Broke Summer

Parentals in town this weekend, and i had no time to write. Plus it is HOT too hot to do anything but bake.

I did accomplish two things of note in regards to BB.

1) A new tentative subtitle. Please see above and react, then analyze your reaction, write it down and email it to me. Also i will need a urine sample.

2) I read this brutally on-point post in Mickey Kaus's blog. He's been basically one of the definitive voices, along with John Stewart and Matt Bai, that has crystallized or just created (IMO) the best in commentary and thought about the election etc.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2120319/&#blameej

I will quote this post at length for a bit right here. Kaus is eviscerating Dem wag EJ Dionne for the 'coccooning' that trapped the left in the election and threatens to continue to trap it. Dionne has since taken the line (although I have yet to read Dionne directly) we shouldn't just criticize Kerry and thereby risk ignoring the real problems. Responds Kaus:

"even if Kerry is history, a Quayle-like dead man walking, the conditions that led Democrats to delude themselves into thinking he was a plausible candidate are still in place and still a problem."

He quotes Donne's coverage of the election w/ flagged commentary as follows:

"Mid-Campaign--Wishful Thinking: "Here is the biggest surprise of the 2004 election so far: It is John Kerry who is eager to talk about terrorism and national security, and President Bush's campaign that is trying to quash a far-reaching debate on these issues." -- April 20, 2004

"The conventional wisdom on this presidential election is wrong. It's frequently said that John Kerry is the man in trouble. Yes, Kerry does have a gift for getting in his own way. But President Bush is the candidate with big problems. ... [O]n the current numbers, Kerry will win if he's simply good enough. Bush's task is harder: to seem a whole lot better than he does now to voters who already know him well."-- May 14, 2004

Pre-Convention--Utter Delusion:

"First Ripple of a Political Tidal Wave?

Rep. Jay Inslee knows about political tidal waves, because one of them almost sank his political career.

Inslee, who now represents a suburban Seattle district, was tossed out of Congress from another district in the 1994 Republican sweep. ...But he came back to the House in 1998, and now what he's seeing 'is the same tidal wave moving in the opposite direction. . . . There's a passion out there.' And the passion, Inslee says, is running against George W. Bush. ...

Even if the plural of anecdote is not data, the anecdotes are about citizens who avoided politics for years but are now devoting time to John Kerry's campaign out of hostility to Bush. Individuals who never before made a campaign contribution are opening their checkbooks to Kerry and the Democrats. ... And, perhaps most significant, moderate and moderately conservative Republicans are showing little enthusiasm for Bush, reflecting their worries about his Iraq policy and their qualms over large deficits." -- June 29, 2004

October--Looking for Friendly Faces in the Crowd: "In the torrent of polling information released over the weekend, the most significant finding was this one: John Kerry's supporters are more likely than George W. Bush's to believe that this year's election is the most important of their lifetimes." -- Oct. 26, 2004"

I won't weigh in on this issue, except that to say I recognized almost every one of Dionne's thoughts that Kaus quoted. That was the story as I imagined it. Of course, Kaus's point is still right, even if it is diluted a bit by the atmosphere of retrospect. But there was no other way -- to my mind -- to assess our path to victory. At least no way that was made available to us.