Andrew Sullivan Kerry-Endorsement Watch

In a comment posted this past Thursday, we opined:

I think maybe Andy is just setting this [his chicken-little-outrage about the prisoner abuse] up as yet another pretext for supporting Kerry. Anything to avoid stating the real reason, i.e., gay marriage.

"Although I supported this war, President Bush has been too arrogant and too incompetent to any longer have any hope of bringing the Arab and Muslim worlds to peace with America. Our country needs a fresh break from the anger and tumult of the past, and that's why I reluctantly am throwing my support behind John Forbes Kerry..."

Compare to Sullivan today:

The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively.

To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen - after a year of other, compounded errors - is unforgivable. By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account. Shock has now led - and should lead - to anger. And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it.

...

And then, when November comes around, we have to decide whether this president is now a liability in the war on terror or the asset he once was.

Not exactly the words we predicted -- yet! -- but you can see where this train is headed.

We correctly deemed Sullivan to have "flipped" politically months ago. We now begin the Sullivan Kerry-Endorsement Watch. He's laid the predicate -- or pretext -- for the endorsement; he's now laid down the law -- Sullivan Law! -- that Bush has one more chance to solve all of the world's problems. In a month or two, he will deem Bush to have failed -- failed even when Sullivan was generous enough to give him one last chance -- and he will officially endorse Kerry.

Andrew Sullivan Kerry-Endorsement Watch

At the tone, the Andrew Sullivan Kerry-Endorsement Watch displays a time of

(bong)

11:47 pm -- 13 minutes to midnight (the Kerry Endorsement)

posted by Ace at 03:30 AM

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