Devastation, Distilled
As ever, the Belmont Club has put the whole matter of John Kerry's candidacy in its proper perspective:

John Kerry's troubles have largely been forced on him by the Democratic Party platform. He has been given the unenviable task of presenting it as the War Party when in fact it is not, nor does it want to be. The Democrats could have chosen to become a real anti-war party, in which case it would have nominated Howard Dean or it could have elected to become a genuine war party and chosen Joseph Lieberman. Instead it chose to become the worst of all combinations, an anti-war party masquerading as the war party.

What else can one add?

Once the Democrats had ended their infatuation with the impolitic and unstable Dean ---knowing full well that the man would guarantee a loss dwarfing McGovern's in 1972--- they cast about for a nominee who could contradict George W. Bush in one particular only ---that of military experience. They believed that their rabid opposition to the War for Iraq would somehow be exonerated through the heroism of a long-serving Senator whose bona fides in both war and protest were beyond question. Kerry would be able to make the chickenhawk label stick to the evil neocons. Kerry would be able to point up the failures in the Bush Administration's diplomacy and consensus-building. Kerry would bring un-preemptive, unimaginative, and status quo ante thinking to our nation's foreign and military policy. In other words, he was the Left's long-awaited dream of an isolationist with enough medals to cover his ass and theirs.

But along the way, these ostriches forgot that Kerry's political life began with enormous slanders of his fellow veterans and his country's military, in general. Did they think that such criticism would be forgotten by people outside of liberal Massachusetts? (That's more evidence of their insularity and arrogance.) Did these Democrats think that Kerry's anti-war activities would engender trust and confidence in him as a Commander-in-Chief?

Most people see Kerry as a self-aggrandizing opportunist who can't be trusted to stand for anything for long. Who can believe a multi-millionaire ---who's married to a multi-billionaire--- on the subject of taxation and health care and public education? Average folks know he doesn't know shit about how these things affect them! They see him as a man of privilege who's simply gunning for the last job on Earth that could sate his ambition. And they hear him flip-flopping around, trying to land on the exact right words that will buy him their votes.

Kerry has done much in the past three weeks to demonstrate that he is unequal to the challenge of intellectual and ideological consistency. And as a political strategist, he has done himself a huge disservice, surrounding himself with young, ill-informed, and programmatic shills who lack the nerve to tell him that he is fucking up big time with his response to the Swift Boat Veterans. Booming about with his dare to "bring it on" while pleading with the President to make his allies stop picking on him? It's pansy-assed. Almost as pansy-assed as sending Max Cleland, the mascot of victimhood, to Crawford to deliver a letter to the President in an embarrassing act of political theater. What the hell is this man thinking?

I have spent the last two months or so believing that this race is Kerry's to lose. But, now, I'm not so sure. It may actually turn out to be a landslide for Bush.