Kerry's Revenge?

We on the Right have engaged promiscuously over the past five years in hurling the phrase "sore loser" and its various permutations at our "friends" on the other side of the aisle. And rest assured the label has been spot-on accurate to a fault. Democrats have never gotten over their agonizing razor-thin 2000 defeat, made all the more excruciating by Al Gore's despicable and futile attempt to sue his way around it.

So it is that I find myself, in light of this, in the duality of saying in one breath, "I've seen sore loserdom, but this is ridiculous," and in the next declaring, "Can anybody really be surprised?":

Senator John Kerry said on Thursday that if the Democrats retake the House, there’s a "solid case” to impeach President Bush on a charge that he misled the country about pre-war intelligence.

Speaking to about 100 veterans of his 2004 White House campaign at Finn McCool’s bar in Washington, Kerry praised Democrats who were working on Senate and House campaigns. Then he said: "If we take back the House, there a solid case to bring articles of impeachment against this President,” according to one listener who spoke to the National Journal’s Web site The Hotline.

Several members of the audience reported that Kerry quickly added: "Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

That is vintage Boston Balker: say something outrageous, then try and fail to keep a lid on it, and then backpedal furiously:

The Massachusetts Senator’s communications director, David Wade, tried to downplay the remarks, saying Kerry was "joking.”

He told The Hotline: "Is it really a story that, with a smile on his face and to ensuing laughter, at a Christmas party for his hardest-working troops who are still working to win in 2006, a Democrat joked about why these die hard Democrats needed to keep dreaming of a Democratic Congress?

Yes, Mr. Wade, it is a story - because your boss wasn't joking. As both the audience, and Wade himself, subsequently, if unwittingly, indicated:

Wade said Kerry often asks this question: "How are the same Republicans who tried to impeach a president over whether he misled a nation about an affair going to pretend it does not matter if the Administration intentionally misled the country into war?”

But several Democrats in Kerry’s audience said his remarks made them uncomfortable. While many might favor impeachment, Democratic strategists "do not want the party to appear hyper-partisan, especially when Congressional approval ratings struggle to reach 30%,” according to The Hotline.

Those "several Democrats" evidently didn't think that Mr. French was "joking." And if Wade had anything like his boss' clumsy candor, he'd at least wonder why Lurch would obsessively pose a hypothetical that is equal parts stand-up comedy and mentally unbalanced delusion.

But then again I myself have to wonder about the political judgment of the "several Democrats" who actually believe that their party didn't pass the "hyper-partisan" Rubicon years ago. If that is suddenly a concern - which, I suppose, may help explain Crazy Nancy punting on Iraq - it's certainly dawned on them awfully late in the game.

If they want to prove their version of the "New Tone," they might start by doing more than just laughing off "hyper-partisan" bile like Kerry's, and/or sotto voce-ing him to shut up lest it blow off their masks yet again, but standing up publicly and denouncing it.

Let Democrats be the ones who reach out to Republicans in the spirit of genuine comity and bipartisanship. Or let them stop pretending to be anything but the raving lunatic extremists they really are.

And you can tell everyone I said that.