Republicans eating their own,

for a change. Meet Rudy McRomney. And his new nemesis, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore (R).

Now, Gilmore is the longest of long-shots, and is trying to run on an abysmal gubernatorial record. But he has nothing to lose by spending his time attacking the top three and trying to level the playing field, which he seems anxious to do.

How nasty will Gilmore get? I don’t know, but it might be entertaining to find out.

Meanwhile, Mittens is delusional.

The mainstream media's aggressive coverage of his candidacy for president, Mitt Romney said yesterday, is proof that he is considered the conservative choice in the Republican primary contest.

Don't count your chickens...

Steve Kornacki offers some encouragement to those who remain unimpressed by the Hillary juggernaut.

Another instructive example is that of Ed Muskie, “the man from Maine,” who was all but penciled in as the 1972 Democratic nominee before the race even started. Mr. Muskie gobbled up all of his party’s big-name endorsements and—as Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is now doing—sent out word that the train was leaving the station and that anyone wishing to board should do so promptly.

But “Big Ed,” as Hunter S. Thompson called him, was hopelessly out of touch with the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, which yearned for a leader willing to speak clearly and unequivocally against the Vietnam War. Mr. Muskie instead embraced a risk-averse, November-minded approach, serving up intentionally mushy rhetoric designed not to offend Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.” Channeling the frustrations of any number of rank-and-file Democrats, Dr. Thompson dismissed Mr. Muskie as “a bonehead who steals his best lines from old Nixon speeches.”

That left the door wide open for George McGovern, the gentle preacher’s son from South Dakota, who derailed Mr. Muskie’s mighty bandwagon with sincerity and moral purpose. Mr. Muskie was defeated, one of his aides later said, simply because he’d never given anyone a reason to vote for him.

Don't do this.

If you want my vote, don't ever do this:

Clinton later headed uptown to the 92nd St. Y, dropping a few Yiddishisms while serving as the opening act for a talk by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). She joked that an alternative title for his "Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time" could be "The Republican Political Machine: A Shanda," or shame.

Yeah. Shamefully condescending.

Clinton vs. Obama - the fallout

Bill Scher:

This is a long campaign. That can be a good thing.

The extra time can give the voters the ability to fully understand the issues and make an informed decision about who can best handle the issues.

And if the voters see a principled fight between the candidates over the issues, the party will come out stronger for it in the end.

But if the candidates think they can triumph by making their rivals look bad over trivial matters, then the entire party will look trivial for the rest of the year.

Amen to that. Still nearly a year until the voting starts, and I already want it to just go away. Temper tantrums threaten to turn off a large segment of the voting population that, after 6 years of BushCo, is starving for honesty and substance.

In my humble opinion, this whole incident did not show Clinton in an attractive light. Her attitude conveys to me her impatience that she is not the only democrat still standing. A bit early for that.

I am not a sheep.

Don't know about any of you, but I deeply resent the push to prematurely thin the herd of democratic presidential candidates one full year away from the primaries, and before anyone has had a chance to get a serious look around. I don't know who's behind the accelerated primary schedule, the trend to minimize small-scale campaigning, and the big money pushing and shoving taking place right now, but I have my own ideas about who benefits from it.

In this spirit I was very happy to see that Craig Crawford (via Political Wire) had said this:

As the presidential contenders from both parties start being placed by conventional wisdom into two camps, top tier and second tier, the Republican and Democratic front-runners seem most notable these days for what they all have in common: Each of them has at least one glaring flaw, and that presents plenty of opportunities for the others to move up from also-rans in the most wide-open race for the White House in eight decades.

Political Insider has the early line on the second tier:

National Journal asked its insiders: Which long-shot 2008 presidential candidate has the most potential to emerge as a serious contender for your party's nod? The results were as follows:

Democrats:
Bill Richardson: 46%
Tom Vilsack: 25%
Chris Dodd: 23%
Wesley Clark: 4%
Joe Biden: 2%
Mike Gravel: ---
Dennis Kucinich: ---

Republicans at the link, if you care. I don't - every one of them is hideous in his own particular way.

I have nothing invested in the primacy of the Iowa caucuses and the NH primary (though I do love a good tradition), but do have very strong feelings about the importance of retail politics in the early going. Somebody's got to get a close-up look at these people before that rock starts rolling downhill. I don't care who it is. But I don't think the size of someone's piggybank should determine who the next president should be. And it certainly should not be determined 12 months before the voting starts.

If anyone cares, and there's no reason why you should, at the moment I'm looking closely at Chris Dodd.

The REAL McCain

New website up, debunking Mr. Straight Talk.

Now all we need is for someone to take over the heroic mission of the currently defunct Romney is a Fraud, and we'll be in business. The republicans are so desperate for someone who looks like they might be a president that they're willing to overlook Romney's two-faced, do-nothing, hypocrisy-ridden record. We need to make a noise loud enough that it can't be ignored in any quarter of the country.

Here's today's jolt of republicans-eating-their-own schadenfreude.

Former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci told the Globe yesterday that he is supporting former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for president over Mitt Romney -- even though Romney called Cellucci and asked for his endorsement in a meeting two weeks ago.

Afterthoughts

photo credit: Island Blue

Thanks to everyone who's come by to commiserate and post kind comments. One of the best things about being a John Kerry supporter is that you get to spend time in the company of other John Kerry supporters, who are in my experience largely of exceptional intelligence and insight, thoughtful, and well-informed citizens. And a special thanks to Elias, whose wit and perspective make me laugh every day.

The venom that's poured out of the left and the right towards Kerry in the past few days have convinced me that he made the right decision. It's been staggering, the amount of bile still held in reserve for him. Only imagine if he'd announced he was running. Someday I hope to nail down for myself the source of all the fury this one man evokes.

Over the past few days I've come to think that, although I believe he would have been an excellent president, and though I do believe he won in 2004, he really did have to choose between following his own moral compass and maneuvering his way into position. He made the only choice that makes sense for him right now.

It's been said here before, and I completely believe this is true, that his only real stumbles in the 2004 campaign came when he was in a position where he was forced to triangulate - he's not good at lying; he's not even good at spinning. He's too honest. If he were better at those things, he wouldn't be the man who inspires us. If he has inspired you, please consider dropping by and leaving him a message.

I was never actually able to bring myself to ask him to run for president again, and I do realize that for those of us who are lucky enough to call him our senator, that's an easier call than it is for others. To see what he had to deal with in 2004 was hard enough - to watch him go through it again (and to think of Teresa, his daughters, and his brother and sisters having to watch him go through it again) in an even steeper uphill effort seemed too much to ask.

I have no idea who I'll vote for in the primary - but that's a long way off, and I'm hopeful that by then there will be someone in the race I can truly respect. Until it's time to rev up for the 2008 senate campaign you'll find me immersed in the Harvard Theatre Collection's early 20th century periodicals, and as far away from Hardball as I can get.