Bubba to the Rescue!

After almost a month of feeling insufficiently proud of our candidate for president, I see a little sign of hope in this depressing drought ... on the far horizon, a cloud about the size of a man's hand. Rain has fallen on parched earth before, from less.

Bill Clinton, on his way to the hospital for open-heart bypass surgery, took time to call John Kerry and give him some advice, "urging Kerry to change his message and strategy ... to draw a sharper contrast with Bush and to explain to voters the effect of going to war in Iraq on domestic policies." Thank you, Bubba!

"He [Clinton] always felt that you've got to give people a reason to vote for you and give people a choice," said one Democratic strategist. "He believes that at the end of the day that if you do make it an effective choice for the voters, they'll figure it out. But the burden's on the candidate to make the case." (WashPost insider gossip on this here.)

That strategy applies just as surely to your local courthouse races as it does to the White House.

So as of yesterday there was a lot of shifting of jobs, and the Kerry campaign began to take on some old Clinton hands, especially to help handle rapid response. Maybe, in fact, they can put the "rapid" back into "rapid response." That would be novel!

According to the WashPost, Paul Begala and James Carville are both offering advice from the sidelines. I'd like to see them inside the Privy Chamber, and maybe they'll get there. We can hope.

"Kerry advisers said they were planning a much more aggressive campaign in the final two months, with Kerry and vice presidential nominee John Edwards leading the attack, and that restructuring at the campaign and the DNC will help in drawing a sharper contrast with Bush and Vice President Cheney."

The goat in all this appears to be Mary Beth Cahill, who ironically rescued the Kerry campaign back when he was floundering under the Howard Dean assault.