Excuse No. 2,458...
From the "I point the finger at everyone but me" department, it has been reported thet John Kerry finally revealed the mystical reason as to why he lost the 2004 election: Osama Bin Laden.

That's right. John has finally got it all figured out. Osama (who I must admit, I thought was dead) sent a perfectly-timed missive via videotape to America two days before the election and scared Americans into voting for George W. Bush.

Now, granted, this new and novel theory is much better than the other democratic mantras about defeat we've heard in the last few weeks: that Americans are stupid, or the democrats were undone by a vicious cabal of neo-Nazi, homophobic evangelicals, or Mid-Western rednecks had a natural affinity for an illiterate presidential candidate who mangled the English language as well as they did, etc.

Of course, to these people, reality never intrudes into the utopian bubble that they have constrcuted around themselves, a vision of the world that we can all share if only, if only, we'd all become as enlightened to the ways of bad French poilitcal philosophers and chardonnay-sipping revolutionary dillitentes as they were. The true reality, the one the rest of us live in, indicates that John Kerry was just a very bad candidate, with no ideas and nothing to offer but reflexive contrariness. In this true reality, Fox News Channel, Rush Limbagh, the 700 Club and "conservative talk radio" had something to do with pointing out Kerry's shortcomings, but ultimately, the decision still rested with the people. They all don't watch Fox, listen to Rush or attend church regularly, you know. At the same time, they have enough common sense to realize when they are being sold a bag of horse manure. Unfortunately, to a democrat, a bag of horse droppings has it's finer points, if you can just convince yourself the smell is not something nasty and aversive, but merely an unfortunate and esoteric aspect of horse dung. It's supposed to be good horse dung anyway because, well, it means well.

See, that's the difference. And it's why John Kerry was such a rotten candidate. Normal people don't contemplate the nature of horse shit and try to dicover the "nuances" hidden within it. We just decide we don't like the smell and try to avoid it.

Perhaps Osama was a last-minute reminder of the stakes we're fighting for these days, although why people need reminders like this is beyond my comprehension. But to discard the evidence in front you (bad candidate, agenda that wouldn't fly with the population, avoiding the press, manic-depressive wife with a streak of dementia sent out as point-man, VP selection that made Dan Quayle look absolutely statesman-like, repeated and gratuitous references to Cheneys with lesbian predilections, ski vacations in Sun Valley, $8,000 bicycles, wind surfing and 18 months of Vietnam-all-the-time) and conclude that a single event or reason was responsible is nonsense. To believe the reason for your defeat was external is bordering on mental illness. The problem is that Kerry has no stanbdard against which to weigh his shortcomings when he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and he's surrounded by people with the same shortcomings.

You know, John Kerry once made an almost-reasonable point in the first debate about George W. Bush not learning from his mistakes. It seems Kerry can identify that flaw in others, but somehow, misses it in himself. I'll bet he keeps on missing it, too.