My response to Kos' most recent Kerry zap

[WilliamPitt]

I'll be the first person to admit that the Kerry campaign blew it in a number of places during his campaign. They let the Swifties do their thing unanswered for far too long. They never answered the flip-flop thing. They never came up with an answer to the $87 billion thing.

But a lot of this smacks of revisionist history. Terrible candidate? How does a terrible candidate pretty much sweep the primaries? And no, I don't buy the conspiracy theories floated here by some Dean die-hards; I've asked for proof of this maybe a hundred times, and never have I gotten an answer.

How does a terrible candidate win all three debates hands down? How does a terrible candidate come within an ace of beating a 'wartime President,' something no other candidate has been able to do ever, with the entire media establishment turned out against him and a good portion of his own base chomping on him because they were bitter their own guy lost, with rampant fraud taking place in a number of swing states?

I saw Kerry with my own eyes sit in Al Franken's living room with Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker, David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker, Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine, Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek, Jeff Greenfield, senior correspondent and analyst for CNN, Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times, Eric Alterman, author and columnist for MSNBC and the Nation, Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post, Fred Kaplan, columnist for Slate, Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate and author, Jonathan Alter, senior editor and columnist for Newsweek, Philip Gourevitch, columnist for the New Yorker, Edward Jay Epstein, investigative reporter and author, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., I saw him sit there for three hours and go punch for punch with a dozen high-powered editors and reporters on whatever topics they wanted to touch on. He came out on top. That's a bad candidate?

I don't buy it.

One last bit. This: "One more note -- campaign insiders will tell you that no one loved Kerry. No one had any sense of higher purpose. People who worked for Dean, Edwards and Clark all passionately loved their man. The campaigns stuck together. Why? Because the campaigns were based in the candidates' home states. Hence, staffers had to move to work on those campaigns. They had to make a sacrifice to uproot and travel to a strange city on behalf of their guy. That commitment was real. And since those staffers knew no one else in these cities, they worked together, played together, and stuck together through thick and thin. It was shared sacrifice, and it translated to genuine affection and commitment to their candidate and their cause."

...is some bullshit. Ask Pete Daou about sacrifices, about how many times he had to move, about dedication. This bit, above all, is bitter nonsense. We loved our candidate more so he was better? Please. You don't want 'movement people' running your campaign. I saw it with Kucinich, and that's a good portion of the reason homeboy barely cracked 3% wherever he went.

In the end, failure is its own example. Sure, Kerry lost the election. But the beloved better candidates couldn't even get out of the gate.