Comments Elsewhere

“Despite the conventional wisdom that a loser can’t run again and win, we have proof to the contrary as recently as Nixon and, at a local level, we see it all the time (think Thune, Giuliani). Kerry ran a good race and could win in 2008 when he’s not facing an incumbent.”

But I don’t want Kerry to win in 2008, and neither does a lot of the Democratic base. Kerry’s big draw as a candidate in 2004 was that he (1) wasn’t Bush, and (2) he was a liberal-enough candidate that lefty Democrats thought was “electable” where the candidate they actually wanted (say, Howard Dean) wasn’t. And, well, we saw how well that panned out. We’ve got a full four years to work on this stuff for the next election; can’t we at least spend a few years working for what we want to happen before we have buckle down to what we think we’ll have to settle for?