A challenge to John Kerry

Paul in Illinois for passed along this link in an open thread earlier today.

John Aravosis is angry, and rightfully so, at the talk (probably puffed by Kerry's office), that he is in great shape to run in '08 because he boasts an e-mail list of more than 3 million. Obviously, those 3 million weren't fans of Kerry per se--they just wanted to get rid of the Dear Leader. Kerry wasn't an awful candidate, but he certainly wasn't a great one. He's had his chance.

Fortunately enough, there's an easy way for all of us in the netroots to fix this problem: unsubscribe from Kerry's list. It's easy, it helps to clean out your inbox, and it will send a very powerful message to Massachusetts' junior Senator that he should make other plans for 2008.

Demetrius and I were talking about this in the car on the way home from lunch, and we think the netroots should do one better than that. We need to challenge John Kerry to validate his email list.

See, after I read the excerpt above, I stopped to think whether or not I am one of the names on that list. When John Kerry was doing some pretty major Dean-bashing in December of 2003, I wrote him a polite but firm letter cautioning him that he needed to lay off. I suggested that if somehow he actually became the nominee (which did not look remotely likely at that time), his behavior now was going to make it harder for some of us to support him later.

Pretty much as I expected, I got back a form letter that did not remotely address the concerns I had expressed. But then I started getting campaign emails from him, as if I were one of his "supporters". I tried to use the unsubcribe link, and got an error message. *Eventually* I managed to unsubscribe once and for all, from that address, anyway. Once we were heading toward the general election and I wanted to be able to comment on the blog of the Democratic nominee, I registered to be able to post on that site. But I didn't use my regular email, because I didn't want his junk in my inbox. So I used a throw-away addy from Yahoo. Which one? Darned if I know. It's not one I still use, I know that.

Is your address listed among Kerry's 3 million supporters? Or, maybe you're listed under more than one address. I was on his list for sending a letter of *complaint*, which he, of course, did not adequately respond to. Others remain on his list, as mentioned in the excerpt above, because they were part of the anti-Bush masses in 2004. And, as I mentioned here, some people are added to his list when they sign his petitions about issues that matter to them.

So yes, I agree with the suggestion that people who do not wish to be considered part of Kerry's 3 million strong army of grassroots supporters unsubscribe from his mailing list. But I also believe that we need to press the issue that the onus is on John Kerry to validate that list. Are all of the addresses on it still valid? Are people signed up more than once? Because if he's going to publicly float numbers like that as evidence of his wide support, we're going to have to have some proof that this claim is accurate. Got any, Senator Kerry?

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