Johnson. I also seem to recall reading here at RK that Steve Jarding was going to be helping him out with the re-election.