As Ridgeway says,
"What to do? Look for the Dem biggies, whoever they are these days, to sit down with the rich and arrogant presumptive nominee and try to persuade him to take a hike. Then they can return to business as usual—resurrecting John Edwards, who is still hanging around, or staging an open convention in Boston, or both.
"If things proceed as they are, the dim-bulb Dem leaders are going to be very sorry they screwed Howard Dean."
<http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0417/mondo1.php>
And David Broder in the WaPost:
"Some Democrats blame this on the millions the Bush campaign has spent in recent weeks on ads depicting Kerry as a flip-flopper. But in the Post-ABC poll, Kerry actually fared much better against Bush in the states where those ads have run than in the rest of the country.
"I suspect something deeper is at work. If you watched Kerry on 'Meet the Press,' you saw many examples of dodginess on his part. At the very start, moderator Tim Russert asked for a 'yes or no answer' to the question, 'Do you believe the war in Iraq was a mistake?' Kerry's response was: 'I think the way the president went to war was a mistake.' By restating the question, he left the fundamental issue unanswered.
"Over the course of the hour, Kerry struggled to explain why he had once -- decades ago -- advocated placing U.S. forces under the direction of the United Nations, why he had said in 2000 that the U.S. effort to isolate Cuba was a 'frozen, stalemated, unproductive policy,' why he had voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein and why he now criticizes that policy after promising he would not do so 'once the shooting starts.'
"This is not a new problem for Kerry. As Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish, Brian Mooney and Nina Easton write in their newly published biography of the senator, despite instances where Kerry showed himself 'a lawmaker willing to stand up to prevailing political winds . . . he is trailed by a reputation for political opportunism. . . . Unlike many who are driven to succeed in public life by a core belief system, the arc of Kerry's political career is defined by a restless search for the issues, individuals and causes to fulfill a nearly lifelong ambition' for the White House.
" The election is still six months away. But Kerry's reputation has been built over 40 years. And the voters seem to be sniffing it out."
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39884-2004Apr24.html>
And from an unfriendly corner (but not unperceptive), we have John Podhoretz of the NY Post:
"The conventional wisdom is that the presidential election will be close. It's a 50-50 country, so the CW goes, just as it was in the year 2000.
"The problem is that the conventional wisdom hasn't taken a proper accounting of John Kerry. Here's the truth that Democrats don't want to admit and that Republicans are fearful of speaking openly because they don't want to jinx things:
"Kerry is a terrible, terrible, terrible candidate.
"It's not so much the policies he proposes, although they don't add up to all that much. The problem is Kerry himself. He no sooner opens his mouth than he sticks first one foot and then the other right in there. ...
"Kerry has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for two months now. Ask yourself: Aside from fund-raising success, has he had a good day? Has he come up with a winning soundbite? Has he made a policy proposal you've heard people talking about?
"Bush has had about as bad a time as he could have had these past two months, and he's not only still standing, but doing better than he was a month ago. And why? Because when he takes center stage, as he did in the press conference last week, he usually helps himself.
"Not so for Kerry. To put it mildly.
"Yes, he has time, plenty of time, six months' worth of time. Kerry will surely get better, but that's only because he can't get much worse.
"Here's the conventional wisdom: The margin on Election Day will be razor-thin because only 7 percent of the electorate hasn't made up its mind yet whom to support. So the entire campaign will be a fight over that 7 percent, and the whole business will come down to a few battleground states - Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico - where polling now suggests the race is neck-and-neck.
"Every piece of information you've just read is true. But there's a strong possibility the conventional wisdom is wildly wrong.
"Events over the past week suggest that Bush may win a substantial victory in November, and for this reason alone: Kerry's performance may seriously depress Democratic turnout. Or drive Democrats to vote for Ralph Nader, just as George Bush the Elder's performance in 1992 drove millions of Republicans to vote for Ross Perot.
"Guys, you should have gone with John Edwards."
<http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/23296.htm>
(These Web references thanks to kausfiles on Slate).
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax