Say That Again
The New York Times buries this quote at the tail end of a long story about the Republican Party's rising popularity:

Wayne Denson, 75, a Democrat and retired optician from Kansas City, Mo., said: "I voted for him to start with but now that Bush got elected, I'd rather vote for Bush than Gore. Bush has got more intelligence."

Amen to that.

The crux of the story is that the Democrats' ratings are dropping - and many people, even many Democrats, don't want Gore to be the party's nominee in 2004.

In a measure of additional concern for Democrats, Al Gore, who is the best-known Democrat who might run for president in 2004, is viewed unfavorably today by a ratio of almost two to one, despite a weeklong bath of favorable publicity that accompanied his national tour promoting two new books about the American family. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents, including just over 50 percent of Democrats, said that Mr. Gore should step aside and allow someone else to run against Mr. Bush.

The sound you hear is the sound of Al Gore sliding into irrelevancy.