Okay, so maybe this is beating a dead horse.

Maybe this is beating the putrid carcass of a very, very dead horse. Heaven knows I'm not the first blogger to beat this particular piece of this particular dead horse.

The putrid dead horse carcass I am referring to is, as you might have guessed, Senator John F. Kerry. And the particular piece of the dead horse I'm going to flail away at right now is, of course, the senator's recent appearance on Meet the Press with Tim Russert:

MR. RUSSERT: Election day, Iraq. Condoleezza Rice, the new secretary of State, has just told the United States and the world, "It has gone better than expected." What is your sense?

SEN. KERRY: I think it's gone as expected. . . .

Secondly, it is significant that there is a vote in Iraq. But no one in the United States or in the world-- and I'm confident of what the world response will be. No one in the United States should try to overhype this election. . . .

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe this election will be seen by the world community as legitimate?

SEN. KERRY: A kind of legitimacy--I mean, it's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote. I think this election was important. I was for the election taking place.

Vintage Kerry.

Still trying to have to have it both ways.

Kerry now tells us the Iraqi election went "as expected." Ho, hum. Nothing to get excited about. Right? But just a few months ago Kerry sure sounded like he expected something entirely different:

the people who are supposed to run that election believe that they need a longer period of time and greater security before they can even begin to do it, and they just can't do it at this point in time. So I'm not sure the president is being honest with the American people about that situation either at this point.

And now Kerry tells us that he really was "for the election taking place," and the "election was important," and it was "significant." But for an infinitely nuanced man like John Kerry, still "it's hard to say" whether the Iraqi election was legitimate.

So, you might ask, "Which is it, Senator Kerry? Are you suggesting the Iraqi election was illegitimate?"

What a stupid question! Only a Red State Moron could fail to appreciate the supple nuance of Kerry's qualifier: "kind of."

"Kind of legitimate" also means "kind of illegitimate." Kinda, but not really. Just sorta. It's hard to say. Sorta, kinda. And, oh by the way, did I mention the U.N. and world opinion?

Thank you, Senator Kerry, for that piercing analysis.

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Yet even beyond the stale stench of the double-talk still emanating from the dried-up carcass of John Kerry's failed presidential aspirations (a commentary that has lately become blackly comic, like an overlong death rattle), there's something yet more odious in the Senator's most recent words, something yet more repulsive and ignoble:

On January 30, 2005, some eight million Iraqi voters risked their very lives to participate in that country's first free national election in forty years. No matter what one might think about other events in the recent history of Iraq, the heart of every human being of good will could but swell with admiration to witness such courage in a people that has endured so much for so long.

Yet in that moment of life-affirming hope, ever-ironic history decreed that, to produce an enlightening contrast, a listless senator from Massachusetts should wander onto the set of a Sunday television news show to pronounce these thudingly dull words, "I think it's gone as expected. . . . No one in the United States or in the world . . . should try to overhype this election."

Eight million Iraqis risk their lives to vote, and the freshly air-brushed senator acknowledges their courage by telling them that their election was only "kind of" legitimate.

Eight million Iraqis risk their lives to vote, and a pampered wind-surfing senator worries that their bravery might be "overhyped."

Eight million Iraqis risk their lives to vote, and in the moment of their triumph a senator from Massachusetts, who prides himself on his diplomatic subtlety, cannot offer to them, from his vast and nuanced vocabulary, one single solitary word of congratulations.

Well, if you can pardon the lack of nuance, though you couldn't spare an encouraging good word for the struggling Iraqi people, I can spare a last word or two for you, John Kerry. It is a truly craven man who can't step aside to let someone else enjoy a moment in the sun, a man who can never take real pleasure in someone else's hard won triumph. So then what does it say about you, John Kerry, that you can't stand aside to let eight million Iraqi voters revel in their moment of triumph untainted by your hope-destroying monotone?

So to hell with you, John Kerry, you selfish, spirit-sapping, self-serving, mean-spirited, small-minded man.

History has just passed you by. And you won't be missed.