Masquerade Ball at the Fleet Center

USA Today fired Ann Coulter for being too, well, too much like herself. They replaced her with Jonah Goldberg who also has the distinction of having fired AC a couple of years ago from National Review for saying something like we should kill all the terrorists and convert the rest of the Muslim world to Christianity, or something like that. Anyway, Jonah's column on the Democrat Convention is here.

He makes the point that the fractious Democrats have constructed a Potemkin Village to fool the rest of the country into thinking that they're really all lovey-dovey with each other and with John Kerry when, in fact, the glue that's holding this convention together is not John Kerry, but a deep and irrational contempt for George Bush. The Democrat Party has for the last four years, been a roiling, seething cauldron of hate, but they know that even though venting their animus makes them feel good, they can't let the American voters see this. So the convention Democrats remind the viewer of Dennis the Menace all dressed up, sitting in church looking angelic, when in fact he's bursting inside to get out and roll in the mud.

Goldberg writes:

It was only when Howard Dean's head exploded like one of those dudes in Scanners that they suddenly switched to Kerry because he was the most "electable," according to all of the exit polls. In other words, Democrats voted for Kerry not because they liked him, but because they thought other people would.

This is the logic of hate. It lets convention delegates who by every measure are far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party, let alone the American public, cheer a candidate who has spent the past few months holding something of a fire sale on Democratic principles. According to a New York Times survey of delegates, 9 out of 10 say they think Iraq was a mistake and 5 out of 6 say the war on terrorism and national security aren't that important; yet Kerry is surrounding himself with soldiers to the point where it wouldn't be shocking if delegates were required to wear camo fatigues. Even Ted Kennedy would be hard-pressed to play a drinking game in which players had to swig every time the words "Vietnam" or "war hero" come up in Democratic speeches.

Goldberg is always good. Read the whole piece.