[mburbank]

Good post.

I think, even as he is right now, (and I agree it's awful) he could win the election. I have much larger doubts about his ability to win the post election litigation, which I think is not certain, but likely. A brutal legal race to the Supreme court is something Republican discipline is far more capable of then Democratic... lack of discipline.

I think Kerry is scuh a bad campaigner for a good reason and a bad reason. The bad reason? This is who he is. Not a flip-flopper, but someone who is constitutionally unable to give a simple answer. He's like scientists I know who can NOT say that something is proved, or given, even for the sake of argument, if there is even a statistical possability some assumption is wrong (and since the finl instrument of measure is the human brain, there is always a statistical possability)

And the truth is, all the issue that face us now are INCREDABLY difficult. But kerry's problem is that with a figurative gun to his head, he still can't boil anything down.

The Republican spin is that this paralyzes him, but I think that's wrong. Like the scientists I talked about, this hedging is a form of discipline personal truth, and in now way stops them from doing good science. The fact that nothing can be absolutely known doesn't mean you don't know how and when to move forward with the best information you have. Command and Debate are too entirely different things. What it does mean is he's a handicapped campaigner.

What's good about that? In this respect he's true to himself, and I'm sure he knows it could (probably will) cost him the election. He gets handled, for sure, he spins, for sure, be he won't, maybe can't pretend he can tell you anything meaningful about Iraq or Health care or the economy that would fit on a bumpersticker.

I'm dissapointed in Kerry. He is not (at this stage in his life) the man I would pick to be president. But the main thing he has going for him is he isn't W, and no ne can take that away from him. I also think (thank God) he'd be a far better president than he is a campaigner. And I've had, four years of seeing how much worse a President than a campaigner W is. And I don't think highly of him as a campaigner.