Friday, November 12, 2004 :::
 
A week and a half after the election, and not much to add. It is raining a dismal, dreary rain--rather like what Northern Californians get all winter, when they constantly reassure you that "it's not normally like this," although it is. Such weather was the blight of the college years of a certain pudgy, balding English teacher, and it's a blight on life today.

Democratic Party leaders are following form, and dumping on John Kerry for losing the election, when all the evidence indicates that it was the Democratic Party's message that got clobbered. As the Clinton years testify, they really do seem to value power alone, and they are looking for the villain who kept them from it. Conservatives, of course, are gleefully defending Kerry, for one obvious reason: it makes it that much easier to dump on liberals, which is fun to do.

But is that entirelyfair? Democrats have a point, thought they do not make it well. Kerry was indeed a lousy candidate, because his ideas were incoherent, and he went for the jugular when plodding would have served better. There is a huge case to be made against George W. Bush's way of handling his office. Kerry never made it. He went on and on about losing Osama bin-Laden in Tora Bora, when the big problem was pulling intelligence resources away from Afghanistan to concentrate on Iraq before they had had a chance to digest everything they uncovered.

Worse, to partisan crowds, he repeated the mantra that "Bush lied," when Bush didn't. Out West, a random person, who turned out to be a liberal, walked up to A Mind That Suits because she saw that he was reading the 9/11 Commission report, and asked about it. After hearing a brief summary, she said, "It's just so good to know that Bush didn't lie." If a likely Kerry voter knew that much, why did Kerry himself lie? Or why did he think that even his own voters would swallow it? Or--which is almost as bad--why did he run for President knowing so little about the real issues?

Venerable Richard Lugar, perhaps the finest man in politics today, gave Kerry the sword he needed when he talked about "the incompetence of this Admininstration, " although that weapon has been there to be grasped since long before the Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations blurted it out. Kerry used it, but it got thrown in with all the other nonsense, instead of being the basis for the campaign.

So, you know, maybe Democrats have a point. But do they understand it?

A certain, pudgy balding English teacher reconciled himself to voting for Mr. Bush almost entirely on the basis of indications that Mr. Bush himself did understand the point.


::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 1:46 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.