Fine, it's Kerry. But it's just not the same...

If you've ever read my posts on Daily Kos, you may know me as one of the many there who were voracious supporters and defenders of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. But it didn't work out quite the way we had hoped, and Kerry won the nomination. One of the big advantages to this was that it made the Diaries section of Kos a lot more readable, as the dozens of daily diaries defiling Dean disappeared d...quickly. Now that we've all rallied behind the presumptive nominee, we're ready to give our votes and our cash to the only guy left who has a chance in hell of beating Dubya. But even after perusing the John Kerry website, I just can't work up the nice fervor I would have liked. It's easy to get behind the idea of kicking Bush to the curb, but not so easy to get behind Kerry.

Actually, there are benefits to this indifference. I can't get disappointed in Kerry, and there's no way he's going to lose my vote. He just made Johnny Fairplay his VP? Whatever. Replaced the Q&A portion of his stump speech with "Smacking Grannies With A Baseball Bat?" Still better than Dubya. Kerry makes it a point to use each piece of direct mail for personal hygeine purposes before sending it out? You gotta do better than that.

Well, Kerry's in the middle of a big internet fund drive, an event with which Deaniacs are no doubt familiar, and it just struck me what's bothersome about the guy. Dean fund drives used the image of a baseball bat to represent the money collected. You know what the Kerry people have up?

A ruler.

Ruler/bat is the perfect metaphor for Kerry/Dean. Which image conveys strength and power more effectively? A ruler suggests the question, "Is it big enough?" A bat states, "Yes, I am big and powerful. Probably my power impresses you, it may even frighten you, but you are no doubt enthralled. With time you will come and accept my power." The post-mortems of the Dean campaign are numerous and varied, but in the end the rejection of Dean as a candidate seemed to be a rejection of the force he embodied, one that could have led to disaster but also a wide-sweeping victory. With Kerry's nomination, the Dems have chosen a campaign over a candidate (and indeed, Kerry's personal credentials are quite impressive), a campaign that has the potential for wide appeal, but based upon perception of what will be popular in lieu of an actual platform.

That being said, I hope Kerry wins. But what fears me is the Kerry campaign will choke in the clutch, we'll have four more years of Cheney having to stop Dubya from accidentally pressing the button with his beer bottle, and Democrats pointing at each other saying "I only voted for him because I thought YOU would like him!"