I actually meant it as a joke, after I acted like I was not joking...

CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry canceled plans to campaign for fellow Democrats after the GOP began hammering him over his comments to college students about getting "stuck in Iraq."

President Bush's 2004 presidential rival -- who told a radio host Wednesday he was sorry for what he called a "botched joke" -- will not appear with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey on Wednesday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a Democratic official said.

"I would be surprised if you see him welcomed out there anywhere," the official said, "and certainly not in a race that is meaningful."

Strategists at both the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees told their candidates the flap is a distraction they don't need right now.

The Massachusetts senator cannot sense how he should react on the national stage. He's been sent packing for the rest of this election, and he may cost his party dearly. No doubt a North East Liberal will energize the conservative base.

Karen Tumulty nails it, at TIME:

His initial impulse, predictably enough, was to fight back against the criticism. He didn't want to fall again into what turned out to be the biggest trap of 2004, when he failed to understand that a relatively small ad buy from a group that no one had ever heard of could be more damaging than he imagined. He was determined not to be "swift-boated" again. So he declared: "If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the President and his failed team and a Republican majority in the Congress that has been willing to stamp — rubber-stamp policies that have done injury to our troops and to their families." But even Rand Beers, his national security adviser in the 2004 campaign, said: "It's unfortunate that Senator Kerry misspoke. No one who has ever been in combat would intentionally impugn our brave troops."

In other words, Kerry has managed on the eve of what could be a watershed election to remind pretty much everyone what it was they didn't like about the Democrats, and especially what they didn't like about him. It might have made more sense just to say he was sorry — for once to get ahead of a mistake, instead of trying to compensate for it the next time.

Kerry should have apologized. This was a slip of the tongue. One tends to apologize for offensive slips of the tongue. A gracious and thoughtful apology goes a long way in this country -- and it slows down the assaults from the other side of the aisle.

It is actually a great injustice that the president of the United States, who has mismanaged his way through a dreadful war, can now take to the stump and score political points. This should be the last days of his presidency, a seal to his legacy. But, Kerry has granted a repreive to his rival.