You bet your ass he is.
Am I being a traitor, writing this? No. I've still got fingers crossed that Clark can pull it out on Tuesday. But I am first and foremost a yellow dog Democrat, and the best should not be the enemy of the good.
So let's examine Kerry's general-election prospects.
Yeah, Kerry is a New England liberal, even if he has sinned at times, including one in late 2002 that, yeah, rankles. If he had stood up to Bush then, many electrons could have been conserved on this board. Yet he is still a New England liberal.
Does that make him unelectable? Much logic and experience says "yes" - though it's passing odd to hear it from people who fiercely rejected those same arguments when made against Dean. Certainly some GOP strategists seem to rubbing hands with evil glee, supposing that will be almost as easy to take down Kerry as it would have been to take down Dean.
They are missing a couple of things. First and foremost, "liberal" has changed context since Dukakis was reamed with it in 1988. For sure it is no longer about gummint spending, not when Bush is throwing away more money than all the drunken sailors that ever staggered along a waterfront. Nor is it about crime - Bill Clinton fried a retarded guy in Arkansas to get that monkey off our back. As a wedge issue, crime is as dead as Rickey Ray Rector.
"Liberal" isn't even about Teddy Kennedy any more, save perhaps among GOP direct-mail suckers. The bloated drunk who drove Mary Jo Kopechne off that bridge is long forgotten. Teddy is now the old but still formidable lion of the Senate, and the last living link to Camelot. (And if you think Camelot has lost its mystique, how much media coverage did that small-plane crash off Martha's Vinyard get?)
"Liberal," as a pejorative, is now about three things only:
- Peaceniks
- Fags
- General deficiency of testosterone
Excuse the bluntness of the second term, but politics is not beanbag. GOP hit men's lips may say "gays," but their message is fags.
Dean would always have been doomed to struggle against the first two of those, and after the Scream he would be constrained in fighting the third as well - his demeanor was the main thing he had going for him in the first place. Trying to retool him as the centrist governor of Vermont is a nonstarter, even if there were time in the primaries, because that merely makes him Dukakis. Remember "this is about competence?"
Okay, now, John Kerry. Once an antiwar protester, sure, but not exactly your wispy-bearded peacenik of lore. To get to Kerry on the won't-stand-up-for-America theme, the GOP has to cross the Mekong River - and Lt Kerry's gunboat will riddle their chickenhawk asses with .50-cal rounds before they're halfway across.
Fags? Kerry isn't shackled to that issue in any real way. Sure, there's the Mass court ruling, but it doesn't have Kerry's fingerprints on it. Moreover, the GOP can't lean too hard on that issue, because a lot of swing voters would rather have a gay couple as neighbors than John Ashcroft and Pat Robertson.
Testosterone deficiency? Nope. It isn't just those 'Nam-era medals. And don't tell me about Max Cleland. He lost Georgia by what? Five points? In a race dominated by the Confederate Flag. If we're going to lose Georgia by five points this fall, Bush may as well buy his bus ticket home now.
More than that, though, Kerry is showing a killer instinct like no one else - not even my guy. Who has his crowds chanting "Bring it on!"? That goes right for the jugular, attacking Bush's phony macho pose where it hurts most. I cannot think of anything better calculated to get under his skin. Goad that boy enough, and his nice-guy mask might just slip in public.
So that is the long and short of it. Would I rather we go at Bush with Clark? You betcha. He really puts icy sick fear into GOP veins. But if they think they can run against John Kerry as Michael Dukakis, they are cruisin' for a bruisin'.
-- Rick Robinson