Taking it a bit more seriously, I think Sorenson’s dream speech is actually a potential indicator of Democratic weakness. There’s a tendency among the activist base of the Democratic Party to, putting it delicately, get hung up on George W. Bush’s mistakes. Maybe you’ve noticed?

What I mean is they seem to think that they still need to drive their points home about Bush, as if people haven’t heard the complaints and processed the arguments already (I think this is the source of the netroot obsession with making Hillary admit she was wrong about the war). I can totally see a Republican writing a similar “dream speech” reflecting similar obsessions with Clinton in 2000. Sorenson’s “dream” is really a fantasy about finally getting to say with the loudest megaphone possible “We hate George W. Bush! — And you should too!” Guess what? Everyone knows that the delegates to the Democratic convention hate Bush. What they don’t know is whether the Democratic nominee will start fresh or carry the bile of the last 16 years forward for another 4 or 8 years. Sorenson’s speech sounds like a fresh-start speech but it’s really just a rehash of the same stuff we’ve been hearing in a more passive-aggressive form. Indeed, the public policy formulations sound like they start from the premise that if Bush does X then not X is the wisest most enlightened position possible. That Ted Sorenson thinks this is a great speech for the Dems to give is barely interesting. That the editors of the Washington Monthly think it’s so great that it warrants the cover of the magazine may be a somewhat more interesting indicator of where liberals are right now.