Bush sucks, circular firing squad wonders why

How did you win?

Kos has the following post:

.........What to make of these numbers? First of all, Karl Rove got screwed by Time Magazine. He deserved that Man of the Year award after selling this lemon to the American people.

But what makes me angry was Kerry and his gang's inability to take advantage of the situation. I may regret saying this later, but fuck it -- they should be lined up and shot. There's no reason they should've lost to this joker. "I voted for the $87 billion, then I voted against it." That wasn't nuance. That was idiocy. And with a primary campaign that consisted entirely of "I'm the most electable", Kerry entered the general without a core philosophy or articulated vision for the job.

I could deal with losing to a popular incumbent. But it's tough to deal with the most unpopular incumbent to win reelection.

Of course, there's a silver lining to all of this. A Kerry presidency would've been an unmitigated disaster, with a hostile congress, budget woes, the mess in Iraq, etc. Not a good time to be in charge. Those Supreme Court seats would've been nice (whoever we would've been able to push through a hostile Senate), but we've got an opportunity for long-term gain.

The left is already working to build it's own version of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy -- the $300 million annual machine that developes the conservative message (think tanks), disseminates it to the public (Fox News, Rush), and trains their leaders in how to wield it.

The war isn't going well, and Bush will be hard pressed to rescue anything positive from that quagmire. The budget is a mess, and budget cuts will cause great resentment while savings get eaten up by his Iraq misadventures. The GOP's right wing is screaming for payback with an agenda that doesn't sell on Main Street. GOP moderates may be emboldened by Giuliani's and Schwarzenegger's popularity to reassert themselves.

Well, Giuliani's going to be logging time in front of grand juries and Arnold will eventually have to deal with his budget nightmares.

But I was irritated by the people posting that Kerry sucked and the primaries were rigged against Dean....

Yawn.

Kerry ran a good campaign, but Rove made it about the issues of evangelicals and they came out. It's real simple. It wasn't gay marriage alone, but religion in schools, and Bush's image as a religious man.

The problem is that he ran Nixon's 1972 campaign. Which means while he beat the Dems, the issues are working against him.

Both sides are wrong in this debate. Amy Sullivan and Peter Beinhart think that selling out core democratic principles will get them to power. They won't.

But the people who think Howard Dean could ever be president are also delusional. That Confederate comment pretty much closed a lot of minority doors to him. That comment helped Kerry with a lot of blacks and latinos and killed Dean as just another white liberal who took blacks for granted. You can ask Mark Green how that works as an electoral strategy.

The fact is that John Kerry got more votes than any other Democrat in history and stands a better than average chance of winning in 2008. Hillary Clinton, who I think is unlikely to run, won't make it past two primaries if she did. Her personal unpopularity is so high that it makes a national run impossible, regardless of current polls. All of this squabbling is pointless.

People forget that Nixon was detested, and people still voted for him. And many were happy to see him gone. Just because people didn't like Bush doesn't mean they knew Kerry enough to vote for him. A lot of people are whining "oh, I wish it was Dean" "I didn't really like Kerry". Which is silly. Dean is not going to be president any more than Goldwater would be. Those people don't win. And the Democrats simply have to stop looking for candidates like movie stars. We're not picking People's Sexist Man of the Year. John Kerry suffered from being obscured by Bob Kerrey and Ted Kennedy. The Republicans do not run people Americans don't know. They don't run strangers. Democrats act like an election is Looking for Mr. Goodbar and that we'll pick up the right guy eventually. Too many people are fixated on 1992, and that was a fluke. We need to run familiar candidates.

Hillary Clinton is the new Ted Kennedy. Her place is in the Senate. Otherwise, she is strikingly unqualified to be President. Living next to power isn't the same as exercising it.

Whether it's Edwards or Kerry again, the Dems need to go into 2008 the way the GOP went into 2000. I'm tired of the whining and the search. Howard Dean was popular in the way Goldwater was popular. The best thing he could do is be DNC chair. I'm also tired of the fantasists who want him to be "outside" the party. Well, no. You need power to have power. Being outside power means being outside. Simple as that. You need someone like Dean to reform the institution, not stand outside shouting while people continue to be rolled by Tom DeLay. The DNC needs reform, not another hustler on the make like Donnie Fowler or a washed up governor like Ray Mabus. We need someone who doesn't need the job, not someone who would be more famous by getting it.

All this blame Kerry, blame Iowa stuff is silly.

Remember, a lot of people who hate Bush stayed home. And even if they voted for him, Iraq is getting worse, not better.

posted by Steve @ 1:39:00 PM