"And what is the temper of the Democratic Party base? They loathe Bush and everything he stands for -- he's become a lightning rod for dark and febrile passions in the same way Bill Clinton was (and is) for the GOP core. It's not just his harebrained ideological nostrums for how to reorder America and the world. They hate him and it's personal. They hate his frat-boy smirk, his phony fly-boy act, his cringe-inducing mangling of the language, his born-again sanctimony, even his Texas twang and his godforsaken, tumbleweed ranch where only someone as fence-post-dumb as W. would hole up in August. They hate him like their lives depended on it, lives that will certainly be unbearable if this bumbling extremist is reelected (or elected) in 2004. "