Now they tell us

Heavens to Murgatroid! - there are some pretty ruthless post-mortems being performed on the proverbial corpse of the Kerry campaign over at The New Republic .

On thursday, the Editors wrote, "He's back. Actually, he never even left. John Kerry, according to reports yesterday ... plans to have a prominent role in the Democratic Party ... Our reaction to this is ... how to put it? Well, here goes: No. Please. Stop."

Writing today, the editor-in-chief of the publication, Martin Peretz, refers to "a run-on interview with Kerry's brother, Cameron, who revealed that John just might run for president again and that, in any case, 'he's going to ... be a voice for the 55 million people who voted for him.' Another aide confided that Kerry 'has been working the phones like crazy.' But Kerry is not the voice of 55 million people, or even the 55.9 million people who voted for him. It was these people's slightly hysterical antagonism to Bush that brought them (reluctantly) to Kerry rather than anything intrinsic to Kerry himself."

Peretz's final paragraph is a real zinger: "Today, Democrats are overcome with despair. And I do not doubt that Bush's second term will have its abuses and its nastiness. But they should not delude themselves: John Kerry would not have been a good president; he might even have been a dangerously bad one. Next time, Democrats need to nominate not merely a candidate who they imagine can win but a candidate who deserves to."

In another piece published today, Ryan Lizza concludes with:
"But, for all the staff intrigue and leaking and counter-leaking among Kerry's aides, perhaps the most honest recrimination is that, in the end, it was Kerry's fault. He didn't inspire intense enthusiasm, even among many of his own employees. 'The weird revolving cast of characters at the top was unhelpful,' says a Kerry aide. 'But people, ultimately, weren't that excited about the candidate.' And most of Kerry's gaffes had nothing to do with his staff. It wasn't their fault that he couldn't get his story straight on Iraq or that he wore funny outfits when he went bicycling. 'I don't imagine they recommended to him that he go windsurfing,' says a senior adviser. 'And it wasn't Bob Shrum or Stephanie Cutter or anyone else who said, "I actually did vote for the eighty-seven billion dollars, before I voted against it." It was John Kerry.' "

Okay, this is all consistent with believing that, for all his faults, Kerry's worst would have been better than Bush's best. And it's understandable that previously the magazine would have attempted to emphasize Kerry's strengths, and downplay his weaknesses - such is the way of partisanship. But "The Editors" themselves - in what struck me as quite a weak endorsement of Kerry, rhetorically and in terms of ratiocination - seemed to have run afoul of what Lizza described as perhaps the fatal assumption of Kerry's campaign:

"Another strategic choice now being second-guessed is the decision to make the race simply a referendum on the incumbent. Inside the campaign, it was taken for granted that the voters would ultimately make a decision about Bush's record in office. If that were the case, the all-knowing polls confirmed, Bush wouldn't win. After all, a majority of voters consistently told pollsters the country was on the wrong track."

Here, I think, there's a parallel to the vacuity of calling for "change," as the rallying cry of a campaign - one doesn't just want any old change, but a change that on balance seems to be for the better. Granted that one believes that the country is "on the wrong track" (who couldn't find some senses in which that is true?!) a lamented status quo might seem preferable to the going alternative(s).