Well, thanks Amos. Now I think I understand it, a little.

Old Guy, this is rude of me, and I'm sure I'm wrong, but since I don't like to qibble in detail, post links, quote at length, and since you won't post me your overall take, I'm going to guess at it.

The reason you put "greedy corporation" and "med. liability lawyer" in quotes is that you are mocking the book of conventional liberal dem. wisdom and it's indictments of the Bush administration. You are drawing parallels--that one could just as easily make these counter-charges, you are calling anyone who votes Kerry a blind fool and an idiot mainly in response to the general tone here that says or implies that about anyone who votes Bush.

I think you want to vote in support of the larger ideals and direction of the party, which Bush espouses and surely beleves in, sincerely--despite that there are some serious problems and the world isn't perfect. I think you want to draw parallels to reassure mainly yourself that some things that bother you are mainly just partisan attacks, which you can easily turn around. That just doesn't add up for me.

The partisan stuff is there, as always, but for me there's a lot more that just that weighing in against this President. Despite the larger goals of the party, Bush is simply a poor and very compromised leader who has and still is making some unavoidably bad things worse.

In short, it sounds to me like you're trying to convince yourself that voting Bush isn't a partisan-biased error, especially given the alternative. And I'm guessing you've convinced yourself.

    But in the long-term, there's no way now that Bush can be remembered well by history--it's too much, too many big misjudgements, too many troubling but ultimately unanswerable questions of his priorities, he's passed his potential by, and mainly missed. He is a generally failed President. There's no real equal parallel to that to be drawn about anyone who hasn't been a president.