Slate takes John Kerry to task for "flip-flopping", a meme hatched by Karl Rove, et al. Most of the examples are bogus, or can be easily explained, but the question I have is, who f---ing cares? "Flip-flopping" is an attack that only resonates in primary contests, when you are trying to convince base voters that the other guy is insincere. In general elections, it's a loser issue, the type of thing that people who don't like you and won't vote for you anyway will use to rationalize their votes.

One example of that attack failing miserably was Jerry Brown's reelection bid in 1978. Brown turned the entire dynamics of that election on its head by changing his position on Proposition 13, which he had fought against when it was on the June 1978 ballot. After the initiative passed, Brown suddenly became its biggest supporter, defending its constitutionality in the courts, and earning kudos from Howard Jarvis in the process. His opponent, Evelle Younger, who had led in the polls, made Brown's "flip-flops" on that and other issues the centerpiece of his campaign. The voters, instead, returned Brown to office by an overwhelming margin. Clinton's strategy of triangulation after the 1994 elections is another example of how a politician who changes his position on issues not only survives, but thrives before the electorate.

One of the dirtiest secrets in politics is that voters in a democracy not only tolerate a politician who changes his mind, they demand it. If swing voters are unsettled by Iraq or the economy, they are not going to give a rat's ass whether Kerry changed his mind about welfare reform in the mid-90's. And since many of those same voters performed the same "flip-flops" over the Patriot Act and the war, it doesn't do the Republicans any good to rub their noses in it.