BEST OF THE ED TODAY: James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" column echoes something we wrote last week. Here's Taranto:

From where we sit, it appears that Democrats in 2004 are repeating the mistake Republicans made in 1996: assuming that the intensity of their own loathing for the incumbent means that loathing is widespread beyond the partisan base. We could be wrong, of course--our own political preferences no doubt color our views--but a party that consorts with the likes of anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore strikes us as more desperate than confident.

They're overplaying their hand, just like the over the top Wellstone funeral-cum-political orgy of 2002. They've hitched themselves to something which is likely to rebound very badly in their faces; but in the meantime, I hope a rope-a-dope strategy is in place by the White House, because without signs of the president fighting back, all of this can be brutal to watch. On the other hand, the staggering amount of overheated rhetoric doesn't sound at all like the FDR-style jaunty "happy days are here again" feeling of a party confident of victory in the fall.