Reply #15: Plus the vote didn't accurately describe his overall view on the war [View All]

"I had problems, way back in 2002 when Kerry voted for the IWR. It was one of 3 votes that I had real trouble with in the long years that Kerry has been my Senator. Ahm, he has cast thousands of votes in the Senate. Although I wish he had voted otherwise, I certainly was not going to stop supporting him based on one vote."

I also disagreed with the vote, but the real issue was going to war. If Kerry had supported going to war I would feel differently about him, but Kerry made his opposition to going to war clear. This included anti-war statements in his Senate floor statement at the time of the vote, his NY Times op-ed at the time of the vote (also published in Foreign Affairs), as well as many other statements leading up to the war.

If Dean had not turned the IWR vote into a litmus test (which he conveniently didn't have to vote in, considering his support for the Biden Lugar resolution) we would not be hearing about that one vote endlessly.