LOCK THE CABANA AND THROW AWAY THE KEY:

Election season is bad time for slip of the quip (MARK STEYN, 11/05/06, Chicago Sun-Times)

My face time with John Kerry has been brief but choice. In 2003, I was at a campaign event in New Hampshire chatting with two old coots in plaid. The senator approached and stopped in front of us. The etiquette in primary season is that the candidate defers to the cranky Granite Stater's churlish indifference to status and initiates the conversation: "Hi, I'm John Kerry. Good to see ya. Cold enough for ya? How 'bout them Sox?" Etc. Instead, Kerry just stood there nose to nose, staring at us with an inscrutable semi-glare on his face. After an eternity, an aide stepped out from behind him and said, "The senator needs you to move."

"Well, why couldn't he have said that?" muttered one of the old coots. Why indeed?

Right now the Democratic Party needs the senator to move. Preferably to the South Sandwich Islands, until Tuesday evening, or better still, early 2009.

He won't, of course. A vain thin-skinned condescending blueblood with no sense of his own ridiculousness, Senator Nuancy Boy is secure in little else except his belief in his indispensability.

MORE (via Qiao Yang):
Democrats Assessing Damage Done by Kerry (Susannah Meadows, 11/05/06, Newsweek)

Chuck Schumer got right to the point. On Thursday afternoon, the New York Senator, who’s leading the Democrats’ efforts to win back the Senate, called John Kerry and let him have it. The Massachussetts Senator’s supposed “botched joke” about the president's handling of Iraq had become a feast for Republicans—sucking up tons of airtime and knocking Democrats off message in the crucial remaining days before the midterm election. Kerry’s attempts to fight back, by calling the Republicans “stuffed suits” and “right wing nutjobs,” was only prolonging the story and making things worse. Apologize now, Schumer told him, according to a high-ranking party official who didn’t want to be named talking about a private conversation. (A source close to Kerry said the exchange was cordial.)

Just the day before, Kerry had been all swagger as he took swipes at President Bush in a speech to a crowd of Democrats. But Kerry, never known for his verbal agility, or his sense of humor, mangled what was supposed to be a biting laugh line aimed at the president’s handling of the Iraq mess. “If you … do your homework, you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” Nervous laughs from the audience. It sounded for all the world like Kerry had just called U.S. soldiers stupid.