when you say the candidate must be able to trust the party - it was not the party's fault that Kerry decided to go home with his tail, and our rights between his legs.

The Democratic party raised millions of dollars and had hundreds of lawyers at the ready for what they anticipated may be a necessary challenge after what happened in 2000. In 2004 all Kerry had to do was say the word and those ready resources would have been brought to bear. If he had only decided at the time that the rights of voters to a free and fair election were worth his being called a "sore loser" by the barking crazy right wing at Faux, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS, we might not be still talking about the continuing problems in the electoral mechanisms of Ohio and a dozen other states that continue to this day.

If the candidate does not have the stomach for a little name calling from the other side, there is little his party can do to help him or his supporters. In a very real way Kerry abandoned the national Democratic party and every voter who pulled a lever, punched a card, pushed a button or touched a screen in an effort to end the reign of Bush the II, and the rest of the Bush crime family.

Don't get me wrong in a choice between Kerry (a real Democrat with a somewhat weak spine) and Hillary Clinton, with her pandering attitude toward the theocrats, xenophobes, cheap-labor capitalists and false patriots in the Republican party, I'd vote for Kerry in a heart beat. But that doesn't mean he isn't deserving of criticism.

After all we are Democrats and Liberals. We don't scream "disloyal" when someone criticizes one of our own. That's the territory of "conservatives."