Dowd today

Why Maureen Dowd is compelled to take shots at Gore, Hillary and Kerry at every opportunity is a mystery. She did it again, at all three, today. Here's a LINK, but it is available only to subscribers.

The first three paragraphs:

Looking for a Democratic Tough Guy, or Girl
By MAUREEN DOWD
The Democrats were throwing haymakers at the White House this week, but they will never succeed as long as they're perceived as the party in skirts.

Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton called the Bush administration on its apparently bottomless store of imperial sins. They made a lot of good points. They just didn't score any.

This trio, apparently jockeying for '08, are not the best messengers. They're loaded down with baggage.

Two of them, who could have stopped W. and Dick Cheney before they undid 230 years of American democracy, didn't, because they allowed themselves to be painted as girlie men. The other, a manly girl, has been so cautious and opportunistic about weighing in on everything from Schiavo to Alito and Iraq that when she finally sang out on Monday and railed against W., she sounded more soprano than basso profundo.

It was easy for the Republicans to play their usual gender games and dismiss the three Democrats as whiny, shrill and ineffectual.

Here's the note I pasted into Dowd's "contact" box:

"In spite of your efforts to the contrary, Gore did win the 2000 popular vote, a fact most Gore bashers always leave out. If the Florida votes were counted fairly, he would have won the electoral votes as well.

I really don’t understand why, when it comes to the Democratic opposition, you continue to parrot Republican talking points. Gore was the victim of an extensive smear campaign that had little to do with facts. For whatever reasons, celebrity journalists disliked him, favored Bush, and took every opportunity to portray Gore negatively. You know this well, since you were one of the players. Why now continue with the personal slander, when we all know better, instead of sticking with the eloquent message Gore delivered?

You, thanks to your dishonest portraits of the Democratic candidates, are partly responsible for the mess we are now in. Seems to me you can be counted on to put aside integrity when presented with an opportunity to be outrageous. You’d rather be interesting than fair.

I picture you squeezing your eyes shut, jamming your fingers in your ears and shrieking when something positive about Gore (and most other Democrats) comes to your attention--a sorry posture for a journalist."