According to the late Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the five stages of grief are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. I couldn't help reminding myself of this, over the past few months.
Bitter sports rivalries start on the close games. A seven game World Series, that ends in the bottom of the fourteenth inning because of an error will start a rivalry between those teams that will last a generation or two. The winning fans will claim victory, and cherish any opportunity to prove that the better team really did win, despite the close last game. The losers will say the pennant was stolen from them, and cite all the bad calls made by umpires throughout the series, and will eagerly await a rematch to prove their superiority.
The same kind of rivalry can occur when a Presidential Election is decided by 500 votes. The 2000 election was an extra inning heartbreaker for Democrats, and they have been commiserating ever since.The 2004 rematch has been eagerly awaited, and they fell victim to this eagerness,when they selected John Kerry as their candidate. Of course, Kerry was never really the candidate, rather, he was the opposition.
Kerry's support is entirely anti-Bush, and the anti Bush vote has been polling at least a solid forty percent for the last four years. Kerry has no ability to charm anybody already committed to Bush, and his ability to win over the undecided is just as dubious.
I never saw John Kerry as formidable. With a rigidity that would make Al Gore appear like Gumby in comparison, and a facelike Fred Gwynne he just seemed an implausible candidate. His speaking style reminds me of a bad JFK impression. His wife seems cold enough to give Hillary the shivers.
The Democrats were in such a hurry to select someone(anyone) to run against Bush that they hired Kerry based on his resume, and never bothered to really interview him. They thought they were getting a War Hero, instead they got a guy who did everything short of wearing a dress and claming section eight to get out of Viet Nam. They thought they were getting an independently wealthy Senator with unlimited resources to run a campaign, instead they got a gigolo on an allowance.
In the run-up to the GOP convention, all my Democrat friends were so certain that Kerry was going to win, it was unnatural. It's not like he did that well coming out of their nominating convention. I couldn't understand why there was such certainty that Kerry was going to win, it seemed preposterous.
That's when I remembered the first stage of grief: Denial. When someone experiences a tragic loss they go into shock, and pretend it never happened. Someone who lost a parent, might go so far as to bring an extra hamburger home for the deceased. Democrats have been collectively going through the first stage of grief, denying that they are going to wait at least another four years before returning to the White House.
The next stage of Grief is Anger.Perhaps that was reflected by the protesters surrounding the GOP convention.I've already seen pictures of a red faced Al Franken, and heard tape of Hillary Clinton and Al Gore screaming. This is going to be fun to watch.
