Well, I think we can all agree that it is more than a bit sad that we will never get to find out more about John Fucking Kerry’s PLAN. He had one, you know.

I’m reminded of what it was like in Vietnam. You heard that he was there, right?

Anyway. It turns out that if you are running against a guy who is a warmongering liar who has spent the better part of his adult life cozying up to corporations, you probably shouldn’t run on a dishonest platform of warmongering and support for corporate interests.

There is a decent chance that Kerry would have lost no matter what, though. I admit that because of my deep and abiding conviction that around half of the voting population of the US is some combination of . . .

homophobic, selfish, hateful, ignorant, stupid, vicious, xenophobic, easily lead, spiteful, and not nearly far enough away from me.

Softly softly NEVER works against fascists. You can’t outflank them, you can only destroy them. Kerry (and Gore before him) tried to outflank them. Clinton succeeded because he was a master of saying one thing and doing another.

Say whatever you want, but don’t lose sight of the fact that NOT ONLY did Carrie Edwards lose the presidency in spite of having an absolutely stunning set of tools with which to dismantle their opponents (the war, the economy, the lying, etc) but they ALSO lost all the way down the ticket. Everything.

Lesser of two evils? How about just LESSER? You’d think the Democratic party had never actually been involved in a political season before. They misread polls, failed to predict or stop Republican fraud, failed to field good candidates in lots of races, failed to shore up their base, and failed to clarify their message.

With the full knowledge that the consensus is that Vietnam was a bad war and that veterans were sensitive about it, Kerry focused on his brief service rather than the thing that built his political career: a dignified opposition to the waste of life.
Presented with Iraq, they promised to do a better job of a bad thing.
Presented with a fucked up economic policy, they promised to tinker with it.
Presented with holy rollers, they sought to position themselves as holy enough.
Presented with a loose and folksy opponent, they nominated a stiff and patrician candidate.
Presented with a soundbite electorate, they spoke in paragraphs.
Presented with a chance to appeal to the people who have suffered most under Bush (poor people), they chose to concede a massive block of poor people in the South.
Presented with a clear leftwing uprising (which they claimed cost them the last election), they ordered everyone to close ranks and used precious time and energy (not to mention awfully unfair ballot access rules) to demonize them rather than offering them a seat at the table.
Presented with a rabidly homophobic campaign by the Repugs, they came out for states rights to discriminate, and that right there may have been the biggest problem of all.


And now, John Fucking Kerry is giving up.


And people are cheering. Cuz he did such a good job.


If it weren’t so clearly disconnected from reality, I would have to say that John Edwards just gave a fabulous speech.

Kerry just undercut his pal’s “the battle rages on” with a call for healing. Fuck healing.

“I’ll never stop fighting for you” except, you know, right now.

And now praise for the glories of being Roman (er, American). Let’s all pull together and pretend that Bush and his supporters and policies aren’t catastrophically bad. Let’s work hard to win the unwinnable wars in which we are now engaged.

America always moves forward. Even right now. Hell, especially right now. We’re moving crazy forward on the “fuck the planet” course, for example.

Dood.


So anyway, the closest big airport to me is Düsseldorf. Frankfurt isn’t far away, though, and the train ride from there to here is actually quite pleasant.


(Al Franken, one of Kerry's biggest cheerleaders, just basically called polite bullshit on the rally around the Dubyah plan Kerry just proposed. Welcome, Al.)

EDITED to play up the homophobia and to point out that Arnold Schwartzeneggar will be the Repug candidate next time and he will win (and I, at least, will be able to call him really nasty names).