If I recall correctly, Kerry's ill-chosen words referred to a case in which he voted to move something from committee to the floor, and then voted against the version that came up for final vote, because it had been amended. What he should've said was that his votes were different because they were on, effectively, two different bills.

In the case of a vote for cloture, followed by a vote against the bill under discussion, there is no difference in the content of the bill affected by the two votes.

Kerry voted for a war funding bill that would have rolled back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy (like Kerry and Bush) to pay in part for the appropriation. That bill failed. Then he voted against the war funding bill that had no means of paying for it but just added to the deficit.

Here's the story as told by George Lakoff, <link>

Let's examine the most ridiculed Kerry quote about the $87 billion appropriations bill for the Iraq war, "I voted for it before I voted against it."

Thanks for the details -- I knew it was something like that. In any case, he clearly could've expressed the issue better. But what he did was entirely reasonable -- whereas there is a fair case to be made that voting for cloture, and against a bill, is somewhat hypocritical.

I disagree with that case. I think there are times when you can, in good faith, say, "I am not sufficiently satisfied with this bill to stand in active support of it, but neither do I feel it is sufficiently bad to warrant taking even extreme action to block it, and I recognize that a large majority of the American people wants us to take some action, so I am not going to stand in the way of an up-or-down vote." But I get how you could be on the other side. (Though I find it rather amusing that Republicans, after bitching about rare Democratic filibuster in 2002-2006, have now discovered that it's noble to resist up-or-down votes.)