Reply #73: My biggest objection to Kerry, as I've often said, is that I find him

[Mairead]

to be an empty suit. He has always seemed to me to be largely a placeholder. A politician, pure and simple.

But after Kucinich, I think Kerry would be my second choice of the Dem candidates (I leave Sharpton and CMB out only because Sharpton has declared his intent to be consciousness-raising, and CMB doesn't really have enough information on her site for me to take a view).

I'd pick Kerry, if I had to pick a Dem, because, even if he doesn't do much, what he does do has always been to come down on the left side of the issues. I can't fault his votes (or couldn't until his recent rightward shift to the DLC, which I put down to misguided political calculus that I'd hope he's now regretting bitterly).

I've never had a sense that Kerry is anything but what he appears to be on the surface--a well-intentioned, conventional guy whose heart's in the right place. What we see is what we'd get: a politician.

I don't have that same ho-hum reaction when I think of Dr Dean. He scares me.