Kerry's failed attempt at humor

WHEN EVERYTHING WAS looking good for the Democrats this election season, the last thing the party needed was to give the Republicans a rallying-point this November.

John Kerry’s “botched joke” at a California university earlier this week provided the Republicans with much needed ammunition to hurl at Democratic candidates who have been looking good in polls less than a week before the election.

With the Democratic Party days away from taking control of the House and threatening the Republican majority in the Senate, it appears that Kerry has genuinely f@$*ed up with his inadvertent suggestion that the United States military is comprised of uneducated, unintelligent persons without many options outside of a future on the front lines.

And while this implication is disgusting and inaccurate, it is easy to construe this incident as reflective of an every-increasing elitism in the Democratic Party — something that has created a distance between the working classes whose children generally makeup our army and politicians such as Kerry.

Vietnam has long passed and many voters next week may have a difficult time calling to mind Kerry’s heroism in the 1960s or separating this convenient sound clip that has been replaying on Fox News since its utterance from Democratic candidates whose careers are on the line.

Even though polls indicate that the Democratic Party has not been affected by this failed attempt at humor, it is a sobering reminder of how high the stakes are this election season and how cutthroat our political system has become.

With all of the partisan quibble aside, there is also a profoundly human dimension to this story that has been left unexplored by most commentators.

Let’s face it: Kerry is not getting any younger and what has been a largely successful political career may be coming to an end.

With many speculating that Kerry was anticipating making a run at the presidency again, the footage from the speech where everything went wrong may serve as an indication that Kerry’s political stock is falling — perhaps beyond recovery.

In it, Kerry looked detached, disinterested and, sadly, somewhat confused.

A joke that was probably made at every campaign stop — repeated mechanically day after day — got the best of a seasoned veteran under the strain of another highly contentious election season.

Now he has become a punching bag for Republicans searching for anything to talk about other than their failed policies and scandals and, unfortunately, an outsider in his own party — another victim of a political system that doesn’t reward elected officials for political action, but quickly demonizes them at the first sight of vulnerability.

What a shame.

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