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Kerry's "Liability"
The media should stop pretending they don't understand Senator Kerry's nuanced position on the Iraq resolution and subsequent invasion. They do. What's more, so do the vast majority if Americans, including the more "impressionable" segment Kerry detractors hope to convince he's a "waffler."
The voting public will understand Senator Kerry's explanation because their view has evolved in precisely the same way. There was a surge of public support for the invasion when the invasion became an inevitability, followed by increasingly expressed doubts and criticisms. When Senator Kerry says he believed the resolution was necessary for the US to negotiate from a position of strength, people will get it. Despite the willful obtuseness of his critics, context matters, and any voter can easily discern the difference between actions such as voting for a resolution out of "statesmanship" and strategy (or voicing support to pollsters during the invasion) - and "flip flopping."
What's more, Kerry is on record as voicing conditions for an invasion similar to those voiced by the public.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Kerry's vote in favor of the Iraq resolution would not a liability in a Kerry-Bush matchup, except for tiny minorities who opposed any invasion under any circumstance and will not vote for either as a result, or who believe affording a liar a degree of trust for defensible reasons is worse than being a liar.
In fact, each time Senator Kerry is asked about it he is granted another opportunity to relay to the vast majority of the American people that he, not the unelected fraud, better represents their favored approach to international relations - the one they have repeatedly told pollsters is their preference.
I do think it is an actual liability, but only because the media will, as the horse describes, pretend they just can't comprehend it.
I do hold that vote against Kerry, but I don't think his position has been inconsistent.