The John Kerry Post of the Day

My latest discovery about my favorite cheese-eating surrendermonkey-looking Ketchup King cum Presidential candidate:

You know, we really haven't paid enough attention to our old pal John Edwards, the Fallout Boy to Kerry's Radioactive Man (and if, you didn't think the Oompa Loompa look isn't radioactive, you need help). Then again, you'd need a microscope to find him on the campaign trail. But here's a small sampling of his visit to the Garden State, courtesy of PoliticsNJ.com...

Concrete proof that things had gone off schedule -- badly -- at today’s much-hyped rally for John Edwards came at about 5:15 P.M. when, with the Democratic vice-presidential candidate already over hour late an and still nowhere in sight, Sharpe James was called from the audience to the stage, from whence he relayed a story about a chicken and a pig.

It was a funny tale that was made only more flavorful by the Newark mayor’s inimitable delivery, but it also sent a message: Edwards was behind schedule and the Democrats were scrambling to kill time. And that’s not something you want to be doing at a carefully-orchestrated media event at the peak of campaign season-- especially when the event is taking place in a state that your party already stands accused of taking for granted.

The 1,000 or so Kerry-Edwards loyalists who had overstuffed a ballroom at the Robert Treat hotel in downtown Newark had been advised to arrive at 3:00, with Edwards's slated to appear at 4:00. It’s customary for politicians to be late, and when Bonnie Watson Coleman, the Democratic state chairman, grabbed the microphone to quiet the crowd at 4:30, the faithful were simply revved up for some old-fashioned rally-the-base rhetoric.

Watson Coleman had no trouble delivering the red meat, and had Edwards taken the stage immediately after her warm-up act, his visit today likely would have been a rousing success. But he was nowhere near.

...When all of the bodies on the stage had apparently been exhausted, Watson Coleman handed the microphone off to Secretary of State Regena Thomas, who, from somewhere in the sea of Democrats on the floor, proceeded to spend fifteen minutes exhorting the audience to join her in increasingly bizarre chants.

...At about 5:50, a woman named Kristen Breitweiser was introduced. A 9/11 widow who has been traveling with Edwards, Breitweiser, in a measured but nonetheless emotional voice, charged the GOP with politicizing the terrorist attacks at their convention and chided the Bush administration for fighting the creation of the 9/11 commission. Antsy and irritated moments before, the crowd was transfixed

It prompted one reporter to wonder, “Why didn’t the Democrats have her at their convention?” But when Breitweiser finished, there was still no vice-presidential candidate, and the exodus resumed.

It wasn’t until 6:15, when members of the national press corps assigned to Edwards's campaign trooped into the press area and the candidate’s Secret Service detail took its position, that it was clear Edwards had arrived.

By that time at least twenty percent of the original crowd was no longer present, and, after standing for so long, much of the enthusiasm had been drained from those who remained. A number of state Democratic dignitaries, including Codey, had to leave because of other commitments.

Edwards uttered his first word to the audience at 6:22 -- nearly two-and-a-half hours after he was originally supposed to start -- and then spent twenty minutes warmly reciting his stump speech.

It didn’t go off without a hitch, though. Spotting Breitweiser behind him on the stage, he called the 9/11 widow forward and began to tell her story to the audience. “I’m going to let you hear from her in a few minutes,” the North Carolina senator said in his syrupy southern drawl.

“We have!” the crowd shouted back in unison.

Well, at least they can't lose New Jersey. As far as we know.

In case you thought we would ignore Ketchup Boy, here's his interview with Dianne Sawyer this morning on Good Morning America, cortesy of Powerline and Polipundit...

DIANE SAWYER: Was the war in Iraq worth it?

JOHN KERRY: We should not have gone to war knowing the information that we know today.

DS: So it was not worth it.

JK: We should not — it depends on the outcome ultimately — and that depends on the leadership. And we need better leadership to get the job done successfully, but I would not have gone to war knowing that there was no imminent threat — there were no weapons of mass destruction — there was no connection of Al Qaeda — to Saddam Hussein! The president misled the American people — plain and simple. Bottom line.

DS: So if it turns out okay, it was worth it?

JK: No.

DS: But right now it wasn’t [ … ? … ]–

JK: It was a mistake to do what he did, but we have to succeed now that we’ve done what he’s — I mean look — we have to succeed. But was it worth — as you asked the question — $200 billion and taking the focus off of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? That’s the question. The test of the presidency was whether or not you should have gone to war to get rid of him. I think, had the inspectors continued, had we done other things — there were plenty of ways to keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein.

DS: But no way to get rid of him.

JK: Oh, sure there were. Oh, yes there were. Absolutely.

DS: So you’re saying that today, even if Saddam Hussein were in power today it would be a better thing — you would prefer that . . .

JK: No, I would not prefer that. And Diane — don’t twist here.

She doesn't need to twist, Senator -- you're doing all the twisting we could hope for, and you're not even windsurfing.

Again, Kerry is torturing us with semantics because he can't find a way to admit that he has been wrong and inconsistent -- which only goes to make him look more inconsistent. There's no logic to the position that Saddam could or would have been removed by anthing save armed force -- he'd been sitting in power for over 20 years, and had basically thumbed his nose at the U.N. and the inspection process for over a decade. He takes a minimum of four different positions here -- the war was wrong, the war could be right if it was better led, the war was unneccessary to keep the pressure on Saddam, and Saddam needed to be removed. Yikes. In a span of two minutes, tops.

Again... this was the best candiate the Democrats had?