I'm going straight to the White House," John Kerry says. "I'm thrilled with where the campaign is right now." Just ninety minutes earlier, on this warm afternoon in late September, he stood on an outdoor stage at the University of Pennsylvania campus in downtown Philadelphia and gazed out onto a sea of 20,000 supporters. The school had hosted only one other rally this big in recent memory -- when Bill Clinton came through on his re-election tour in 1996. It's heady stuff when a first-time presidential candidate draws crowds comparable in size to those of a popular sitting president.
"I feel as if we have finally gotten the American people and the press simultaneously focused on the real issues," he says. "Things I've been talking about for two years. George Bush has made catastrophic mistakes in Iraq, catastrophic mistakes in foreign policy. He's shown bad judgment, made bad choices about how to proceed in a war on terror. I think he's also out of touch with the American people on what their day-to-day lives are like. The cost of health care skyrockets; he has no plan to reduce it. School is expensive; he's made it worse. He has a string of broken promises about not hurting Social Security as he dips into it every day. This is the most say-one-thing-and-do-another administration in history.
(snip)
"It soon became apparent that many members of Kerry's traveling press make no attempt to hide their open dislike of the candidate. The morning after Kerry had addressed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala on the evening of September 15th, two members of the press corps were talking on a campaign bus. "That event was stupid," one said, referring to the previous night's occasion -- one of the largest Hispanic galas of its type. "A waste of time," the other said.
(snip)
But to report on these events accurately would mean you had to say something unqualified and positive about Kerry. This is something his traveling press corps has been -- and still is -- loath to do. On the evening of September 21st, outside an auditorium in Orlando, where inside more than 7,500 people were screaming wildly as Kerry spoke, Candy Crowley stood next to the venue and reported on CNN that Kerry was "trying . . . to rev up the crowd." The implication was unmistakable: Kerry's supporters in Florida were resistant, even standoffish. Just to make sure Crowley was able to get away with downplaying the event as she was, CNN never showed a wide shot of the large, cheering crowd.
We're gonna win this thing in spite of the "liberal" press.
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