Kerry has the nomination almost within his grasp, and has also emerged from the bruising kiss of imputed scandal. Unless Ms. Alex Polier or some other woman inconveniently crops up again, Teresa Heinz won't have to wield the carving knife she has threatened to use on her husband's private parts if his path to the White House is derailed by sexual scandal. Polier notwithstanding, never has a candidate had to put up with less in the way of the baptism of sewage that is a vital part of the primary process. Dean and Clark drew all the fire. Edwards, who could carve up Kerry in a minute, has adamantly refused to deploy his forensic artillery.

Did Kerry have the jaunty mien of triumph, that night of victory in Madison? Not that I could see. His long face, albeit abbreviated by corrective surgery, remained lugubrious, and he stumbled his way tiredly through Bob Shrum's phrases. The one thing all Democrats this year want is a winner. He doesn't look like a winner to me. Right now some polls show Kerry a few points ahead of Bush. But at time of writing, February 18, trend lines in other polls show Kerry slipping behind Bush after peaking on February 15. Karl Rove has yet to launch the Shock and Awe barrage that will explode over Kerry's head sometime in late summer, after the Democrats have got their boost in Boston.

Rove's targeting plans will obviously include such easy but telling hits as Kerry's support for Bush's tax cuts for the rich. (If elected President, according to the bean counters at Forbes, Kerry will be the third-richest denizen of the Oval Office in American history.) Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, and he voted for the '03 attack on Iraq. And this wasn't just a resigned or furtive aye. Kerry was up there with Bush, Rumsfeld and Blair as a huckster for all the lies that have come home to haunt Washington. "These weapons represent an unacceptable threat," he bellowed in the fall of 2002. Not only nuclear weapons of mass destruction. "Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland." Kerry's bottom line: "The President laid out a strong, comprehensive, and compelling argument why Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are a threat to the United States and the international community."

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