As Kevin Drum and others have noted, yesterday marked Jonathan Chait's
first effort as an LA Times columnist. Old timers (one-year-olds) around here may recall my bitter denunciations of the New Republic, and specifically Jonathan Chait's "Deanophobe" blog. When he started that blog, I wrote a dKos diary by the same name as this one. If I recall correctly, Chait asked Markos to do one of those stupid TNR "debates" with him, which kos sagely refused.
I must say this: Chait was right and I was wrong. When he started that blog, I attacked him for weakening the presumptive Democratic nominee. We carried on an email correspondance at the time, and he explained that he didn't think Dean had it sewn up, that many people were spooked at his candidacy, and that a decided effort to stop it could be successful. Obviously, that was correct.
But Chait wants it both ways. Granted, he supported Clark, even going so outrageously far as to refer to Clark as the "Messiah," but his and others' efforts to bring down Dean are what created the Kerry nomination. His manifesto for the Deanophobe blog declared that he didn't actually think that Dean was worse than Bush, but he couldn't get the badness of Dean out of his mind and was consequently forced to do everything in his power to topple Dean. To his credit, he was considerably kinder to Dean in our correspondance than he was in public, because a public figure cannot be subtle at all, but even so he suggested that Dean would be the worst nominee since George McGovern.
Chait and his like-minded "responsible" Democrats at the New Republic and the rest of the establishment media brought us the Kerry campaign through a firehose of shit they called "electability." But that's passed. I have become an enthusiastic Kerry supporter, helped by an excellent Democratic convention and a campaign I thought was doing pretty well. But what do I find when I arrive on Kerry's turf? Holy shit! Chait is on the other side of the fence again!
Thus, Chait:
"The main thing people will remember about [Kerry's] campaign is how utterly bizarre it was that a major party nomination could have been captured by a man so staggeringly devoid of political talent."
How bizarre! How utterly shocking and inexplicable that such a thing came about! Gee, how do you explain it, Jonathan?
"Kerry's contribution to a potential Kerry victory would be similar to the anchor's contribution to an America's Cup championship."
You know what? It sounds like Chait is voicing his old reliable argument. What Kerry needs in order to win is.... Jonathan Chait carrying him across the finish line! With friends like these, it's no wonder every evening's news is a post-mortem of the Kerry campaign.
Let me just say that Chait is not actually the worst so-called responsible Democrat out there. But if he's going to do much of anything besides whine and moan with his new gig at the LA Times, he should probably do something besides peddling TNR-patented ennui at Democrats constantly found wanting. Because that's why Democrats lose: they don't even try to win.
Happy Talk
On August 12th, I posted this diary here whilst everyone else was celebrating good polls and easy victory. So let me say this: we're going to do better this month than we've done last month. For some reason, Bush gained some ground on who could best handle Iraq. But he's losing it again. We'll be celebrating on October 18th. I just hope we're celebrating on November 3rd.