Thomas Dewey, John Kerry and Propositions Q&R

Question of the day - which is John Kerry?

For the past six months or more the Mainstream Media has been touting the tidal wave that would come home on November 7 and swamp any GOP candidate around - or at least enough to take care of those evil GOP Bush supporters. But John Kerry never could keep his mouth shut. Kerry was speaking at Pasadena City College and said "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." It is hard in one sentence to impugn the motives of volunteers and the military but Kerry did it. The White House attack dogs moved into place and Kerry took the bait and only dug himself in deeper.

There is a lot of chatter about whether the dems have blown their chances in the Senate. In some key races this kind of comment could move the election from D>>>>R. In 1948 the papers all told the story of President Dewey, who was named president by the papers not the voters. So one wonders whether the certainty of a democrat victory in retaking Congress. Dewey was not a very good candidate - some compared him to a wedding cake figure. But he was caught up in the inside nature of politics - the real lesson from 1948 was not the bad media but the fact that Dewey acted in a way that was not appropriate for a serious political figure. President Truman made the race a real one by taking the process seriously. Kerry seems not to have learned that lesson. In 1948 such a remark could have been lost in confusion. But in 2006, no way.

But then we get to Propositions Q&R. Again for the last few months we have heard a lot about how the propositions which would authorize a quarter cent sales tax increase should be adopted or we would be a (shudder) "cow town." In this morning's Bee there was a good story about the negotiations - which the supporters of this measure wanted to keep secret. The story gives a good rationale why the supporters wanted to be so secretive. The deal, even before the disclosures, looked like a dressed turkey - but with the way that our civic "leaders" bent over for the owners - it looks even worse now.

The election will be over in about a week. California looks like it will not follow the national trend. Mr. Kerry seems to have helped the GOP put up a slightly stronger front in a couple of key races across the country. There was a joke on the internet recently which (wrongly) compared the murders per thousand in DC and Iraq - the tagline on the thing was "Perhaps we should pull out of Washington, DC" - with leaders like Kerry - perhaps we should. With leaders like the ones who negotiated the arena deal, perhaps we should not stop at DC.