Pro And Con

Jonathan Chait outlines part two of The New Republic's case against George W. Bush: he's weakening our democracy. A pretty serious charge. Meanwhile, Dan Drezner has apparently decided that becoming the blogosphere's most prominent "on the fence" swing voter will get him a lot of attention (or, perhaps, a sub rosa promise of a job) because his latest reservation about John Kerry is so transparently silly that he's obviously already made up his mind to back him. Kerry, it turns out, missed a lot of votes while on the campaign trail:

One could plausibly argue that Kerry's full-time job since early 2003 was running for president -- but he could have resigned if that were the case.

Bam! Come now, Dan's a professor of political science, surely he's aware that the "missed votes" issue is entirely bogus (first ginned up, I believe, by Joe Lieberman in his campaign against Lowell Weicker) that says nothing whatsoever about a legislator's performance. Besides which, voting for Bush on the theory that his opponent isn't hard working doesn't even pass the laugh test.