Taranto: Look who's stalking

What is John Kerry?

James Taranto: OpinionJournal.com

Remember all those angry speeches Bob Dole and Jack Kemp delivered about Bill Clinton in 1997? Or the anti-Reagan orations of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro circa 1985? Neither do we, because they didn't happen. Last year's losers, however, lack the dignity their predecessors possessed.

"Kerry, Edwards Blast Bush Over Katrina" read an Associated Press headline yesterday, and one could be forgiven for wondering if Kedwards realize this is 2005 and not 2004. Here's a particularly rich line from the AP account:

In a blistering critique, Kerry said former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was to Hurricane Katrina "what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to 'slam dunk intelligence'; . . . what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "

How about "what John Kerry is to 'bring it on' "? Really, this is about as "blistering" as a glass of warm milk. Another AP story, meanwhile, reports that "Edwards is calling for a return of depression era job programs to rebuild the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast."

Remember how when they were running for president, Kedwards argued that their plan would better prepare the nation for a natural disaster? Remember how Edwards, during his six years in the Senate, repeatedly introduced legislation reviving Depression-era job programs? Neither do we, because it didn't happen. Or maybe it did happen, but they certainly didn't emphasize it in their campaign, which centered on other issues:

John Kerry served in Vietnam.

Vietnam veterans are liars.

The war in Iraq was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the right time," and Kedwards were right to vote for it.

"Dick Cheney's daughter . . . is a lesbian."

This was the case for Kedwards. Amazingly, it was enough to attract more than 30 million votes, but they still lost--and they are evidently having great difficulty accepting that reality.

Do Kedwards--and, for that matter, much of the rest of today's Democratic Party--remind anyone else of a jilted boyfriend stalking his ex? (The ex, in this analogy, being the United States of America.) He hears that she is having a rough time with her new beau, so he seizes the opportunity to win her back, by badmouthing the beau and trumpeting his own virtues: How could she prefer him, I'm such a nice guy! But of course he isn't acting nice at all; his behavior is annoying, creepy, even menacing. Anyway, even if things don't work out with the new beau, there's no way she's going back to the ex, whom she ditched months ago for reasons that remain as sound as ever.

When you think about it this way, you realize why hate-harpy Cindy Sheehan is the perfect symbol of today's Democratic left. She spent the month of August literally stalking the president, and her various rantings on far-left Web sites reflect the same sort of narcissism and delusion that characterize someone in the grips of a romantic obsession.

Then again, Sheehan actually did lose someone she loved, whereas Kedwards only lost an election. They should follow the example of Mondale and Dole and take it like a man: get over it, move on and stop bothering the country that rejected them.