Stuck in Nantucket
November 1, 2006

Talk show hosts across America knelt down and gave thanks yesterday for the gift of Senator John Kerry, whose cultural condescension keeps on giving. A week before Election Day, his fellow Democrats may have had a different (unprintable) reaction.

The American Legion and various Republicans, including John McCain and President Bush, all criticized Mr. Kerry for his comments a day earlier to a student crowd in California: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

We didn't always do our homework, but it's hard to come to any conclusion other than that Mr. Kerry was saying that only fools and knaves, not patriots, end up fighting in Iraq. Mr. McCain said the Senator should apologize. But Mr. Kerry instead issued a statement so over the top with invective toward his critics that we wonder if some Republican secretly wrote it to make Mr. Kerry look un-Presidential. Then yesterday Mr. Kerry held a press conference delivering more of the same, and claiming that he was merely attacking Bush policy, not the troops. We don't have space to reprint all of this, but we commend you to OpinionJournal.com for the complete implosion.

For reasons clear only to himself, Mr. Kerry has been acting as if he intends to run for the White House again in 2008. Apparently he thinks he can win. We've long thought that Democratic donors would soon enough convince him otherwise, but his behavior this week may speed up the reckoning. Congratulations, Senator Clinton; another competitor bites the dust.