Tag: John Kerry

It's official. The Senate voted today 94 to 3 to confirm John Kerry as Secretary of State.

President Obama has announced that John Kerry will be his next Secretary of State.

He is expected to take office in January. Hillary is recovering from a concussion and the flu.

President-Elect Barack Obama will name New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as his Commerce Secretary tomorrow.

Why was John Kerry left out in the cold? Among the few high-level positions left for him is Secretary of Veterans affairs.

Senator and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry will endorse Barack Obama for President.

The endorsement is considered "a slap at" John Edwards. Edwards beat Kerry in the 2004 South Carolina primary. Edwards' reaction?

"Our country and our party are stronger because of John's service, and I respect his decision. When we were running against each other and on the same ticket, John and I agreed on many issues."

How much effect will the endorsement have?

Since losing the 2004 race, Kerry has kept a national network of supporters intact. He has an e-mail network of 3 million supporters, according to aides. He also has traveled extensively raising millions of dollars for Democratic candidates nationwide.

Sen. John Kerry has decided not to run for President in 2008. Smart move. The field is already over-crowded.

In the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 5 percent of Democrats said Kerry was their top choice for the 2008 nomination, and a little more than half -- 51 percent -- did not want him to be the 2008 nominee.

Kerry trailed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who led the field of Democratic preferences with 34 percent; Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, with 18 percent; his 2004 running mate, former Sen. John Edwards, who got 15 percent; and former Vice President Al Gore, the party's 2000 presidential nominee, with 10 percent.

I'm close to concluding that Hillary will be the nominee. She's going to get the big bucks from contributors. She's got a team that is honed to the 9th degree. And, she has Bill.

If we needed only one reason to support John Kerry, this might be it. For the first time since 1992, the Democratic Party Platform will not contain an endorsement of the death penalty. John Nichols writes:

Simply put, on the question of execution, John Kerry is a very different Democrat from Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Clinton and Gore, while surely aware that capital punishment is an ineffective and racially and economically biased vehicle for fighting crime, were willing to embrace it as a political tool. Clinton even rushed back to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded inmate. With Clinton and Gore steering the party's policies, Democratic platforms endorsed capital punishment. But Clinton and Gore are no longer at the helm. And as of tonight, the party will no longer be on record as supporting the death penalty. Asked about the removal of the pro-capital punishment language, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who chairs the committee that drafted the document, explained that "it's a reflection of John Kerry."

As we've reported several times, including here , John Kerry is opposed to the death penalty for all but foeign terrorists--and that exception arose after 9-11. Nichols expands on his position, writing:

Kerry opposes the execution of juveniles, supports greater access to DNA testing for death row inmates, and argues that studies "reveal serious questions, racial bias, and deep disparities in the way the death penalty is applied." Kerry was a co-sponsor of the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2001 and of the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2003. "I know something about killing," Kerry says, referring to his service in Vietnam as a swift boat commander. "I don't like killing. That's just a personal belief I have."

Kerry is a former prosecutor. We have friends that worked as assistants when he was the DA in Boston. Rikki Klieman, the great criminal defense attorney and NBC legal analyst for one. She raves about Kerry as a prosecutor. She writes about him in her book, Fairy Tales Can Come True.

John Kerry has said he could never be a defense attorney. His heart lies with the prosecution. We don't mind that at all since he was one of those rare prosecutors that cared about doing justice more than his office's win/loss record.