Kerry Alive:
At what point in John Kerry's speech last night do you think Dick Cheney and Karl Rove looked at each other and said, "Oh, fuck"? Do you think it was when they realized that Kerry was going to hit them harder than virtually any other speaker at the convention: "I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States"? Do you think Cheney and Rove thought, "We're fucked" when they heard Kerry say, "Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities – and I do – because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn’t make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so"? Do you think Rove said, "We'd better hide the keys to the White House liquor cabinet" when Kerry said, "Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: 'I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way'"? Do you think Dick Cheney had to lower the charge on his pacemaker to keep his blood pressure from blowing the top of his bald head when Kerry said, "That flag doesn't belong to any president. It doesn't belong to any ideology and it doesn't belong to any political party. It belongs to all the American people"? Or when Kerry said, "It is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families" (an obvious and almost sublimely simple turn of phrase that magnificently fucks with the original phrase)? Do you think Rove and Cheney looked at each other as if they were going to vomit at the end, as commentator after commentator, all the ones who had lined up so dutifully behind the White House's talking points for all these years, praised Kerry to the hilt? (And this morning on Fox, National Review editor Rich Lowry had almost nothing but praise for Kerry)? Do you think they asked each other, "What will we tell the President?"

The GOP website is fuckin' hilarious about Kerry. Sure, the whole "flip-flop" thing has stuck more than it ought to. But here's this page with photos of Kerry with Michael Dukakis, when Kerry was the Duke's Lt. Governor from 1982-1984. The whole revision of Michael Dukakis's career to a failed presidential run (which was less about that photo of him in a tank and more about the considerable power of Lee Atwater to get people to believe lies) is ludicrous. Dukakis was elected governor three times in Massachusetts. He presided, in his second and third terms, over a huge expansion of Massachusetts' economy, hitching the state to the wagon of high tech, what was deemed by Dukakis as "the Massachusetts Miracle". In 1986, he was voted the most effective governor in the country by his fellow governors. Indeed, Dukakis was far more qualified to be president than, say, this George Bush. Sure, maybe it'd be naive to expect Kerry to embrace Dukakis, considering how successful the GOP has been in portraying the man as a loser liberal, but it's also pretty fucked up to imply that Kerry somehow did something wrong by being lieutenant to an incredibly powerful governor.

By the way, one of the main reasons the Massachusetts Miracle ended was that the defense budget was slashed to deal with deficits left over from the Reagan engorgement. The President who agreed to those cuts? Why, Poppy himself, George H.W. Bush. The Secretary of Defense? Why, Dick "You Heard My Name, Motherfuckers" Cheney. Now, who needs to be embarassed by photos when facts do just fine.

Oh, the Right will be hysterical the next few weeks, attacking Kerry for attacking Bush's record as president at the same time the GOP posts bullshit like this, which simply points out that Kerry is rich while never mentioning how much Bush is worth. The GOP will get personal. Kerry will stay political. The GOP will try to make Kerry's attacks on Bush's record look personal.

Now, if Kerry said, "Tell that motherfucking dry drunk, slack jawed yokel-wannabe to step off or I'll bitch slap him back to sweet Mama Babs saggy teats," then, you know, he'd be gettin' personal.