The worse things are, the better

That was the party line when I was an extreme leftist many years ago, and nothing made me more uncomfortable with being an extreme leftist than that mindset. Christopher Hitchens believes the same mindset infects the Kerry campaign. He writes:
“If you calculate that only a disaster of some kind can save your candidate, then you are in danger of harboring a subliminal need for bad news. And it will show. What else explains the amazingly crude and philistine remarks of that campaign genius Joe Lockhart, commenting on the visit of the new Iraqi prime minister and calling him a ‘puppet’? Here is the only regional leader who is even trying to hold an election, and he is greeted with an ungenerous sneer. The unfortunately necessary corollary of this