Jonathan Chait at TNR has stopped his "Dean-a-phobe blog" - Mission accomplished, so to say.
However, he is not happy. And when he sketches his take on it all, he speaks for me, too.
Quote:Finally, John Kerry takes all the fun out of Dean-o-phobia. Indeed, if there's anybody who could make Dean attractive, it's Kerry. Kerry is a miserable candidate, bereft of political skills, and possessing of a record and a persona tailor-made for Karl Rove. The Republicans will merely have to say about Kerry what they said about Gore--that he wants to be on every side of every issue, that he's culturally out of touch with mainstream America, that he's a pompous bore--and this time the sale will be easier, because all these things are far more true of Kerry than of Gore. [..] I'd take Kerry over Dean, but it's a choice of defeat over disaster, akin to--as my colleague Frank Foer puts it--the Republicans selecting Bob Dole over Pat Buchanan in 1996.
The one thing I differ with him about still is how Dean ranks vis-a-vis Kerry in the "worst cases" category.
Dean made me feel anxious about the fate of the Democrats against Bush, as in, you dont know
how it's gonna turn out. Bit of a wild card. But I did get this sense that, just like it
might well turn into an utter disaster,
he might also pull off an unexpected surprise.
Kerry just makes me feel deflated, like I would rather just stop reading about it all and give up. Cause you just know he'll be predictably mediocre, and thats just not gonna be enough, in any case. Then even a wild card would have been a better bet.
