As a long-time Dean supporter I want to say something about these "Kerry=Bush" stories: are you insane? Kerry has a solidly liberal record over his time as a Senator, Bush is a wacko right-wing ideologue. Their politics are diametrically opposed to each other. Now, I know that much of this feeling is not tied to political ideology, and, to a certain extent, I share the displeasure about the junk politics of empty statements and biographical hagiography which is the staple of the Kerry campaign. But to blame Kerry for that is like blaming your alarm clock because you have to get up in the morning. It ain't his fault; he's just reflecting reality.
Junk politics is what this country has descended to. I'm not sure if a record is completely meaningless, but it's sure close to it. Bush's record in Texas sucked, but he got elected (well, sorta) as a compassionate conservative. Dean's got a great record of moderate, compassionate governance, and he is rapidly fading. Bush's campaign could make the sale, Dean's couldn't. Right now, Kerry's making the sale. He's running on, well, Dean's rhetoric combined with a look and some medals. And ya know what? That just might be the winning combo in November. It might not be, either. I sure as hell don't know either way. But, it seems evident that Dean's campaign was not ready for the big-time of junk politics. Sure, the compressed primary schedule is turning out to be a really stupid idea, giving no time for the Kerry campaign to be tested or the Dean campaign to retool. And it may lead to a one-note Kerry campaign wasting a golden opportunity to blast the GOP. But Dean's campaign was not ready to compete in the current debased political climate. That much is clear.
To me, Dean's campaign seemed to represent a return to a politics of meaning, where a decent, honorable, unpolished man's record would help him weather spurious attacks in the media. I was hoping the campaign knew the limits of this approach. They didn't. It's not Kerry's fault that's true, nor is it his fault Dean's record doesn't help him more. The enemy in this fight for meaningful politics is not the DNC, or John Kerry, or even the DLC. The real enemy is the corporate-controlled, for-profit media machine that covers nothing but the race, as if each of the candidates was the product of some production company rolled out for the summer movie season. A candidate, especially a challenger, can make any statement they want, and unless the public already knows it to be untrue (Bush can't call himself a fiscal conservative, for example), it only matters how effectively the campaign amplifies it. Or, on the other side, an attack can stick, no matter how trivial or unrepresentative of the reality of the candidate's record, if the rival campaign does it well. Attacks and rhetorical flights have been the staples of politics forever, but the level to which you can now stretch the mendacity is appalling. Context, in the form of reality, is ignored by the media in favor of covering how this particular moment fits in the narrative of the campaign. The only context is the present, so that our politics lives in a constant state of easily manipulated immediacy. Our body politic has regressed to the developmental state of a petulant 3 year-old.
So, fellow Dean supporters, if, as seems increasingly likely, Dean doesn't pull it off, my feeling is: don't waste your time in pointless recriminations of Kerry. Work to change our politics. Especially, work for media reform.
And vote against Bush. Because he's a historically bad President.