Dems are anti military and, like it or not, the leaders of the Middle East continue to show their true colors in relation to the horrible West and our militaries are needed today more than ever -- and the Dems can no longer seem to "connect" with the common citizen regarding economics. Those are the two main points, and I see no viable solutions coming from the Kerry side of the tracks. The DNC remains askew since the Clinton and Gore fiascos.

And no matter how the (nationally speaking) few here try to explain it all away, Kerry is a lot of things, but the people's choice is really not one of them.

Come on! He can’t be!

Kerry remains a shallow, shadow of a candidate, one who listens harder to his résumé-building PR people than to his hopeful constituents. He’s doing the right thing, don’t get me wrong, but he’s just doing it at the wrong time. This is the voter’s period, but he’s just not there yet.

What he’s trying hard to do is to reinvent himself in the image of his best challengers from the Democratic Race of last year, something he should have been at least trying to do then -- or at least have finished by the end of winter. Of course he would need to continue this throughout the election year, but not at the level he apparently is. He should be at the fine-tuning stage of his public impression now, not announcing big surprises, such as cross-party candidacies for his cabinet -- or worse, as his running mate. If he had not already done so, he should wait for either a public debate to announce his preferences, for then he should be better defined to the people -- or, where the cabinet is concerned, until he has actually won the office.

I feel that media events should not run a race for the presidency. The candidate should be of a caliber that he becomes the event.

Admittedly, it took Bush a while to achieve this level, but he is now there. Expectedly late, but he is now as complete as he’s ever going to get, and we know him. And he wasn’t really running against anybody in ‘99. Kerry has a serious race to win against a seated president, and I really don’t think he’s being very serious about it.

Dan