Back to politics.

A lot of ink has been spilt over Howard Dean in recent weeks: Howard Dean Can't Win, Howard Dean Can't Lose, Howard Dean Can't Win (Again), and the ever-popular Howard Dean Is Crazy, as featured in a series of internet clips and music mixes. The same is happening now with John Kerry, now that he's surged ahead as a favorite after winning both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries and eclipsed Dean as the buzzworthy candidate of the moment. Some of this conventional wisdom is coming from the Bush-leaning punditocracy, who see a Democratic challenge to President Wrap Myself In The 9/11 Flag as rude at best and downright treasonous at worst - let's try to tune these idiots out for a moment, and concentrate on the rest of the noise, which is coming from partisans who are backing an individual Dem as their Chosen One. What annoys me about the Kerry fanatics, the Dean fanatics, the Kucinich fanatic (ba-dum-dum!), et al is that they want their guy to succeed so badly that they can't even fathom anyone else winning the Democratic nomination, and take any little bump in the polls as Conclusive Evidence that the party must get behind their candidate now NOW NOW or else Bush will definitely win again in 2004 and, as Sean Connery said as Doctor Jones Senior in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusader, "the armies of darkness will march across the face of the earth".

Now I have no problem with cheering on your personal favorite, but isn't the point of this whole primary business to ensure that the strongest candidate emerges? If so, wouldn't it make more sense to let your guy fight the other person's guy for as long and hard as possible, so as to test each's mettle to the utmost. It's not enough to be popular with the grass roots, or to have the money, or to have to name or the connections; it's not enough to have the ideas, the debating skills, the sound bite-friendly public persona; it's not enough to have the anger, the compassion, the vision, the enthusiasm. The candidate who will put a premature end to the Bush dynasty in November must have all of these qualities. That no one of our guys right now owns the complete package is not an indicator of Certain Impending Defeat, as the idiot pundits would have you believe (besides, aren't we supposed to be tuning them out right now?). Candidates are made, not born. And the longer Kerry or Dean or whoever is destined to earn the right to call Dubya out spends in the primary crucible, the better an all-around candidate that person will be standing at the podium in the FleetCenter in Boston this summer - fucking my commute all to Hell for two weeks or so, incidentally, as the site of the 2004 Democratic Convention happens to be the same place I go to catch my commuter train to the North Shore. But if that's the price I'm going to have to pay for a Bush-free White House, then so be it!

Hey, has anyone else noticed that John Kerry's middle name begins with an "F" (it's Forbes, by the way)? JFK redux, anyone? Just keep this one away from any Grassy Knolls or Book Depositories!