I dunno about K being a liberal, he distanced himself from the dems after 94

Certainly he's been a hypocrite from time to time when he needed to be politically ... but in his overall approach and attitude, he's very much a knee-jerk liberal. Nothing wrong with that.

He voted for Daschel instead of Chris Dodd in 95

Is it your impression that that leadership fight was understood as moderate vs liberal? I'm not so sure. Dodd may be from the NE but he's a neoliberal like the rest.

On your other points on Kerry--hey, as I say above, I agree he's a hypocrite who's willing to bash the left when it's politicallly convenient. But he always comes home--his instincts are 100% traditional liberalism.

Just an anecdote; when I do that "find the candidate who agrees with you on the issues" online test the scores I get are Kucinich 90%, Kerry 85%, and then the rest all around 70%. That's because, of course, Dennis & JFK are willing to actually admit that they're anti-Death Penalty, (in Dennis's case) pro-legalization, etc ... anyway, it's indicative of Kerry's flaming liberalism. Which I think it would be fascinating to see elected, don't get me wrong.

and its an error to characterize Dean and Clark supporters as Paleoliberals, we know better than that, we read.  And we love at least one of them, if not both.

I don't imagine any Dean or Clark supporters (at least not here) think that their candidate is a Paleolib--but I also imagine that many or even most of those supporters are themselves Paleolibs. Hence their outrage at positions like those you list Kerry insincerely taking.

Myself, I prefer candidates who take some such moderate/conservative postitions sincerely. (Hmm, maybe there's a problem with how that online issues test is structured!) And I love Clark and like Dean and Edwards.

Kerry I respect but not for his policy smarts--and I imagine an administration of his would run into some serious problems in the first few years working the Ira Magaziners out of its system.