Lesson learned here: Don't suggest Kerry for VP at midnight on DailyKos:

[beachmom]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/5/232552/3362/270/490959

I commented, but to read all the insults was disheartening. I think you can boil it down to a still standing grudge that Kerry defeated Dean (and Clark) in '04. Still going and going and going and going .....

[MBS]

1. it amazes me that these grudges keep going on, even in the face

of all the evidence -- YEARS of it now, and stuff happening right this minute -- that JK is fighting the fight they supposedly are for, and doing it more effectively than either Clark or Dean or Edwards (etc) ever would have been able to do as presidential candidates, or as president. (I do think that Dean has been doing a good job, in many ways a great job, as DNC chair, barring a couple of impolitic statements here and there. So my comment is about what they could have achieved as elected officials).

[karynnj]

3. Also, Dean did not have the foresight needed to push for a

resolution on MI and FL before they voted. In fairness, he obviously did not give much weight to the possibility of 2008 being a close race. The fact is that one Dean poster was nearly alone here in arguing that the rules were the rules and nothing should be worked out. Many pointed this out as a possible nightmare in angering those 2 states. (Does anyone think that a Kerry or Obama in that position wouldn't have brought every stakeholder in to work out a viable solution before the vote - when the DNC head would have more leverage?)

I think that Clark has lost some luster with his knee jerk defenses of Clinton - what it shows is that just as he was for Kerry, his background makes him an excellent surrogate. He will use his brilliance to defend the positions of the one he supports.

I think that in all these cases, it is what the posters themselves invested in these people that keeps them from accepting that in 2004, the strongest best voice we had was Kerry. It also shows that Kerry, who was even more obviously the strongest voice, was wise to decide that there was still too much anger to run in 2008.

[karynnj]

2. I think it is also still too early

and agree with you that the Dean people NEED to believe that he was unfairly stopped rather than that he imploded. It is also true that the Deniacs were part of why he failed - both because there are many accounts that they annoyed more people than won them. On a deeper level, he might have lost because he didn't run as who he was. He was not a radical progressive - he was a moderate governor. Being angry doesn't change your history. He also was not among the strongest anti-war people in late 2002. The problem he ultimately had was that he both seemed disturbingly angry (which resonated with the Kossacks) but not the rest of the country and that as people examined his record, it didn't match.

The problem these people have is that they need to accept that Dean was not a great candidate or that Kerry was an exceptional one. Otherwise, Kerry couldn't have won. This is why they blame it on outside forces - though Kerry's campaign being near broke in December 2003 makes the conspiracy theories rather silly.

[wisteria]

4. When you boil it down, it is a small minority who are still fighting a refuted viewpoint

and do not want to comprehend the truth. Their BS is so 2003. Senator Kerry overtook both Clark and Dean because HE WAS THE BETTER CANDIDATE.

[JI7]

5. i'm not going to read it because it's the same crap i see from time to time

but it's easier to believe certain things than to accept reality for some.