Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

An astonishing statement from Pinchdom:

I was born about three months after Robert Kennedy’s death, so I’ll probably never understand what it is about the Kennedy legend that seems to have suspended Democrats of a certain generation in a specific moment in time, as stuck in their frame of reference as an insect in amber. Every four years, it seems, since I first became aware of politics, Democrats have been trying to transform someone into a Kennedy, almost always with disappointing results. Sometimes it’s the candidate with “youthful vigor,” like a Gary Hart or a Bill Clinton. Other times it’s been the guy with stirring anti-war speeches (Howard Dean), or a sense of ideological purity (Bill Bradley), or even just the right hair and accent (John Kerry).

There’s something unhealthy about all this Baby-Boomer reminiscing, because it forces Democrats always to look backward, to serve some unrealized ideal of government rather than a more modern and relevant vision of what government might become. There is a faint line between nostalgia and delusion, and with each passing year, those liberals who long for the reincarnation of their heroes seem ever closer to obliterating it.