Zell Miller

I hope you have all seen it by now, but if you haven't, you must watch the keynote address by Democratic Georgia Senator Zell Miller at the convention last night. Here is the transcript, but find the video to do it justice. He went absolutely frigging bonkers. He took all the pent-up frustration he has with his party's refusal to carry on their proud tradition of kicking ass in foreign wars, and released it on the Democratic nominee for president.

Folks will quibble with the details and spin that speech all over the place, but they are missing the point. There is one key group out there that is being by and large ignored in this campaign: 9/11 Democrats and Independents. The folks who may have voted for Gore and may want to vote for a Democratic candidate this year, but can't. They are the folks who realize that the country really, truly is at war. They care about domestic issues, they care about nuance, they care what the rest of the world thinks of the United States, they want to address root causes, but all of that pales by comparison to their desire to win the war. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they are going to vote for the guy who is going to kill the most terrorists. Period. Everything else is just dressing. We are at war. We have been attacked. We will be attacked again if we do not get them first. George W. Bush will kill more terrorists than the Democratic candidate. It did not have to be that way--there is a clear Democratic tradition of killing bad guys--but that's the way it is, and some Democrats and Independents are really peeved that the Democratic Party did not give them a choice. Miller put a voice to their feelings, and he sure as hell didn't hold back.

(Miller wasn't done. When Chris Matthews engaged in a pretty hostile interview with him after his speech, Senator Miller, um, defended his honor. See Miller Versus Matthews for the transcript and video, and some of the best lines.)