Who's the incumbent?

AP Wire 09/01/2004 Zell Miller, then and now

You'd be hard pressed to see evidence that Bush is the incumbent by watching the Republican National Convention coverage. I haven't watched the speeches, but I have tuned in to the MSNBC and CNN coverage, and the highlights are completely focused on Kerry attacks.

MSNBC had a gallery of "undecided" voters (ahem.) First off, how many "undecided" voters do you know that are hanging out at the convention?

They overwhelmingly loved the Zell "Zig-Zag" Miller attacks.

Are Republicans truly stupid, that out-of-context quotes are "right-on" to them? That Cheney did a masterful job of dissecting Kerry's voting record, without mentioning that Cheney also recommended the cancellation of many of the same weapons systems?

One particularly gleeful neocon "undecided" voter nearly peed her panties with joy at Miller's applause-line that the military would be armed with "spitballs" under a Kerry administration. She "believed" it to be more truth than metaphor, if you took her at her word (I don't.)

So, no, on the one hand I don't believe they're all stupid.

The true undecided, however, are at least ignorant. If you can honestly examine our weakened global standing, our crumbling middle-class, our destroyed manufacturing industries, Bush's complete failure to continue Clinton's anti-al Quaeda policies until after 9/11, the coddling of big business to the point where, for the first time in US history, the gains in the economy are going in higher proportion to corporate profits than American workers, the out-of-control spiraling of health care costs, and the out-of-control budget deficits which fund a misrepresented Iraq war and tax cuts for the rich; if you can take all that in and still claim yourself "undecided", you're too stupid to vote. You either see the good Bush is doing for you personally (say, the rich getting richer, or Osama enjoying the explosion of recruits thanks to the Iraq war) or you see the destruction of the country and vote anybody but Bush.

The Miami Herald had a decent piece about Zell before and after: before being the 1992 Democratic convention where he supported Clinton.

1992: "We can't all be born rich and handsome and lucky, and that's why we have a Democratic Party. My family would still be isolated and destitute if we had not had FDR's Democratic brand of government."

2004: "In (the Democrats') warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy. It is not their patriotism - it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking."

Sounds to me like Miller is a political whore, and anyone who buys his spin is indeed stupid.