ONE LAST DEAN BITCH POST, I SWEAR: I mean--you're Howard Dean. You probably look at the Kucinich campaign and think, There but for the grace of God go I. You tapped into the legit Democratic anti-Bush fervor when the rest of the candidates were too pussified to say anything against Bush--and this made you the frontrunner, a situation you were probably not anticipating.

And so you go and lose Iowa but afterwards you're in this room full of supporters who believe in you. They've been putting in long thankless hours for you and you want to reward them with the full-on Howard Dean schtick they know and love. And you give them classic rabble-rousing kiss-stealing limousine-riding Howard Dean and they eat it up but it was absolutely past time to be giving the full-on schtick--a few hours after polls have closed. But you only felt the emotion of that room and not the consequences of being a credible candidate while doing your wildman thing--they don't mesh. In retrospect, you realize that policy speech you gave in New Hampshire the next day was the tone you should have been reaching for and all the non-weirdos are already writing you off.

I mean, he's a credible candidate with me--I could care less about the shriek. But my tastes tend to run counter to the rest of the electorate.

And now we are apparently stuck with that insufferable Kerry person. I HATE POLITICS. You didn't want Dukakis 3000, Demmycrats? Well now you got him--in spades. Good luck with that. I have to go find Ross Perot's number......