If you're referring to Edwards, he's 51, not 40. I'm also 51, for another few days. I remember Jim Crow, and I lived in Southern California, not South Carolina. So what's your problem here?

No, box. Thanks to a socially conscious 4th grade teacher our little minds were kept abreast, that 1961-62 school year, of events in the old Confederacy—dogs, fire hoses. That's not to say we were aware that the San Fernando Valley of the time, certainly lily-white in our northwest quadrant of it, enjoyed the blessings of de facto segregation.

cordially,

Sociologists and political scientists recently announced the discovery of a "mass-movement" psychology which, if verified by further research and analysis, bids fair to account for the tendency of the Teeming Millions to project their hopes, desires, anxieties, etc. onto so-called "public figures."

People drink the Kool-Aid. You knew that already. It's not a Republican-Democrat thing: the administration's party will presently mount such demonstrations on behalf of its Dear Leader as might cause the cheeks of a Caesar or a pharaoh to redden for very shame. This sort of thing has been going on for a long time, although the regime at present in power seems to have brought the Cult of the Commander-in-Chief to a pitch not hitherto approached among the notional Anglo-Saxons since the wet dreams of Charles II.

If permitted to be elected (if I felt certain that it would be a fair fight, i.e., the election conducted with neither widespread purging of the voter rolls, nor Republican operatives garbed in SWATlike attire arrayed for purposes of intimidation at selected polling places, nor Diebold-like chicanery—"the dog ate my election"—I would be prepared to bet on a substantial Kerry victory) JK is obviously not going to be, as some of his giddier partisans assume, the combined second comings of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Caesar Augustus, St. Francis of Assisi, Pope John XXIII and Sergeant York. That he will necessarily fall short of these inflated expectations, and that the Washington press corps, those corrupt and jaded courtiers, will give him a hard time for this purported failure beginning by next February 1 ought not astonish the grownups among us. I recently looked in on Kevin Drum's blog, wherein he had posed the question of whether a Bush victory this November might not be preferable, since the regime would then be obliged to clean up its own messes. Scores of responses made the obvious point that BushCo II wouldn't waste a heartbeat surveying the wreckage to date, but would rather commence with trebled energy and dedication to producing more of same.

I have no unrealistic expectations of a Kerry presidency, and will not fault him if he fails to produce the Earthly Paradise. It will suffice for him to cease breaking up the joint, something it is clear the incumbent has no intention of leaving off. Anything else is gravy.

cordially,

154 days to the election? I make it closer to ninety and change. Or are these folks privy to some DHS "emergency" planning the rest of us haven't heard about?

cordially,

Could it be (since you have the trusty HP handy) that they are counting down to the actual (devoutly to be hoped) earliest date for regime change, i.e., 20 January?

cordially,