When you look at it, Kerry the campaigner had problems with his wooden style and windy speeches, but his campaign strategy really wasn't that unsound; try to be all things to all people (borrowing from Clinton in 1992) and count on the media to rough up George W. Bush enough to squeak by with a victory. The Clintons used that same playbook 12 years ago, with Iraq in this case serving as the meida's substitute to the elder Bush's flip-flop on the tax hikes as the supposed wedge issue that would split voters off from the president.

Little things like the Guard memos were supposed to be the final naiils in the coffin for GWB, the way the fradulent supermarket scanner story was for his dad in '92. The difference this time, and the problem for Kerry, was with the advent of the Internet, he could neither control the exposure of that story as fake, nor could he rely on the media to keep ther Swift Boat Vets' story away from the public. Imagine if the web had been around to the same extent 12 years ago, when Bill and Hillary went on "60 Minutes" to rebuff Gennifer Flowers' charges, even with the audio tape sitting out there. History would have been a lot different (though we still might have ended up with President Tsongas in 1993).

I agree OJ.

Ironically Mr. Kerry's flip-flopping worked FOR him. Mark Steyn wrote last week that the difference between Bush and Kerry voters were that Bush's support came from people who thought he was telling the truth about Iraq and Kerry's support came from people who thought that he was lying about Iraq. I actually think Steyn was only half right about the Kerry support.

Last summer I read a couple of columns a few days apart. One was by Dennis Prager talking about callers to his radio show who were supporting Kerry because they were sure that his "real" agenda was to withdraw from Iraq immediately upon taking office. A day or so later I read an E.J. Dionne piece that snippily chided Rep criticism of Kerry concerning wobbliness on Iraq using his own speeches as evidence. In a sense Kerry was able to use the debates to bring home the latter point and to make himself palatable to a lot of Americans. With the help of the MSM, he could pull this off. But while he was able to finesse this issue for the election, it would have made it extremely difficult for him had he actually had to govern, as his base's expectation of him was completely split.

In the end Kerry was, intentionally or unintentionally, misleading a large part of his base as to his intentions. This is the real rub of the Democrat's dilemma.

We often criticize the Dems for having to lie about their agenda in order to make themselves palatable to the middle, but I think the point we miss is that often the real lies are to their own base. Certainly Clinton did that a lot, throwing symbols to the far left while governing center-left. But he was a deft enough politician to pull it off. Kerry isn't and for that reason a Kerry Presidency would have been a disaster for the Dems (as well as for the country).

I think after the dust clears some of the cooler heads of the more responsible left will realize the bullet they've dodged. Kerry's failure probably moves their inevitable comeback forward 10 years or more.

I hope the '008 campaigns look at the way the so-called debates resuscitated the Kerry campaign, and realize that it's stupid to give your opponent a chance to rehabilitate himself with you standing there next to him.

In '08 debates will be unavoidable as there will not be an incumbent. We need to choose a better debater if possible.

Jeff-- I think you're right about your flip-flopping point. It did help him, because it allowed him to stay largely undefined: he remained a "generic democrat" candidate, and, ergo, did better than he would have otherwise.