1/04/2005 06:56:06 AM|||Nathan Moore|||

I don't like even the perception of kicking a guy while he's down, and this is no exception. I got around to reading Kerry's Newsweek interview yesterday and noticed something odd.

First, the usuals made themselves immediately obvious - for example, Bob Shrum, who has proven himself to be one of the most overcompensated, underdelivering politicos in the history of American politics. Why anyone would hire him, or why Kerry hired him, is beyond me. His overconfidence is exceeded only by his cluelessness

Still, the 7 o'clock exit polls were considered to be reasonably reliable. Time to tell the candidate the good news.

Kerry had slept only two hours the night before. He was sitting in a small hotel room at the Westin Copley (in a small irony of history, next door to the hotel where his grandfather, a boom-and-bust businessman, shot himself some 80 years ago). Bob Shrum, Kerry's friend and close adviser, couldn't resist the moment. "May I be the first to say 'Mr. President'?" said Shrum.

Funny - I have a lot of friends I wouldn't let run a campaign for me. This especially goes for the ones who destroy every political effort they touch.

As I said, I'm not into kicking Kerry around right now. I'll at least give him until after the Inauguration. It seems clear, however, that the campaign marches on to 2008 (Hillary beware!). According to this piece in Newsweek, there is in fact a cadre of true Kerry believers, plotting even now how to wrangle the nomination away from the presumed nominee. This may be an attempt by a journalist to dispel the conventional wisdom that Kerry merely embodied the Anti-Bush, and a dried stump would have come just as close. Perhaps not.

|||110484420675072947|||Kerry's Post Election Interview