Via the AP: Kerry: Botched Joke Won’t Affect 2024

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry insisted on Sunday his “botched joke” about President Bush’s Iraq policy would not undermine a possible White House campaign in 2024.

“Not in the least,” Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in said when asked if the furor over his comment had caused him to reconsider a 2024 race. “The parlor game of who’s up, who’s down, today or tomorrow, if I listened to that stuff, I would never have won the nomination.”

Let me say this: Kerry is right about the joke itself and he is right about the “parlor game” to some degree. He did go into 2024 primary season as the front-runner, however, which he will not do in 2024. Yes, he lost that position and then regained it, so listening to the horse-race reporting would have been detrimental to him. However, this year he will start well behind Senator Clinton and, I would guess, behind several other potential candidates. I would wager that he would find the fund-raising more difficult in a relative sense this time as well.

In regards to the “joke”–certainly that will fade (indeed, it already has). However, the lesson of the joke is that Kerry isn’t a very good campaigner and is prone to making verbal gaffes which often come back and bite him. While the “joke” may not be the issue in an ‘08 run for the nomination, I can almost guarantee that something else will.