As far as "red-meat anger and Bush-bashing" is concerned, that would be the easy—but sleazy—route. I think it's wise to back off on that and leave it to Michael Moore, Al Franken, et al. With these guys at work, and with folks like Molly Ivins throwing in the zingers (I love Molly Ivins!), that front is well covered. And judging from the commercials I've seen so far, while the Kerry forces talk about what's wrong with the county, what the country really needs, and how Kerry and Edwards are the ones to bring it about, most of the commercials from the Bush side that I've seen seem to be devoted to bashing Kerry. And they have to do a lot of distorting of the truth to make the Kerry-bashing commercials sound even plausible.

Point:   I think the negative campaigning—the real mud-slinging—will be coming from the Republicans. It's going to be really hard for the Republicans to run Bush on the basis of his accomplishments, so all they can really do is go negative. What else have they got?

Last night, while keeping things on an essentially positive note, Clinton managed to do a pretty good job of laying out who's who, what's what, and who's been doing what to whom. A whole lot better than standing there saying that Bush is a lying, mealy-mouthed little weasel.

Even if it is true.

So far, so good!

I think Ron Reagan is scheduled to speak tonight. I'm looking forward to that.

Don Firth