Whither John Kerry?

It's no secret that the Democratic Party isn't terribly charitable toward its losers.

One minute, the entire party apparatus is mobilized to cheer on a potential president of the United States. The next moment, the reception is more like . . . uh, what was your name again?

When George McGovern went down in 1972, he remained a senator for eight more years but his party never forgave him for losing 49 states. When Jimmy Carter lost the presidency in 1980, he was widely shunned and had to rehabilitate himself through the labors of an ex-president who eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Walter Mondale in '84? Dems didn't want to be reminded of a guy who stood up at a convention and promised to raise taxes. Michael Dukakis in '88? The man's face was practically on a milk carton after that. (You didn't see him holding forth at July's convention in Boston, did you?)

And Al Gore was the target of considerable resentment that he blew a race that was widely viewed as winnable--so much so that it would have been very difficult for him to run this year.

All of which brings us to the question--what happens to Kerry now?

Does he become the party's leading spokesman in the Senate, overshadowing little-known minority leader Harry Reid? Does he start some sort of America's Future group and raise truckloads of cash from his donor lists and play the role of power broker? Does he use the fact that he got 56 million votes to lead the opposition to Bush while the '08 picture sorts itself out?

Well, maybe. But Kerry is also going to be a reminder of the huge Democratic disappointment of 2004, the failure to retire a president with a vulnerable record. More pundits are coming out and saying Kerry ran a lame campaign. Unlike the Red Sox, he will have to live with that 'L' tag forever.

The New Republic wants him off the stage:

"He's back. Actually, he never even left. John Kerry, according to reports in The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, plans to have a prominent role in the Democratic Party. Apparently he's contemplating a political action committee and think-tank to help define the party's future. And, according to those around him, he's also considering another presidential run in 2008.

"Our reaction to this is . . . how to put it? Well, here goes: No. Please. Stop.

"If the election results somehow failed to make this clear, we'd like to remind Senator Kerry that he is not an effective communicator. He tends to blather on, circling round and round his point without coming close to it. He regularly utters phrases --'global test,' 'I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it'--that play directly into his opponents' hands. And he projects the image of an out-of-touch patrician that is precisely the opposite of what the Democratic Party needs.

"Kerry's inner circle has come away from the election apparently convinced that he represents the aspirations of nearly half the country...

"It is certainly true that the election saw an enormous outpouring of activism on Kerry's behalf. That activism, though, was motivated by opposition to Bush rather than by support for Kerry. He was merely a vessel for righteous outrage over a failed and dangerous presidency. And not a very potent vessel, either. . . .

"If the Democratic Party is going to get off its back, it needs spokesmen who can clearly explain its positions without leaving even its own partisans bored or confused. It needs someone who can connect with the economic and moral values of the middle class. And it needs to be able to discuss foreign policy without invoking the word 'alliances' like some kind of irrepressible verbal tic. The longer Kerry overstays his welcome, the harder it will be for such spokesmen to emerge.

"Kerry certainly does deserve to retain a role within the party. That role ought to be the same as it was before he ran for president: second-most influential senator from Massachusetts."

Ouch. And this from a magazine that endorsed him.

National Review is a bit fed up by all the huffing and puffing:

"We do not usually favor expensive domestic-policy initiatives, but the Bush administration should consider emergency spending on mental health. So many of its critics have gone nuts.

"A casual tourist of the op-eds and the Internet can catalogue all the symptoms. The Bush haters begin with random abuse. 'The president got reelected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule' (Maureen Dowd). She left out receiving stolen goods. 'I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. . . . My relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority' (Jane Smiley). That will be an awkward Thanksgiving dinner.

"They predict disaster and conflict, or welcome it. 'I don't hope for more and worse scandals and failures during Mr. Bush's second term, but I do expect them' (Paul Krugman)...

"The wrath of the losers is more than pique over a hotly contested election, even one contested in wartime. Bush haters feel affronted by America's failure to defer to their wisdom. Pundits, novelists, historians, movie stars, eminentoes, and glitterati of every kind told us that Bush was dumb, crooked, bigoted, bloodthirsty, incompetent, and unpopular the world over, yet 51 percent of the electorate ignored them. The election was worse than a defeat; it was a diss. All was lost, including honor."

The New York Times reads the tea leaves on the Gonzales appointment:

"Republicans close to the White House said on Thursday that the choice of Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general was part of a political strategy to bolster Mr. Gonzales's credentials with conservatives and position him for a possible Supreme Court appointment.

"These Republicans said Mr. Gonzales had been widely viewed as one of President Bush's top choices for the court. But by first sending him to the Justice Department, they said, Mr. Bush could then nominate a conservative favored by his political base to fill the first vacancy that arises.

"For Mr. Gonzales, tenure as attorney general would allow him to demonstrate his reliability to conservative leaders, many of whom say they are unsure of his views on issues like abortion and affirmative action, Republicans said. One Republican said Mr. Gonzales's nomination hearings in Congress would also 'get out of the way' the debate over legal memorandums that Mr. Gonzales supervised as White House counsel. Civil rights groups say memorandums about the treatment of captured terrorism suspects appeared to endorse the torture of some prisoners and opened the door to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"The strategy, which Republicans said was in large part the work of Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, would clear the way for Mr. Bush to make his first nomination to the Supreme Court a trusted conservative, thus showing gratitude to his political base for the large role they played in giving him a second term."

Wonder how conservative the "trusted conservative" will be.

Not so fast, argues Slate's Phillip Carter, who says Gonzales may be too loyal to his client:

"Before the Senate gives its advice and consent to Gonzales' nomination as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer, he does have some explaining to do. One set of questions grows out of Gonzales' work for then-Gov. Bush as his lawyer in the Texas Statehouse, where critics allege his work on death penalty cases fell far short of what a professional attorney in that position should have provided the governor.

"The second set of questions arises from the decision adopted by the White House, apparently on advice from Gonzales and other administration lawyers, to set aside the Geneva Conventions and other laws as part of the global war on terrorism. His conduct in both situations raises significant questions about Gonzales' lawyering skills and his apparent willingness to sacrifice the rule of law for the policy positions of his client, George W. Bush.

"The state of Texas executed 150 men and two women during Bush's six-year tenure as governor -- a rate unmatched by any other state in modern U.S. history. As governor, Bush had statutory power to delay executions and the political power to influence the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute them entirely, where there was a procedural error, cause for mercy, or a bona fide claim of innocence.

"Then-Gov. Bush assigned Gonzales a critical role in the clemency process -- asking him to provide a legal memo on the morning of each execution day outlining the key facts and issues of the case at hand. According to Alan Berlow, who obtained Gonzales' memoranda after a protracted legal fight with the state of Texas and wrote about them in the July/August 2003 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Gonzales' legal skills fell far short of the mark that one might expect for this serious task. . . .

"On the basis of these memos, Gov. Bush allowed every single execution -- save one -- to go forward in his state."

Been reading those posts on the "stolen" election? The Philadelphia Inquirer tackles the subject:

"John Kerry may have conceded, but many of his supporters haven't.

"Armed with thousands of reports of malfunctioning voting machines, lost ballots and suspicious vote counts, they are filling the Internet and the airwaves with arguments that President Bush's victory was a fraud.

"Web sites and blogs are streaming headlines such as 'Votescam: The Stealing of America' and 'Evidence Mounts That the Vote Was Hacked.' Groups such as stolenelection2004.com contend that electronic voting machines were tampered with to tip the election in Bush's favor.

"In Ohio, legal challenges to the election are brewing. David Cobb, the Green Party candidate for president, and Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate, said yesterday they would demand a recount in that state. And a group of Democratic activists said they would contest the election, under a state provision that permits 25 voters to go to court if they believe there has been fraud in an election."

Salon's Farhad Manjoo declares: "I'm not on Karl Rove's payroll -- and there's still no evidence that George W. Bush stole Election 2004."

The WP and NYT also run debunking pieces.

The anti-anti-Ashcroft backlash has begun, with S.T. Karnick in the Weekly Standard:

"The New York Times analysis of Attorney General John Ashcroft's resignation reflects the general press coverage from the left, describing him, somewhat hyperbolically, as 'one of the most powerful and divisive figures ever to serve as the nation's top law enforcement official.'

"The article's title, 'Antiterror Campaign Made Ashcroft a Lightning Rod,' sets the tone for the piece and establishes the angle from which the New York Times explicitly wants historians to judge Ashcroft: as an overly aggressive--perhaps even reckless--partisan conservative Christian who used the September 11 attacks as a pretext for casting aside much of the Bill of Rights (which his bizarre religious beliefs had already inclined him to do).

"The article specifically instructs historians on how they should view Ashcroft: 'it is his legacy in the fight against terrorism that is sure to be dissected by historians for generations.'

"What this 'analysis' leaves out, of course, is the fact that the controversy to which the Times alludes was largely a creation of that newspaper and its political allies, who disagreed strongly with the entire thrust of Ashcroft's policies. However much one might disagree with sundry details of Ashcroft's actions as attorney general, it is futile to pretend that he was some sort of radical madman. His nation, after all, was at war with an exceptionally shifty and amorphous enemy. Some very strong disagreements on the appropriate means of dealing with such a threat are only to be expected."

See, Ashcroft wasn't controversial at all. He just got bad press.

Salon's Rebecca Traister has some therapeutic suggestions:

"OK, it's worse than we thought. It's not just post-election blues. It's full-on, why-am-I-even-here depression. Who knew that last week's 48-hour cycle of hope, premature celebration and crushing defeat would have aftershocks that reverberated so far?

"At first it was just exhaustion and the damaging psychological reversals of Tuesday's demoralizing polling-results debacle. We were left sore and nauseated, as if we'd taken a baseball bat to the belly. But it didn't get better after a good night's sleep. Next came rage -- at friends, family, entire states, individuals we've never met. If I could have burned Rudy Giuliani in effigy, I would have. This blinding, electric fury was at least an embrace of something vivid and alive, before the inevitable turn to existential despair. It wasn't about politics anymore. It was about life: There is no hope, no belief. Everyone and everything lets you down.

"There's been crying -- so much crying. At work and on the street and on subway platforms and at my friend's 30th birthday party on Saturday night at a swank private club. Just little rivulets of tears falling down the faces of people I don't know to be easy weepers. So common that no one even remarks on it anymore."

Among her many suggestions:

"Get loaded. Quit drinking? Start again. Quit smoking? Congratulations. Light up. It's going to be a long, strange, ugly four years. Nicotine helps."

Oh, and lots of people are apologizing to the world for Bush's reelection at sorryeverybody.com.

American Prospect's Robert Kuttner sees a different kind of Iraq/Vietnam analogy:

"President Bush should enjoy his victory celebration while he can. He will soon face the most determined antiwar movement since the 1960s.

"The Iraq situation is becoming more and more reminiscent of the Vietnam disaster. American troops mostly stay in heavily fortified barracks. When they do venture out, their sweeps don't achieve durable pacification. Militants and young men of fighting age are long gone by the time American bombardments start.

"The Iraqi casualties include women, children and old people, and the American casualties keep mounting. After the U.S. troops move out of an area, they leave in their wake new sympathizers and recruits for the insurgents. And the provisional Iraqi government is even less capable of maintaining order than its Vietnamese counterpart was.

"It was Howard Dean's antiwar campaign last year that infused energy into rank-and-file Democrats. Antiwar sentiment among Democrats has been kept politely under wraps pending Election Day, but it hasn't gone away. Democrats will now be liberated to mount full-blown protests, and Republicans will be on the defensive.

"It was several years before opposition to the Vietnam War became a politically potent mainstream protest. This time, a new and mainstream antiwar movement will mature almost overnight."

Finally, the conservatives will have their worst blue-state stereotypes confirmed if they read this column (via Andrew) by Ted Rall:

"If militant Christianist Republicans from inland backwaters believe that secular liberal Democrats from the big coastal cities look upon them with disdain, there's a reason. We do, and all the more so after this election. . . .

"Would Bush's supporters have voted for him even if they had known he was a serial liar? Perhaps their hatred of homosexuals and slutty abortion vixens would have prompted them to make the same choice--an idiotic perversion of priorities. As things stand, they cast their ballots relying on assumptions that were demonstrably false. . . .

"So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us. But don't demand our respect. You lost it on November 2."

A telegram from Coolness Central, dripping with disdain.