Reply #51: Kind of depends on what you think will be effective, doesn't it?

[primavera]

If Kerry wins the nomination, sure, I'll support him, maybe not as enthusiastically as I would Dean or Kucinich, but Kerry's a far cry from a candidate like Lieberpuke to whom lending my vote would involve a serious, soul-searching, crisis of conscience.

But I think it's a yet unanswered question whether Kerry is as electable as his advocates make him out to be. There's a strong argument I've heard made by any number of analysts to the effect that, when Americans feel their personal safety to be at risk, all other considerations will take a distant backseat to national security. Frankly, I think there's some validity to that argument and, if it's correct, Kerry's progressive stand on the environment isn't going to get him very far if all anyone cares about is homeland defense.

Right now, the shrub is holding all of the homeland defense cards - because almost no one is standing up and calling him on it. The shrub must be aggressively assailed on this issue, or he's going to walk away with the election, no matter how deplorable and inadequate his policies in every other area may be. If Dems are to have any hope of taking back the White House, they need to call attention to the weaknesses in the shrub's national insecurity plans: the fact that our policies have resulted in us becoming a universally loathed pariah state whom most of the world now considers a more imminent threat to peace than any terrorist ever was. This is not, repeat not helping our national security situation.

Kerry's going to have a tough time making that critical argument given that he went along with all of the shrub's antagonistic, imperial, crusader crap and, to a large extent, continues to do so to this day. So how electable is he if he's unable to distinguish himself from the administration on such a pivotal issue?