Lessons learned

One of the many things I've been impressed by with the Kerry campaign has been their effectiveness in applying lessons learned from past Democratic campaigns and applying them to 2004. The press regards the BC04' operation as nearly perfect and snicker at the Kerry campaign's efforts to counter. But, truth be told, Kerry ran a well-disciplined convention and a very secret VP vetting process and has generally run a very tight ship throughout the general election compared to past Democratic candidates, in particular Al Gore.

Now they are busy trying to avoid another crucial mistake that Gore made in 2000 - not marshalling congressional forces for the all important post-debate debate. Josh Marshall, who seems oddly out of the loop of late, wonders what the Kerry strategy might be and hopes they have one. Well, they do, as detailed in The Hill.

The Kerry campaign has enlisted congressional Democrats to play down expectations of the challenger's performance in the first presidential debate this Thursday, and then flood the airwaves with jubilant analysis that he has won it.

The Democratic lawmakers will seek to influence media analysis by drumming campaign talking points into the press's echo chamber before and after the Florida showdown. Democrats want to avoid the mistakes they say 2000 nominee Al Gore made by ceding both pre-debate expectations and the post-debate conversation to Republicans, allowing aggressive GOP lawmakers and sympathetic pundits to set the tone for the debate analysis.
...
Another House press secretary said, "The Kerry campaign felt that in the 2000 debates, lawmakers weren’t up to speed [in] making the case in the first 24 hours after the debate.

"There weren't enough people on the ground, and on the air," the aide said.