Kerry the un-electable.(Politico)

When John Kerry won the Iowa caucuses on January 19, Democrats bravely told themselves they were voting for electability. All the other challengers had nailed their colors to particular Democratic party special interests. Howard Dean was the candidate of leftwing anti-Bush enthusiasts; John Edwards of trial lawyer money and the South; Dick Gephardt of labor unions; Joe Lieberman of the disappearing moderate Democrats; Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley-Braun of the African-American vote.

Crowning Kerry with the virtue of "electability," though, is like a teenage boy telling a young lady she has a "good personality." That usually means you can't think of anything better to say.

Surely Kerry is a stronger candidate in a general election than Dean. Or is he? Howard Dean was seen as out of the mainstream on two issues: His venomous opposition to the Iraq war and his early support of civil unions for homosexual couples. Dean opposed the Iraq war at a time when many expected U.S. troops to find buckets of anthrax beneath Baghdad. That would have crippled the candidacy of any vocal opponent of the war. But the expected WMDs were not found, and though Dean's skepticism may not be a vote winner in a general election, it is probably not a fatal liability. And his radical, too-weird-for-middle-America position on civil unions is suddenly the default position for many conservatives--including President Bush--who have made stopping same sex marriages their priority instead. Even Dean's disastrous rant on Iowa's election night would have been treated as cute if he had won.

While Dean would have been no prize candidate, John Kerry is actually a weaker one on several fronts. Kerry has served in the Senate for 19 years and has a voting record best described as a "target-rich environment." His votes closely track Senator Edward Kennedy's--during a period when Kennedy's Presidential aspirations had given way to his run for the title of "History's Greatest Liberal Senator." This long, publicly-available-on-the-Internet voting record has already exposed Americans to Kerry's 350 different votes for higher taxes. The American Shareholder Association has compiled a book of Kerry's ...