Dean/Kerry

     Where I live I didn't notice, earlier in this election cycle, any H. Dean "prayer meetings" being held, and so I didn't get the "spirit."   I missed getting the idea that the election this year, in 2004, would be about the apotheosis of the Vermont governor, however worthy he may be, or of anyone else.  For me all that has mattered is the more earthly necessity of sending the bums home,  i.e. the Republicans.

     John  Kerry's been down there in the muck and the trenches dealing with a bunch of bonafide nasties for a long time, and I'm not talking about Vietnam.   I'm talking about the U.S. Senate.  Some of the monsters he faced are now gone from those chambers -- Helms, Thurmond, Gramm -- but many are still there vandalizing the country -- Nickles, Santorum, Lott, McConnell, Specter, and almost all the other  Republicans as well.

     I voted for Kerry in the primaries not because the media or the Democratic establishment told me to -- I'm perfectly capable of coming to conclusions on my own -- but because to me he was the one most familiar as a dedicated Democrat, and in that connection he dated from farther back than his fellow contenders or, I would guess, even many of the avid supporters of H. Dean or the other candidates .

     Unlike those who vote in the general elections, the people who vote in primaries and caucuses -- one-quarter of them anyway -- tend to be those who pay attention to politics, and I would guess that most who voted for Kerry likewise remembered him from before, and they were thinking, "Maybe his day has finally come. In any case, let's give him the chance -- because he's had the most experience at sliding through the jungles with the big gun oiled, sighted in, and at the ready, no muss, no fuss."
 
     This just isn't H. Dean's year, but there's a good chance  -- and I use "good" in more than one sense -- that one of the cycles to come belongs to him.