Leave Dad out of this.

MSNBC - Presidential debate: "You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn't is, he said he wrote in his book because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land.
That's exactly where we find ourselves today."

While this analysis is both correct and relevant, within this comment are certain assumptions that show both why Kerry is going to lose and what's wrong with the power brokers within the DNC generally.

For the true Blue, this sort of statement is a knockout punch, "Your Dad was a terrible president and you are not even as good as him."

But even those who are merely moderately left of center recognize this as a cheap-shot on the level of "you are so ugly that when you were a baby your mama had to tie a porkchop to your ugly face so that the dog would play with you."

Those who are in the middle might also understand how this sort of remark is the worst kind of arm-chair quarterbacking.

There is no such analysis on the right. Social Conservatives adore Bush and loathe all Democrats on principal. Fiscal Conservatives distrust Kerry and are seem willing to forgive extremely bad fiscal policy. Hybrid conservatives both love Bush personally and actually do believe that the world is a safer place and that the economy has improved, at most willing to blame foreign countries for any problems we may have (as in: stupid U.N., if they want elections to go well in Iraq they should help rather than say its not going to work) The point here is that these people will never, ever, change their mind and vote for a democrat no matter how blandly moderate the Democratic party tries to present him, so don't bother. I call this the theory of "No Clinton Republican counter-weight to Reagan Democrats".

This brings me to the 2nd point: What went wrong with the Democratic nomination process? We didn't end up with the more obvious Edwards-Kerry or Dean-Kerry ticket, which means that something went badly wrong.

The DNC should have stopped Gephart from his murder-suicide attack on the Dean campaign. Clinton should have beat Gore to the punch backing Dean or maybe Edwards, rather than put up Clark (who isn't even a real Democrat)
The Democrats should never allow more than three candidates in their primary.
Super Tuesday, not Iowa should be the key contest for the nomination.

Finally: stop nominating boring moderates - Kerry, Gore, Dukais, and Mondale are all excellent candidates for vice-president. Who should the Democrats nominate? Here are some suggestions:

1. Former professional baseball players, preferably from the Midwest. Bill Bradley would have also been acceptable.
2. Steve Jobs
3. Ewan McGregor or Sean Connery (shut up, I know)
4. Lead singler of an Evangelical Christian-rock Band. Bono would also work (shut up! I know!)
5. Christopher Reeves (no one is going to vote against Superman). Bruce Springsteen would also work.
6. Oprah Winfrey

Wait a minute... At 1 AM, I write this blog more or less extemporanously. President Oprah is a brilliant idea.

Both parties could nominate Oprah and then the contest would be over the VP.

Would it be Winfrey-DeLay or Winfrey-Biden?

Wow! What a great contest that would be.