The Diminishing Relevance of John F. Kerry

Shortly after the Democratic convention, I speculated that a Kerry strategy shift had occurred, that the candidate, freed by Ralph Nader’s patent irrelevance from the need to appease hard case leftists, would try to reduce the election debate to Bill Clinton’s winning “It’s the economy, stupid” formula.

If Senator Kerry’s unbalanced flailing last night was any portent, I was wrong, though I have the satisfaction of having been wrong before Hugh Hewitt, who writes today:

I discussed the options available to Kerry on yesterday’s program with John Podhoretz and Terry Eastland. . . . We all agreed that Kerry would never embrace the “Michael Moore option” of running on anger and paranoia because it is a recipe for electoral disaster. But that’s what Kerry grabbed on to last night, in a speech that may go down in American history as the worst ever delivered by a nominee. . . . Wild accusations that every responsible member of his party’s leadership knows to be false must be sending shock waves through that group this morning. Can you imagine Joe Lieberman reading Kerry’s remarks? Or even Bill Clinton? Kerry’s lost it, and he did so on a night when George Bush reminded America why our enemies fear his leadership.

What “every responsible member of his party’s leadership” thinks, I have no idea, but putting Bush Hatred at the focus of the election appeals to core Democrats like Susan Estrich, who managed the Dukakis campaign and has never gotten over it. She called earlier this week for left-wing 527 groups to respond to President Bush’s improvement in the polls by running ads claiming that the President and Vice President are alcoholics, draft dodgers and womanizers. She made it quite clear that the truth value of such accusations was an insignificant consideration.

My instant reaction to Mrs. Estrich’s tantrum was “Bring ‘em on!” If anything could drive John Kerry’s share of the vote below Barry Goldwater’s, it would be reckless, hysterical dishonesty by his supporters. My second take is more cautious. Bush Hatred has a solid foothold among the media, and charges leveled by “respectable” news agencies may be effective, even if, emanating from George Soros & Co., they would go nowhere. Will we perhaps start to see “scientific reports” on the dangers of alcoholic relapses? Though it is a minor matter, I can’t help but find it ominous that the Associated Press has claimed, falsely, it appears, that, when President Bush asked for prayers for Bill Clinton, his “audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them.” Can a reporter who writes a petty, malicious lie like that, and the “news” outlets that spread it, be trusted not to invent or exaggerate scurrilous yarns about the President’s and Vice President’s past?

John Kerry is rapidly making himself irrelevant to the election. The real contest is George W. Bush versus the Angry Left and the Media Elite.

Further Reading: Stephen F. Hayes, “The Kerry Crackup”