Sunday, February 04, 2007

I have to say this for - hopefully - one last time,

in response to this particularly brain-dead comment, which was in response to a radio show about McAuliffe's scummy little book. There is a diehard breed of leftish political activists that has refused to cut John Kerry a micron's worth of slack ever since his vote on the Iraq war resolution, and that even since Kerry's withdrawal from the 2008 race has continued to malign him at every opportunity. It's amazing to me how eager this breed has been to buy into the right wing-generated smears against Kerry in order to further their own candidates' prospects. Perhaps its their own crystalline moral purity that blinds these people to Kerry's finer qualities. In response to that particular idiotic comment and all others of its ilk:
  • Kerry is a lawyer.
  • Lawyers do not bring cases to trial without proof.
  • If you have said proof, let's see it. Otherwise, shut the hell up.
As to the rest of it, as far as I can see, Kerry has been right about pretty much everything since that vote, which is more than I can say about anyone else currently in the running. And he faced the error of that vote with more grace, courage and directness than anything either Edwards or Clinton has been able to muster. By the way, Kerry's courage is a subject that should be off limits to anyone who has not put his or her own ass on the line as many times as he has in service to the country.

As far as the 2004 campaign goes, let's just agree to disagree and put the insults to a rest. Kerry came within a handful of votes of winning during wartime against a president who at that point was still held in ridiculously high esteem by a large number of voters. He smoked Bush in all three debates. I believe he ran a campaign he deserves to be proud of. I also believe that at some point in the not-too-distant future the country may actually realize what it lost when he was not inaugurated. Sadly, I can't stop thinking about it. But it's not Kerry I blame. It's Karl Rove. It's Bush and Cheney and their army of liars-for-hire. It's Kerry's "good friend" John McCain, whose lust for the presidency has cost him his integrity. It's all the backstabbing democrats who were too consumed with their own ambition to help him win, and who preferred spending their time chuckling along with the right wing pundits. And I blame those progressive purists.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. -- Voltaire

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