Kerry's speech at TBA (from CampusProgress.org)

[Mass]

http://www.campusprogress.org/page/community/post_group/main/C3x8

Kerry me home

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Coming in he got a lot of love from the crowd. His has been the most war-themed talk of all this morning's speeches, with an introduction by a veteran, Captain John Powers, who served in Iraq and began talking about his work against the Vietnam War. Patriotic dissent is the theme and the audience is eating it up.

I follwed Kerry pretty extensively during the primaries in New Hampshire, and like the rest of us got my fill of Kerry in 2004 (I think he's gotten better speechwriters since then, or maybe it's the absence of Bob Shrum, or maybe because he's so comfortable being honestly anti-war as he was in the beginning of his political career). My take on him was that he's a good legislator but a bad politician. I'm surprised by how popular he is here. He is also the best speaker of the morning (and more believable, I think, than HRC or Pelosi).

Kerry also got a huge ovation for a (thinly) veiled attack on HRC: "It's not enough to argue aboutt the logistics, or argue about the details, or the manner of complex execution. It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake. ... it was wrong, and I was wrong." Somone in the back yelled "No Hillary!" soon after. Another ovation came when he called for "a hard and fast deadline" for troop withdrawal.

John Kerry 2008 doesn't seem as dead on arrival as expected, if the progressive audience's numerous ovations here today are any indication.

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