John Kerry is the Democratic nominee for president. He won the roll call, 4,254 to 43 over Dennis Kucinich.

The AP has an article about the roll call:

With the nomination in the bag, the biggest questions at roll call was which states would go first, which state would clinch the nomination for Kerry, and what delegates would say when it was their state’s turn at the microphone. …

Hawaii was the “most beautiful fleet of islands anchored in any ocean.” Idaho was named the “gem of the mountains.” Kansas said it the home of actor Dennis Hopper. …

Arizona, of course, was the Grand Canyon State. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, one of Kerry’s defeated primary rivals, boasted of the home of the Razorbacks. Not to be outdone, Connecticut said it was home of the men’s and women college basketball champions.

Yay! Go Huskies! :)

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The Ohio delegation puts John Kerry “over the top” for the Democratic nomination for president:

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State-by-state play-by-play after the jump…

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Is this hip-hop act designed to win over swing voters in Ohio? Missouri? West Virginia? Arizona? Really, I’m curious as to the strategy here. Does Black Eyed Peas play in Peoria?

Edwards is on stage now, soaking up the audience’s adoration. I wish Elizabeth had been given a longer time slot; I like her. But anyway, heeeere’s Johnny Boy. Updates to follow below.

AWW, ISN’T HE CUTE: “I am such a lucky man” blah blah blah. Ooh, he remembered all four of his children’s names! Way to go, Johnny! :)

“How great was Teresa Heinz Kerry last night?” Not great at all! She was terrible!

He’s looking at his parents and thanking them for teaching them his values. Aww, again, isn’t he cute?

I AM THE HUMBLEST PERSON IN THE WORLD: Edwards declares: “I am so humbled to be your candidate for vice president of the United States.” (Of course, he’s NOT their candidate yet. He’s still their presumptive candidate. He’s accepting a nomination that they have not yet given him!!)

On a side note, I hate it when politicans say they’re “humbled.” I mean, really, it’s not very humble at all to say, “Look at me, I’m humble!”

“ED-WARDS! ED-WARDS! ED-WARDS!”

Wait!! Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam?!?! I had no idea!!!

“Decisive. Strong. Is this not what we need in a commander-in-chief?” John Kerry… decisive… heh.

GOOD LINE: “You don’t judge somebody’s values based on what they say in a political ad. You judge somebody’s values based on what they’ve done all their life… [John Kerry] represents real American values.”

Wait… let me see if I’ve got this right… John Kerry will make America safer at home and more repsected abroad. I’m not sure if I got that right, can you please tell me about 867 more times? (Talking points: they’re true because they’re said a lot. :)

Man, I love being cynical. :)

SUMMARY SO FAR: Negative campaigning bad. Cutie-pie Southern senators good.

(Not that I noticed!) (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

HOW COME NOBODY TALKS ABOUT THREE AMERICAS? Here he goes again with the “two Americas” thing. The contrast with Obama on this point has been much discussed on Kausfiles and elsewhere.

Hmm, I’ve seen this speech before. In Iowa… and in New Hampshire… and in South Carolina…

In all seriousness, though, this guy is sooo much better than Kerry! In fact, I feel an unexplained, overwhelming urge to give him a $2.6 million settlement right now!

SPECIFICS! Wow! He’s got specifics!

But, uh, I think he just said he’s going to pay for his programs by keeping tax cuts in place. That doesn’t really follow.

Moral responsibility to lift people out of poverty… “It’s wrong. These are men and women who living up to their [end of the] bargain. … Their families are doing their part; it’s time we did our part.” Raise the minimum wage, “finish the job” on welfare reform.

FEAR, FIRE, FOES, GNOSTIC WATCH AWAKE! “We’re going to say no forever to any American working full-time and living in poverty. Not in our America. Not in our America. Not in our America.”

“We are at war. … We share a profound sadness for the almost 3,000 lives lost [on 9/11]. … We’re approaching the third anniversary. … When we’re in office, we won’t wait three years to enact the necessary reforms to keep us safe. … Never again.”

“We will safeguard and secure our weapons of mass destruction”?

EDWARDS TO AL QAEDA: “You cannot run, you cannot hide, we will destroy you.”

“U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” I wonder if Kucinich is chanting?

Military stretched thin… hey, apparently John Kerry served in the military! I wonder when and where? Did he win any medals?

“A new president can bring the world to our side.” It’s Kaus’s “Pedro Martinez” theory!

Peace in the Middle East, “including a safe and secure Israel.”

I missed it, but Becky says he said “nukular.” I did hear him say something about securing loose Russian nukes, which would be, uh, good. Yeah.

Shades of “a thousand points of light”… :)

“HOPE IS ON THE WAY.”

They actually have pre-printed signs that say “Hope is on the way”? LAME!

“We don’t believe in tearing people apart. We believe in bringing them together.”

“Join us in this cause. Let’s make America stronger at home and more respected in the world.”

“In our one America, tomorrow will always be better than today!”

YAY!!!

EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT!!
EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT!!!
IT’S NOT TOO LATE!! Don’t you see, delegates, he’s so much better than Kerry!!!! The roll call is in 10 minutes….. VOTE EDWARDS!!!!!!

:)

Joe Lieberman, the junior senator from Connecticut and BrendanLoy.com’s favorite presidential candidate, is still scheduled to speak to the DNC tomorrow in “prime time” — though the exact schedule is unknown at the moment. The Associated Press provides a preview of what to expect from Senator Joe’s speech:

“I know my position on the war is not the majority position” in the convention hall, he said. But he said he wants to speak to the independent voters around the country whose support Kerry needs to win, but who may agree more with Lieberman’s position on the war.

The Kerry campaign, he said, didn’t ask him to tone down his remarks about the war, or tread lightly. Instead, in keeping with their move to keep the convention positive, the campaign made him delete a line that took a shot at President Bush. …

His speech, which will run about eight minutes, will look back a bit at the 2000 race, and include “maybe just a little humor on how it ended,” he said. And it will focus on how things have changed over the past four years in terms of national security and the war on terror.

In terms of 2000 election humor, I’m not sure Lieberman can top Gore’s “little-known third category” quip or his comment about little boys and girls dreaming of growing up to win the popular vote. But it will be fun to see him try. :)

The article says Lieberman was given “no explanation” for why his speech, originally scheduled for tonight, was moved to Thursday, as we reported last week. “The move gives centrist Lieberman a higher profile time to address the more liberal convention crowd,” the article states.

Go, Joe, go!

I just hope the crowd won’t boo or anything. That would be really stupid, making the party look intolerant of opposing views, and hopefully they’ll have the good sense to applaud politely even when they disagree with what he’s saying. But thousands of delegates — many of them uber-liberals — can be unpredictable. I’ll be crossing my fingers.

Becky, an Arizona swing voter, writes:

How are these people courting my vote? I’m the coveted undecided voter. I’m not thrilled with the current administration for many reasons, the FMA and the WMD thing included. But the Democrats aren’t really selling themselves to me. They seem immature, repeatedly bringing up insignificant and irrelevant information like whether or not Dubya served in the Nat’l Guard. Let it go.

On the “immaturity” front, Becky adds hilariously:

I feel like I’m in grade school gossiping with malicious preteens. “Did you hear that Dick Cheney said f*ck?” “I heard that Bush hasn’t created jobs.” “Well, I heard that Dick Cheney only cares about enriching Haliburton.” “Omigod. I know! Someone told me that Bush courted black votes.” “Ew! Can you imagine!?! I mean, my grandmother told me that George Bush’s father is like, from Texas and stuff.” “I know! Texas is like total hicksville.” “You know, Dubya was like 20 in 1964.” “Um, WHATever! I think you actually like him.” “No I don’t.” “You’re blushing! Omigod! You gold digger.”

Heh.

You know, at the risk of sounding like a Republican, I have to say: if this is the toned-down, scaled-back, go-easy-on-the-Bush-bashing version of the Democratic Party, I’d hate to see what the no-holds-barred version would look like!

In fairness, though, the latest blatant Bush-basher, Al Sharpton, strayed significantly from his prepared text. According to Peter Jennings, he had been allotted six minutes and had taken 20.

Jennings also noted that Sharpton had broken all the rules against Bush-bashing and far-left-ism (though, like I said above, I question how much those rules have really been followed anyway), but said the crowd had absolutely eaten it up, showering Sharpton with more adulation than anyone before except Obama (and maybe Clinton?).

I believe Jennings also made a comparison between Sharpton in ‘04 and Pat Buchanan in ‘92, but I was listening on the bus via cell phone, and at that point my MobiTV signal was fading in and out, so it was hard to understand exactly what they were saying.

Anyway, I just got home. I have to admit, the “America the Beautiful” climax of Sharpton’s speech actually gave me goosebumps. The rest, though, was a little… well… see for yourself:

On the importance of this election: “The only choice we have to preserve our freedom at this point in history is to elect John Kerry the President of the United States!”

On his philosophy of government: “The promise of America is that government does not seek to regulate your behavior in the bedroom, but to guarantee your right to provide food in the kitchen.”

On Bush’s assertion last week that the Democrats take black voters for granted: “With all due respect, Mr. President: Read my lips — our vote is not for sale.” (As Becky said, “Uh, I was unaware that Bush was trying to buy it.”)

Sharpton also made reference to the broken promise of “forty acres and a mule,” and declared, “We never got the mule, so we decided on the donkey.” Heh.

About Kerry and Edwards, Sharpton observed, “I am convinced that they are men who say what they mean and mean what they say.”

I also, um, think that Sharpton said something along the lines of, if Bush had appointed the 1950s Supreme Court, the schools would still be segregated… but that’s so damn inflammatory that I’ll wait to read confirmation before attributing it to him with certainty.

UPDATE: I guess I got it wrong, but not by much. Becky reports Sharpton’s remarks thusly:

“if Dubya was elected in 1954, I promise you that Clarence Thomas woulda never gone to law school.” That’s WAY over the line. They should have locked Sharpton up in the protestors’ cage.

Heh:

Jesse Jackson just finished speaking, and not a moment too soon. He’s so out-of-touch with the moderate message Kerry is trying to project, he was preaching “bring the troops home” (Kerry’s plan is to send more) and calling Bush’s “words of mass deception” on Iraq a “deep moral failure.” That, and he sounds like a tired, broken record, a cheap imitation of Martin Luther King, Jr. whose time has long ago come and gone. “Keep hope alive”? How original.

Dennis Kucinich is due up in about 20 minutes.

UPDATE: They played “Power to the People” when Kucinich came out and exited. (Didn’t see if he exited stage left, but one would assume so. :)

“We. Democrats. In Convention. United.” –Dennis Kucinich, caveman

More quotes from Dennis the Menace:

“We are one for John Kerry! We will carry America for Kerry, and Kerry will carry America for us!”

“Courage, America. Courage to replace this administration and once again respect our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. Courage to reject doctrines which separate us from the world. Courage…” [blah blah blah] “…to put an end to war.”

“Courage to give John Kerry the chance to restart the 21st century.” [He can do that? Well, he *did* win three Purple Hearts… -ed.]

“This administration rushed us into a war on the basis of distortions and misreprestations. We must hold them accountable. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or with Al Qaeda’s role in 9/11. We have found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I was mayor of Cleveland, and I can tell you that I’ve seen weapons of mass destruction in our cities. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction… poverty… joblessness… fear… we must disarm these weapons.”

Sharpton’s due in 15 minutes or so. I’ll be on the bus ride home, and Becky’s at her Weight Watchers meeting, but we’ll both be blogging more later this evening.

Becky has started her convention live-blogging for the day. Check it out! I’m not even pretending to half-watch at the moment, but I suppose I’ll fire up the old C-SPAN webcast in a few minutes. Wouldn’t want to miss Kucinich and Sharpton. Alas, I have no idea when they’re speaking, because the Dems still haven’t posted a freakin’ schedule. Just a list of speakers, and even that is incomplete, since it omits someone who evidently just took the podium, according to my better half:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I HATE CHUCK SCHUMER!!! He reminds me of being intensely constipated. He’s like a peacock. Spread your feathers b**ch! When he says he represents NY, he means that he represents NYC…or maybe just Manhattan. Oh man. Did you know that John Kerry went to Vietnam? *Poke*bushnevershowedupforservice*Poke* How subtle maggot pie.

Heh.

UPDATE: The schedule is finally online. Jesse Jackson will give a speech shortly after 4:00 PM MST. Then, according to C-SPAN, Kucinich will be up around roughly 4:45, and Sharpton at approx. 5:15.

Bob Graham will be immediately after Sharpton (at 5:25 according to C-SPAN). There will be a performance by John Mellencamp shortly before 6:00 PM. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm gives the “featured speaker” address at 6:00. Then come the “Past Presidential Nominees” — some sort of on stage tribute, I gather, rather than a speech, but still, presumably this will be our one chance to see Dukakis!

After that, we get two military folks — Claudia Kennedy and John Shalikashvili — and then the Edwards-fest begins. Cate, then Elizabeth, then Johnny. The latter’s speech is scheduled for approx. 7:25 PM MST, according to C-SPAN. And then, finally, comes the roll call, due to begin at 8:00 or shortly thereafter.

Assuming Kerry crosses the vote threshold at around midnight Eastern time, the Dem Panic deadline is barely five hours away! I suppose it’s fairly unlikely to take hold at this point… but one can always hope… :)

CNN reports:

Fred LaRue, a Watergate figure and high-ranking Nixon administration official who once was rumored to be Deep Throat, has died of natural causes. He was 75.

If he was Deep Throat, I suppose we should know that soon, right?

The Dems haven’t published today’s convention schedule yet; all they have is an alphabetical list of speakers. The most potentially interesting speeches of the early evening — at least that’s when I assume they’ll be speaking — will be the ones by Kucinich and Sharpton. Also, there’s the possibility that Ralph Nader may crash the party. So, all in all, this promises to be the most potentially volatile day of the DNC… though, potentiality aside, here’s guessing the actual volatility, in the end, will amount to nothing. But we shall see.

In the later evening, the focus will be on the Edwardses, with daughter Cate, wife Elizabeth and candidate John all taking their turns at the podium. According to ABC News’s The Note, Edwards will be on stage sometime during the 10:00 PM EDT (7:00 MST) hour.

After that comes my favorite part of the convention — and the only part that actually matters — the roll call of delegates, that arcane ceremony of pomp and puffery that, oh by the way, chooses the Democratic nominee for president. (God, I sound like my dad. :) Traditionally, the roll call takes place on the convention’s final night, during the early prime-time hours, because, you know, it’s sort of the climax of the convention, being the whole point of the darn thing and all. But this year, it’s been moved to the post-prime-time, very late evening on the third day, so that the Dems can spend all of tomorrow night’s broadcast reminding us that John Kerry won three Purple Hearts (in Vietnam, apparently).

Anyway, according to The Note, “DNC secretary Alice Germond will begin the roll call of the states and territories shortly after 11:00 pm ET.” For me in Arizona, that’s a comfortable viewing hour of 8:00 PM, but in Boston, this could go into the wee hours! I’m guessing the delegates will be crankier than ever, seeing as how this minor formality of choosing a nominee is going to be keeping them from getting to the night’s parties, so we may hear lengthy delegation introductions (”the great state of Ohio, home of American hero John Glenn, the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame, and our great Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds…”) interrupted by cries of “VOTE! VOTE!” more often than usual. Which will, of course, be great fun. I can’t wait. :)

“The states and territories will be called in alphabetical order,” The Note notes. “It is traditional for the nominee’s home state delegation to put him over the top, officially delivering the nomination. (In this case that takes 2,162 votes.)” That tradition generally entails a whole bunch of delegations “passing” in order to ensure that the home state’s votes are the decisive ones, and with Massachusetts less than halfway through the alphabet (and before New York, Texas, and several other large states), I’m thinking this year will be no exception (though I’m not about to do the math on it).

(Here’s hoping for a Boston Red Sox shout-out, and perhaps even a Yankees put-down — hey, we’re going to win New York regardless, we can afford it! — when the Bay State delegation introduces itself before officially making Kerry the nominee!)

In regards to the substance of the roll call — that whole, uh, nomination thing — Dennis Kucinich has released his delegates, telling them to “vote your conscience.” But his 14 delegates from Colorado are reportedly standing firm, so it looks like there won’t be unanimity on the floor tonight. Woohoo! (I wonder if the Vermonters will go for Kerry, or stick with Dean. And I hope at least one Connecticut superdelegate will cast a vote for Lieberman. Just for old time’s sake.)

A brief summary of winners and losers so far at the DNC:

WINNERS

Bill Clinton: We’d nominate him again if we could. And he’d win again. And he’d cheat on his wife again. And we’d re-elect him again. Because this guy is good.

Barack Obama: The next Bill Clinton? The first real black president? This guy, too, is good. If Kerry wins the presidency and Obama wins Illinois’s Senate seat (the former promises to be much more difficult than the latter), then all he’s gotta do is win re-election in 2010 and avoid scandal over the next eight years, and methinks he’ll be a major 2012 contender.

Al Gore: Actually struck me as more charismatic than Kerry, which is both a compliment to Gore and an insult to Kerry. Says Chris Suellentrop: “[He] gave the best speech it’s possible for Al Gore to deliver, hitting that third gear he usually skips, the one in between robotic Gore and mental-patient Gore.”

Dick Gephardt: Who knew his speech would be more exciting than Dean’s? More heartfelt-sounding in his endorsement of Kerry, too.

Tom Daschle: Who knew his speech would be more exciting than Dean’s?!? “Not nearly as crappy as I thought it would be” — that’s high praise from Becky.

Janet Napolitano: I missed the Arizona governor’s speech, but Becky loved it. “I love Janet. She’s a great speaker. She’s convincing, even to my cynicism.”

Ilana Wexler: Gotta love the 12-year-old “Kids for Kerry” girl. Too bad the networks probably didn’t show her speech; she was much more compelling than the pundits undoubtedly were. Too bad, too, that the woman introducing her forgot her last name. But that bit of forgetfulness was itself forgotten when Wexler delivered what may go down as the convention’s most memorable line, for those who heard it: “When our vice president had a disagreement with a Democratic senator, he used a very bad word. If I said that word, I would be put in a timeout. I think he should be put in a timeout.” She’ll be on Letterman tonight.

LOSERS

Howard Dean: The Iowa Screamer goes out with a whisper. Pity.

Hillary Clinton: Cast in a rather harsh light by immediately preceding her husband. She’s OK, but compared to Bill, she looks like an amateur. “How could one witness the modulated, varied, emotional delivery of the former president and not realize that the would-be president’s delivery was flat, shrill and one-dimensional?” –Dick Morris

Ted Kennedy: “The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George W. Bush” is just about the dumbest thing that anyone’s ever said, especially in this age of terrorism. Also, that George III business was really rather juvenile. This guy is a Bush TV ad waiting to happen. (And what the heck is the “shirt ’round the world“?)

Jimmy Carter: If you look up the word “elder statesman” in the political dictionary, I’m pretty sure the definition wouldn’t contain any reference to the thinly-veiled harsh negativity of his anti-Bush screed — er, I mean, speech. Jimmuh should stick to building homes. He’s good at that.

Teresa Heinz Kerry: In Jonah Goldberg’s words, “I’ve thought Teresa is horrible for a very, very long time. I think she’s smug, unfunny, unsexy, unclever… now there’s no denying it. That was without a doubt the most self-indulgent, unnecessary convention speech in modern memory.” P.S. Plus, in keeping with Boinkette’s “Separated at Birth” theme, we couldn’t help but notice the striking similarity to Harvey Keitel:

Did I say “striking”? Well, perhaps it’s more “passing”… but we report, you decide.

Tom Vilsack: He’s the governor of Iowa, and the-man-who-could-have-been-the-veep. (Hell, there’s a Kerry-Vilsack watch for sale on eBay!) Yet he got stuck speaking Monday at 4:09 PM — “to about 30 people,” according to Hugh Hewitt — while his wife, who is not the governor of anything, nor even an elected official at all, got a plum prime-time spot Tuesday. Think there’s any tension in that marriage right now? (On the bright side, Gov. Vilsack did deliver a good, forceful line about the war on terror: “We recognize we are at war with an enemy that must be destroyed.”)

Hilda Solis: She probably meant to say “We need leaders who are strong enough to challenge the special interests, and take up the cause of doing what’s right for the American people”… or something like that. It came out, “We need…leaders who are strong enough to take special interests and challenge the American people.” Luckily, no one knows who she is, and no one was watching at that point except me.

Bob Menendez: Mispronounced “nuclear” as “nukular” on Monday, robbing the Dems of the opportunity to play the all-important pronunciation card against Dubya.

Gray Davis: He may not be on stage, but he’s in the building, and according to Hugh Hewitt, “He acts as a sort of dementor upon the gathering of otherwise happy delegates and media types.”

The protesters: “At one point, a speaker urged the crowd not to fall asleep.” ‘Nuff said.

Send your best wishes to Adrienne, who has mono. :(

Blogger Paul Mirengoff says Howard Dean missed his chance last night to become the liberal version of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan, an ideologue rallying his troops with a stirring convention speech that will launch him to the nomination four years later:

Tonight was Howard Dean’s opportunity to play the bloodied but unbowed ideological hero. The stage was set when he received a rousing welcome. But he responded by going through the motions in a flat performance that should make Hillary Clinton and John Edwards rest easy. Where Goldwater and Reagan had large portions of the crowd ready to march into hell, Dean generated about as much excitement, it seemed to me, as Tom Daschle did.

The National Review’s Rich Lowry was likewise unimpressed:

Dean stayed uncharacteristically, bizarrely restrained. … He said at one point, “Never again will we be ashamed to call ourselves Democrats. Never. Never. Never.” But that’s a line that just doesn’t work without Dean-like shouting. He ended his speech with his usual urging to “take our country back” and his vintage rallying cry, “You have the power, you have the power.” Accurately rendering that rallying cry usually requires exclamation points, but not tonight. Instead of getting louder, he got quieter with every repetition of the phrase, until his empowering rant trailed out into a kind of whimper.

That was my reaction exactly, although I was listening to the speech on the rather low-quality audio of MobiTV on my cellphone, so I wasn’t sure if my perception was accurate. But yeah, it really seemed like Dean was just — well — bored. Especially compared to the extraordinary level of excitement with which the delegates greeted him, his speech struck me as monumentally unexciting.

Hugh Hewitt, though, had a rather different reaction:

Howard Dean’s running in 2008. That much is clear from his remarks this evening: “Never again will we be ashamed to call ourselves Democrats. Never. Never. Never. We’re not just going to change presidents, we’re going to change this country and reclaim the American dream.” Look for that line and that clip to play over and over again as Dean travels the country in the aftermath of Kerry’s loss. It is an elixir to the new, nutty Dems following Michael Moore around the convention, which will tell them it wasn’t their nuttiness that lost their election, but the refusal to go even farther over the cliff. Dean, Edwards, and maybe Hillary –it will be a fun cycle.

Eh. I didn’t get that from the speech, but I suppose the Deaniacs are more than capable of lionizing their man’s words after the fact, if they so desire. Hopefully it won’t come to that, though. Dean’s anger certainly won’t have much appeal in 2012 after eight years of Kerry-Edwards. :)

On another front, not to emphasize my agreement with National Review columnists or anything, but I tend to agree with Jonah Goldberg here:

I’ve thought Teresa [Heinz Kerry] is horrible for a very, very long time. I think she’s smug, unfunny, unsexy, unclever — but not uninteresting. She is a fascinating specimen, but one I find entirely unappealing. I waited until now to commit to that position. But now there’s no denying it. That was without a doubt the most self-indulgent, unnecessary convention speech in modern memory. To the extent anyone is paying attention, I think she damaged herself and her husband’s ticket.

Admittedly I missed much of Teresa’s speech because, as Becky kindly noted, I got bored halfway through and, surrendering to the call of nature instead of holding out till the end of the speech (as I would have if the speaker was actually interesting), went to the bathroom to take a “monster dump.” But from what I saw, the speech was utterly pointless. What was she talking about, and why was she up there? Did she present a compelling case for why we should elect her husband president? I certainly didn’t hear it.

And I don’t buy this bullcrap about how she’s an “opinionated woman” and it’s therefore sexist to call her a b**ch, because everybody respects opinionated men but nobody likes opinionated women, blah blah blah. I have nothing against opinionated women; I’m engaged to one! :) I also have nothing against opinionated women with political power; I have never been a Hillary-hater, nor do I dislike the various women senators, or Conneticut’s fine governor, Jodi Rell. :) No, I don’t viscerally dislike Teresa Heinz Kerry because she’s an opinionated/powerful woman. I viscerally dislike Teresa Heinz Kerry because she’s Teresa Heinz Kerry. Every time she opens her mouth, I find myself thinking, “Huh? What are you talking about? And can’t you just shut up?”

It’s not about gender. I just find her really, incredibly off-putting, in much the same way that I find strikingly irritating men (like, say, Michael Moore or Rick Santorum) off-putting. And I can’t imagine her helping Kerry in the battleground states. She’ll play well in California and New York and maybe New England — e.g., she’ll help Kerry win my mom’s vote, but, uh, he’s already got my mom’s vote — but I think she’s a liability overall. Translation: Teresa is to John as Cheney is to Bush. Alas, you can’t dump a wife like you can dump a runningmate. (Well, you can, but it’s not recommended in mid-campaign. :)