Multimedia journalist Farai Chideya found Dems from Blue America enclaves such as NYC and SF to be quite glum while watching the Republican convention.

At a convention-week gathering of such types, Chideya took a decidely non-scientific poll. No one, but no one, believed Kerry can win.

"My stomach did a little flip-flop. I'd underestimated the depth of John F. Kerry's problem, his lack, to quote a phrase from the Bush I years, of the "vision thing." No one can win the presidency without mobilizing the base, and Kerry's base, uninspired and dispirited, is weakening."

Kerry's base is uninspired and dispirited because they don't even like their candidate, he is merely the anti-Bush. As I've said before, Kerry is a cipher; Bush the genuine article. Here in Mount Shasta, I had an "Aha Moment" of my own. At the Panther Meadows campground, I met one Robert Honeyman, a landscaping company employee who spends most of his spare time doing "street luge," an extreme sport growing in popularity worldwide. He straps himself on to a converted ambulance stretcher (ironic, huh?) and carefully zooms down the two lane highway on Mount Shasta into town at speeds averaging 65 mph.

And he's for Bush: telling me he was tired of Kerry's posturing over Vietnam experience, and, more to the point, wanted a "John Wayne" in charge, not an "Alan Alda."

That seems the perfect quick take of both candidates. Unlike Maureen Dowd, I'm not much swayed by Kerry's cultural literacy and Bush's less omniverous intellect. Smart is as smart does. Clinton was MENSA material, and, like Kerry, oblivious to the threat of terrorism.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 5, 2004 08:27 AM

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