Cancel the firing squad.

Alongside the question of who gets credit for the Bush win is the debate about who takes the blame for the Kerry loss. Among the targets in that debate I think we should discard are the candidate, his campaign and our Democratic values and platform. We had a great candidate, who stood for good things and we waged as good a national campaign as I can remember.

And we got beat. When push came to shove, Karl Rove lived up to his press clippings. He snookered us, by means legitimate and otherwise, and stole this election from right under our noses.

But no more self flagellation, please. Put me in the column with Al Giordano, who writes...

John Kerry put up the best fight that anyone in North American politics could have waged. He brought 55 million decent Americans to the polls (which, in 2000, would have won the race handily). He held the Gore 2000 states and added New Hampshire to the blue map. He adopted the best of Howard Dean's small donor-activist Internet strategy, and for the first time the Democrats had parity with the Republicans in the money game. He took it to Dubya, winning three debates in a row. He very nearly got 311 electoral votes that would have made the election a landslide on the other side. If he had, pundits would be falling all over each other today talking about the new electoral map in America. But two big Bush 2000 states where Kerry pulled close stayed in the red zone: Florida and Ohio, with their less than ethical governors, sleazy secretaries of state, and voter suppression tactics, proved to be insurmountable.