The Dean-o-Phobe retires:

... Dean is finished as a potential nominee. He's blown all his money, his campaign is in disarray, and he's turned to an inside-the-Beltway Democrat to run his campaign. ...

... Deanism is dead as well. By "Deanism" ... I mean ... the belief that some combination of technology and Dean's charisma can somehow suspend all the known laws of politics ... It's apparent to just about everybody--except, perhaps, the die-hards on the left who always believed it--that neither Dean nor anybody else has the ability to conjure millions of new voters out of thin air merely by making the differences between Republicans and Democrats sufficiently stark. ...

... John Kerry takes all the fun out of Dean-o-phobia. Indeed, if there's anybody who could make Dean attractive, it's Kerry. Kerry is a miserable candidate, bereft of political skills, and possessing of a record and a persona tailor-made for Karl Rove. The Republicans will merely have to say about Kerry what they said about Gore--that he wants to be on every side of every issue, that he's culturally out of touch with mainstream America, that he's a pompous bore--and this time the sale will be easier, because all these things are far more true of Kerry than of Gore. ....

Is Kerry like Gore? Chris Suellentrop has this:

I don't want to overstate Kerry's flaws. He's not Al Gore. He comes across as good-humored, decent, and likable rather than phony. And he doesn't pander mindlessly on every subject.

Yes, why not kick around Al Gore a little more, as we struggle to avoid dying of boredom trying to find a way to talk about Kerry for the next nine months?