This post is adapted from a comment I wrote
here .
Kerry ran a lukewarm campaign when we all thought that we needed fire and brimstone. We accepted the lukewarm stuff because we believed that reality would be our fire and brimstone and our candidate could remain aloof and statesmanlike.
I remember thinking during the debates, 'wow, come on, just whack that out of the park.' But he would not. He felt, I guess, that he would be inducted into the coalition of the schrill (google it, I'm not the mood for links tonight.)
It should have been a landslide. Bush is not a normal republican (indeed he urinates on normal republican values) and many (if not most) of us assumed that non-dominionist republicans would desert him. We even had some anecdotal evidence here on dKos that this was happening. Clearly too little and too late.
They stuck with him. They did "not speak ill of their fellow Republicans" even though these fellow Republicans were amassing deficits, wrecking the armed forces, intruding into 'states-rights,' emasculating fair-trade, or rushing into ill-advised 'foreign adventures.'
Keeping in mind that I hope we never unite behind a Democrat as disastrous and radical as W, there is much to be learned on the other side of fence, but I hope we never lose our ability of self-criticism.
In my gut, i still don't believe we lost the popular vote much less the electoral vote but... Oregon comes to mind. The Republicans did really well there and we can't complain about the vote! It is bizarre. Or is it Republican monolithism? Or is it all surreal as I was trying to say with Alice (again, look up my diaries, this is a no link post.)
I do, in vain, hope that Europeans never pick up this mantra, the lack of which makes European politics so entertaining.
A curse upon the Republican Party and its mindless ways. It is following a leader who is betraying the Party's own principles and leading all of us over the abyss.