KOS DOESN'T GET IT

Power Line commenting how Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, whose Daily Kos is the leading liberal blog, still doesn't get it. I read his blog a few times and to be honest he's not that bright, so of course he doesn't get "it."

The election, that is. Thus, Kos is mad as hell at John Kerry for screwing up the election, suggesting that he and his advisers "should be lined up and shot" for losing to "this joker" (President Bush, if you were wondering).

In reality, John Kerry, while hardly a great candidate, ran as well as any liberal Democrat was likely to. Indeed, one could predict Bush's victory and his margin of victory (as I did) merely by extrapolating from his approval rating. Those seeking more complexity could predict the result by looking at the economic numbers and the polls reflecting the public's attitude on security issues and the war in Iraq. There is no need to factor in Kerry's quirks and flaws in order to explain the election, and thus no justification for doing so. The only facet of Kerry that may well have affected the outcome was his (correctly) perceived weakness on security issues. But to avoid that problem, the Democrats would have had to nominate a security hawk, not a liberal Democrat, and certainly not anyone that Kos would have found satisfactory.

What's Kos' evidence to the contrary? He notes that Bush has the lowest approval rating of any president coming off of re-election. But that's why Bush's victory was, if I'm not mistaken, the narrowest of any incumbent re-elected since the approval rating has been tracked. The key point is that Bush's approval rating was, and is, higher than those of incumbent presidents who were defeated. (full post)