How about changing it to:

The GOP had a choice between a media favorite and an annoying phony back in 2000.

Oh well. It's Maguire we are talking about after all.

The Democrats didn't have much of a choice in 200. Bradley was every bit as boring as Gore.

Wasn't the 2000 Dem media favorite also an annoying phony?

It's also deja vu to 1996, only with reversed polarity. What did anger achieve for the Republicans in 1996? Not much...

Doesn't it bother anyone else that Edwards doesn't actually have *any* experience with public office? This is a guy who is still in his first term in the Senate. He's never run for any other office and he's never had to run for re-election for the one office he did win. As for that he's spent just about as much, or more, time running for President as he's spent actually working in the Senate.

This bothers me, how about you?

Kerry has been pretty succesful despite all the talk of how boring he is. For some unimaginable reason, people vote for him in primaries. And it isn't all just momentum stemming for an early win: Dick Gephardt in '88 and Path Buchanan in '96 tried same, but failed.

The point of the democratic primaries is to produce a nominee that is electable by testing out all of the candidates in a political battle. They seem good at doing just that, despite the continual grumbling that the wrong guy wins.

This is lame. Surely you must recognize that "annoying phony" just means "Democratic candidate most of the media dislike for no good reason, which dislike Republicans are of course more than happy to exploit." You can't seriously believe that in the context of a presidential race, "annoying phony" has any meaningful significance. Surely. No?

Nods in agreement with what Jeff L. wrote.

Check out Bob Somersby's archives (www.dailyhowler.com) for a complete takedown of the tragi-comical role of the media elite during the 2000 campaign. There was a phony in that race; unfortunately, he ended up in the White House.

Bill Bradley was a Media favorite?!?!

I don't believe that a few years of being told what one will be allowed to do by the Texas legislature counts as useful experience.

Bill Bradley was at one time a great favorite of the sports media. The political media always regarded him as a really smart guy, but in my opinion dropped him a couple of notches because he waited too long to run for President.

Edwards is a media favorite, because the press badly wants a contest during the Democratic primaries and because Edwards appeals to that side of most people in the electronic media especially that looks above all things for candidates who can make them feel -- feel good, feel important, feel pain. Plus he looks good on television. McCain if anything was more attractive to the print media than to television and radio reporters; where Edwards answers every question with a section of his stump speech McCain was a quote machine speaking off the cuff, and he spoke off the cuff all the time.

But the fact is that however good Edwards can make people feel and however good he looks on television his candidacy is completely crazy. The biggest fans of the last two Presidents would have to admit that they ran into significant problems early in their terms because of their inexperience with foreign policy and national security affairs. And now, after 9/11 and everything that has happened since then you want to put another novice in the White House to learn on the job?

That's not even counting what Edwards knows and has accomplished in domestic policy, which outside of areas vital to people with a law degree is not a lot. Look, I've seen enough politicians to recognize good retail campaign skills when I see them, and Edwards' are first rate. But he can't do the job he's campaigning for. He's faking it. It's a measure of how little enthusiasm the other Democrats who ran this year evoked that Edwards has gotten as far as he has.

Surely you must recognize that "annoying phony" just means "Democratic candidate most of the media dislike for no good reason, which dislike Republicans are of course more than happy to exploit." .

I would say that is a good definition. However good or bad the media reasons are for disliking a guy, for the Dems to pick a candidate who is destined for a beating at their hands is an odd strategy, if plausible alternatives are available.

I happen to agree with Bob Somersby that the media pummelled Al Gore in 2000; do you think they will go easy on John Kerry, or will Bob be writing another series about how the media may have cost Kerry the election by screwing him in 2004?

The GOP had a choice between a media favorite and an annoying phony back in 2000.

The Reps are well accustomed to getting their guy elected without media support. Or does the estimable "GT" think the NY Times would have endorsed McCain over Gore?

I may be stealing one of Somersby's points, but the right's cries of media bia do work the ref a bit. When an (inevitably!) liberal reporter is annoyed by Bush, they wonder if it is their own bias; when they are annoyed byGore or Kerry, they know it is the other guy's fault, and fire away.

As to Bush being an annoying phony, I have little doubt that many Dems think so. However, I think Bush polled, and polls well amongst Reps on the authenticity question. Kerry and Gore seem to have noticeable problems within their own party, and within the media.

Although Kerry keeps winning.

However good or bad the media reasons are for disliking a guy, for the Dems to pick a candidate who is destined for a beating at their hands is an odd strategy, if plausible alternatives are available.

But the problem is, Tom, that there are no alternatives. Whoever the Dems pick as a candidate will receive a beating at the hands of the popular media, while Bush gets a free ride, just as happened in 2000. That's the disadvantage of the media being dominated by the right wing.

However, this time around Bush is laboring under the disadvantage that people already know what kind of President he'll make if he's given a second term - no matter how kind the media is to him. The mass media went Clinton-bashing at his second election, and it didn't matter, because Clinton's record as President spoke for him. The media will go Kerry-bashing this time around - and it shouldn't matter, because Bush's record at President speaks for him. He's likely to go down on record as one of the worst Presidents in US history, but at least come 2005, he'll be gone.

Sometimes you read something so detatched from reality that you realize anything you might say will merely add to the tinnitus-like ring of facts that some folks have learned to live with. And ignore.

Hey, good luck on that Bush-gone-in-'05 thing.

No luck required, Spongeworthy. After all, Bush couldn't win in 2000 - and that was before the whole country saw what a hopelessly incompetent President he made.

Apparently, even minimal contact with reality is not a prerequisite for posting here.

Apparently not. ;-) But I suspect that you are confused as to which of us has no contact with reality.

Since the topic drifted a bit, two thoughts: Bill Bradley newver struck me as particularly smart. Given his boards, he never would have gotten into Princeton without his basketball skills.

And for those who expect Bush to lose, I am currently predicting that he will win with 59 percent of the two pary vote. You can find the details on my site. (And if you want to look back, you can find my predictions for 2000, which were very close on both House and Senate numbers.)

And for those who expect Bush to lose, I am currently predicting that he will win with 59 percent of the two pary vote.

Do you work for Diebold?