kerry is a loser. not only did he take too passive an approach with the swiftboaters, instead of swift counter-attacks, he also messed up the debates with bush.

can you imagine bill clinton debating bush!? think of how clinton would sweep the floor with that ignorant spoiled fratboy.

but kerry did not have the cojones to do the job.

forget him, he's history.

No he's not. And it's not about the Iraq joke or his being taken out of context by the hate radio jocks (which, by the way, is a good term! Let's keep using that.)

Kerry played dead throughout the Democratic primaries, coming to life just long enough to keep Dean and Edwards from taking the nomination. The nice, safe, "electable" candidate chosen by the punditry and determined to fulfill their vision of what the candidate should be.

He did okay in the debates against Bush, but just okay. He should have cleaned up the floor with him. Hey, John, here are the answers to the awkward questions you went to such excruciating lengths to answer:

Q: "Senator Kerry, you voted for for the Iraq war resolution. Now you're against the war. Explain."

A: "The President told us Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It never occured to me that the president would lie about something like that."

BAM! That war-resolution albatross around your neck just went away, John, and we've reframed the debate to boot. Where the hell were you?

Q: "Did you vote for the $87 billion?"

A: "I did the first time. It was presented as a bill to provide support for the troops. Then I looked at it again and realized that too much of it was going to bloated contracts to Halliburton and other GOP cronies. It was a kickback disguised as an appropriations bill. You know, it's okay to change your mind when you make a mistake."

BAM!

Kerry tormented all of us who watched him tap-dance when he could have, should have just LET BUSH HAVE IT! BAM! Few things are as frustrating as watching someone blow a job when you know you could have done it better. You had your chance, Kerry. Please disappear now.

I am a hobby farmer in Minnesota. Russ Feingold was my stone-cold champ to be President until I found out he supports the National Animal Identification System. How could someone who voted against the Patriot Act be for a piece of legislation that violates so many Constitutional rights? Who is buttering Feingold's bread in Wisconsin?

Was that to check-off your pundit pablum quota for the piece?

He did not do one damn thing wrong. I refuse to let people like YOU continue to foment this godawful GOP-created REGIME where every Democrat in America has to pitch every $##$ word he uses, not to the audience he's actually $@!##$ talking to, but rather to the RNC tape recorder, and what it could do if it were amplified, spliced, excerpted and distorted. Well, actually, no. Bite me.

Kerry not only did not do wrong at that college, he did RIGHT - much better than Clinton with Chris Wallace - in his immediate, rapid response to UNCONSCIONABLE GOP misbehavior. Also note that Harold Ford's pandering to the GOP over Kerry did not help him win.

Back when he respected himself, Carville used to point out that the American people won't trust you to defend them if you can't defend yourself (from the 101st Flying Keyboarders or the 22nd Airborne "Chicken-Hawks").

Kerry actually was a role model for how to respond - and the gutless performance of his fellow Dems as they pointedly did not have his back - again - was the role model in how not to respond. At least in some cases, I suspect not wanting to give a possible 2008 candidate "a moment" was a calculation.

Keith Olbermann can tell a fact from BS and apparently, you cannot. And that, sir, spoils your whole article. Completely.

Another Wisconsinite chimes in. Russ is awesome, a moral compass in a Congress that has no soul. A statesman perhaps, and yes also a politician (Gun Vote - Deer Hunters - Most Of Wisconsin). I am glad he is staying in the Senate where he can continue to remind us of what a Liberal is in this knee jerk, no thought given, political world. Bear with us in the Midwest: this is a place of climate and political extremes, We gave the world La Folette, Proxmire, Socialist mayors in Milwaukee and sadly Joe McCarthy. Russ lets us feel proud to have a liberal spine, and will surely continue to elevate the discussion to the plane of thoughts, ideas and liberal action. Now if we could only get occupied Wisconsin back from Michigan....

As a Wisconsin resident and voter, I can't say enough good things about Feingold. He makes it a point to visit every single county in the state every year regardless of whether it leans Democrat or Republican and regularly attends listening sessions where anyone is free to ask him questions. If I send his office an e-mail or letter, I always get a response from him. He's a living example that a progressive candidate can win elections by simply standing by those principles and not trying to dodge the dreaded "Liberal" moniker. If there was ever a complete opposite of Bush43, it is definitely Russ. That alone makes me believe that he'd make a terrific President, but Shapiro is right that the steriotypes that often come with national elections would likely be his undoing in '08. Sadly, a RNC smear ad would suggest that since Feingold is a Rhodes Scholar like Bill Clinton, he must have also slept with Monica Lewinsky.

I'd also agree with a good deal of what Karen stated about Kerry. I canvassed quite heavily here in the last two election cycles and I have been surprised of late at how many more people have a better impression of Kerry now compared to '04. Very few Republiacans I talked to believed that Kerry's comments were meant to insult troops and most thought his remarks were aimed squarely at Bush. Almost all had more respect for Kerry when he fired back at the White House while many affirmed that they wished they saw more of that in '04. Here's some food for thought. Some of the more nuanced folk that I talked to agreed strongly with my distaste for Hillary Clinton chiming in for Kerry to apologize. Many here in the midwest interpreted her actions as self-serving and suspected that her motives were calculated to undermine someone she saw as a potential threat to her own asperations for '08, and were put off by the fact that she put her own ambitions in front of the good of her party at such a critical juncture for Dems as a group.

No wonder Dean can't stand her. She acts like Bush. As if he alone isn't repulsive enough.