Can we put to bed this weird myth about John Kerry being a “good closer“? He’s really a pretty lousy politician, and has only survived in his Senate races by being a liberal plant in the hothouse of Massachusetts. He couldn’t survive out in the wild of the rest of the country.

The frightening thing is that Bush really was vulnerable this year, and the donkeys screwed up by picking one of the worst possible candidates, because they foolishly thought that Kerry’s Vietnam record would somehow inoculate them against being soft on defense. In retrospect, I think that a Gephardt, or a Biden, or particularly a Lieberman (I might have even voted for him, despite the dreary prospect of having to listen to his whiny voice for four years) could have knocked him off.