Markos os DailyKos has authored a wonderful piece on why Kerry was not a great candidate, and why he’s not the “real deal” for 2008.

I agree with many of Markos’ points. Kerry rain a primary campaign that largely relied on the “most electable” meme, rather than anything clear and coherent. While a great Senator, with known campaign skills that felled many formidable opponents in Massachusetts, his presidential campaign was unfocused and without any drive. He was easily portrayed as a flip-flopper, a person who couldn’t explain himself, and a cold, aloof person because he didn’t show anything close to a fight.

Markos notes that other Dems in the race – such as Dean (my fave), Clark and Edwards – had clear themes and ideas in their campaigns, as well as dedicated staffer and volunteers who moved to the canididates’ home states to work for their men. Kerry’s campaign HQ was in DC, where, as Markos notes, senior staffers merely had “to plan on getting of at another Metro stop” to get to work. To these people (people like Bob Shrum and Mary Beth Cahill), it was just another job, not a race for the presumptive “leader of the free world.”

Now Kerry is trying to remodel himself as an “outsider” in building the case for a 2008 run. And while he’s doing a great job in the Senate, his “Friends of John Kerry” PAC still doesn’t get it – which, in turn, means that Kerry doesn’t get it, either. He can’t win in 2008, and if the Dems follow him again, we’ll lose by an even larger margin than last November.

Give me John Edwards, who has moved back to North Carolina to head a center on the disadvantaged – an extension of his “Two Americas” platform. Give me Wes Clark, who was rushed into a campaign in 2004 but has incredible defense and foreign policy credentials that will be boosted by domestic work over the next three years. Give me a Democrat who still has a foot in the real world. Give me somebody who gets it!