John Kerry blames out-of-touch voters for Democrats' midterm image troubles

Kerry blames out-of-touch voters

for Democrats' midterm image troubles

 Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is docking his family's

new $7 million yacht in neighboring Rhode Island,

allowing him to avoid paying roughly $500,000

 in taxes to the cash-strapped Bay State.

By Mike Lillis - 09/25/10 06:06 PM ET
The Hill.com/Boston Herald.com
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) this week said an uninformed public is largely to blame for the Democrats' problems heading into November's midterms, the Boston Herald reports.

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry said Friday in Boston, according to the Herald.

"A lot of the anger today — while it’s appropriate because Washington is broken — is not directed at the right people."

The remark drew a quick response from William Jacobson, a conservative blogger and Cornell University law professor, who told the Herald that such an attitude is the reason the Democrats' are facing a tough election cycle to begin with.

“It just continues the Democrats’ theme that the reason people are upset is because they don’t understand — they're not smart enough," Jacobson told the Herald. "That sort of rhetoric just gets people even more upset."

Kerry waded into a similar spot in 2006 when he suggested that students who don't perform well in school will get "stuck in Iraq." Though Kerry is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, his comment drew howls from conservatives — including the George W. Bush White House — for implying that the military attracts less intelligent (or at least less motivated) recruits than other professions.