This is utterly inexplicable. I understand not wanting to kowtow to the Swift Boat Superliars, but it would surely have spared him from a lot of grief. Tom Maguire and Insty and Maglalang all made big deals about his undisclosed military records.
I still wish he had won, but I have to question his judgement, and I have to say we could have nominated someone better.
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A peculiar hybrid of personal journal, dilettantish punditry, pseudo-philosophy and much more, from an Accidental Expat who has made his way from Hong Kong to Beijing to Taipei and finally back to Beijing for reasons that are still not entirely clear to him…
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1
By Ken
“I still wish he had won, but I have to question his judgement, and I have to say we could have nominated someone better.”
We tried. But the democratic establishment kept telling us that we would be dumb not to vote for Kerry. Why are we still listening to them? Why do they dump on Dean (sure he’s pushing the limits but he’s doing something). The establishment democrats have given us a minority party, why are we still listening to them? And insider establishment web blogs like TPM and the Washington Monthly are not the means of communication that we need in order to wrest control away from these elitist.
Not that I have an opinion on the subject.
June 7, 2005 @ 11:02 am | Comment
2
By richard
My heart goes out to Dean. Like John Kerry and George Soros, he’s being slimed everywhere, especially on Fox where they talk about his like he’s a deranged animal. Granted, he was dumb to make his controversial recent remarks, but all politicians slip up. (Even our own shrub.)
June 7, 2005 @ 11:10 am | Comment
3
By Ken
Was it dumb? It sure was in “insider” circles, but he has a point. The Republican Party is a mere caricature of its former self. It has ALWAYS had a problem with corruption (Grant, Nixon, and Bush Jr.) and has almost always kowtowed to wealth. In history since the Civil War I’d say its strength has been keeping the Democrats on the planet when they get flighty, as Democrats do. But right now I agree with Dean, the Republicans in power are corrupt to the core. The problem Dean had is not having said clearly “Washington Republicans” What we don’t need is a bunch of Democratic insiders recasting what he said in the same way Fox News does. This will not win us elections folks, and rightfully so.
June 7, 2005 @ 12:42 pm | Comment
4
By jillian
The problem with Dean is that he offers a fresh new look that our party is craving…well…those of us in the party NOT in D.C.
June 7, 2005 @ 2:30 pm | Comment
5
By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
And don’t blame Kerry that much, Richard. We both know that the InstaParrot and Ma-ding-a-ling and the PowerSwine would have just tut tut’ed the truth, moved the goal posts, and started to repeat another lie.
Look up “Glennuendo” from the Wingnut Debate Dictionary (as contributed by vaara), the ability to draw dark evil conclusions from silence.
Not that the InstaParrot or Ma-Ding-A-Ling or the PowerSwine would do the same thing about Furious George’s refusal to release all of his records, even when he was under court order to do so.
June 7, 2005 @ 5:22 pm | Comment
6
By richard
Tom, go see Maglalang today — she did exactly what you describe. As did Maguire. Bastards.
But even so, he could have taken some of the wind out of the Swift Boat Liars’s sails, at least temporarily.
June 7, 2005 @ 6:37 pm | Comment
7
By winterfire
I just have a couple of questions:
1) Can anyone imagine what would be happening to the Democrats right now, if Kerry had been declared the winner; with a Rethug Congress and the quagmire in Iraq?
2) Which would actually be better for, not only progressives and liberals everywhere, Democrats and, more importantly, the nation? Bush losing a close election, or Bush, Cheney and their whole criminal administration being Impeached and imprisoned for High Crimes, including war crimes?
June 7, 2005 @ 6:55 pm | Comment
8
By richard
It’s a tough question. If Kerry had won, I’d think there wouldn’t have been such a big Rethug majority voted into Congress. But I agree, I wouldn’t wish this presidency on my worst enemy –not after Bush’s first term left this country in such shambles.
June 7, 2005 @ 7:04 pm | Comment
9
By RMH
Seriously, what is the sense in going over and over, ad nauseum about Bush. Think about who to support next time and plan to WiN, something which seems to be missing in the democratic psyche. This animus towards Bush verges on the patholigical and diverts attention from the battles AHEAD..
June 7, 2005 @ 8:53 pm | Comment
10
By richard
RMH, call it pathological if you’d like. In my mind, to not speak out would be criminally negligent. My country is in the most perilous position it’s been in since 1941; silence equals death. To not speak out is cowardly. It’s inexcusable.
June 7, 2005 @ 8:58 pm | Comment
11
By Conrad
Can we all agree now that John Kerry ran the most inept campaign since the last Massachusetts liberal nominated by the Democrats? What the hell was he thinking?!?
Forget left v. right and Republican v. Democrat, if the guy’s campaign (which, btw, is the only thing larger than a patrol boat he’s ever run) was THAT friggin’ bad, doesn’t it give you qualms about how he’d have run the country?
June 7, 2005 @ 10:37 pm | Comment
12
By Sam_S
Yup, Conrad, but I know the REAL reason he didn’t release the records.
That butt-ugly college photo would have cost him at least 2 million votes.
June 8, 2005 @ 12:19 am | Comment
13
By Sam_S
That, and after all the talk about his brilliance and Bush’s stupidity, the record shows his grades were actually worse than Bush’s.
Somebody, somewhere, please clone us a worthy politician!
.
June 8, 2005 @ 12:24 am | Comment
14
By Conrad
I’m the last person to mock someone else’s undergraduate performance, having myself majored in beer and getting the knickers off of Chi Os, but I must ask, how in the hell does someone who lived in France and attended a French speaking boarding school in Switzerland, get a bloody “C” in French?????
June 8, 2005 @ 7:34 am | Comment
15
By lirelou
I view the quality of the candiates as fairly representative of the general intelligence level of the electorate. Could the last election have been a result of the “dumbing down of America”, as some critics of public education have asserted? Works for me.
June 10, 2005 @ 11:16 am | Comment