Baseball survived the strike, but politics as pastime is dead. After all, the parties today compete for the center. Philosophically, they have converged. Republicans may promote increases in spending for public education. Democrats may go soft on affirmative action.
Politicians hop from party to party, whimsically, in response to subtle changes in political winds.
In Bay County, a county commissioner left the Democratic Party in favor of the Republican Party and couldn't articulate reasons for the change. Presidential candidates are anointed by machines, shaped by polls, treated by spin doctors and undermined by self-serving media. The trends toward convergence and diminished enthusiasm for politics concerned Dean, certainly, but she remained, throughout her days, a yellow dog Democrat who celebrated the differences remaining between the parties. Her heroes sometimes disappointed her, as heroes will do. But Dean remained an optimist, a Clinton apologist and a woman who would turn conversation about Lewinsky to dropping crime rates and the most robust economy the world has ever seen.