By Andy Matthews

He didn't get the Democratic presidential nomination, but Howard Dean just may deliver George W. Bush a second term nonetheless.

Spooked by the former Vermont governor's unpredictability and extremism, the Democratic establishment succeeded in stopping the Dean machine in favor of a more "electable" candidate to challenge Bush this November.

But in their mad rush to stop Dean, Democrats failed to take the time to make sure their "electable" alternative was, in fact, electable.

I'm talking, of course, about John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who walked untouched to his party's nomination and supposedly rescued the Democrats from a Dean-led drubbing in November.

The Dems' desire to halt Dean was certainly understandable. And there were a few alternatives within the Democratic field who indeed could have mounted serious challenges to Bush. John Kerry was not one of them.

Either Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt or even John Edwards would have been able to cast himself as a moderate and appeal to certain segments of the American electorate that could have jeopardized Bush's re-election chances (Lieberman as a strong-on-defense centrist, Edwards as a Southerner and Gephardt as a Midwesterner who could have challenged Bush in states like Ohio and Missouri).

But Kerry? Electable? You can't be serious. Howard Dean's problem was that he was supposedly too liberal. Too liberal? John Kerry is a guy who has to turn starboard to see Ted Kennedy.

Kerry's real problem in this campaign, however, likely will not be his leftward tendancies, but rather his vulnerability on national security. A big strike against Dean was that we're at war, and many worried about his lack of foreign policy/national security credentials. But are Kerry's that much better?

To recap: Kerry voted to authorize the war in Iraq, then erupted at the Bush administration for going ahead with a war that the senator himself is on record as supporting. He voted against the $87 billion to rebuild Iraq, then criticized Bush for not doing enough to rebuild it. Democrats are fond of saying they voted "no" on this because they refused to give the president a blank check. Only it wasn't a blank check. It was for $87 billion dollars. The thing was practically itemized.

Democrats point to Kerry's service in Vietnam and his vast experience in the Senate as proof that he's strong on defense. The fact that you've spent your life considering foreign policy issues can be a plus -- but only if you've voted the right way as a result. Which Kerry has not. Except when he's actually voted the right way before voting the wrong way and, well, you get the idea.

Speaking of flip flops, the senator's have received much attention of late, but taking both sides of an issue is nothing new for Kerry, who voted to slash our intelligence capabilities in the 1990s and then has had the chutzpah, after September 11, to throw up his hands and ask why our intelligence community hadn't foreseen the attacks.

These are serious times that call for strong leadership. Democrats would have been wise to take these Kerry vulnerabilities into consideration during the primary process.

Now it's too late. Through his endless contradictions and willingness to shift on our most crucial issues for political gain, Kerry has demonstrated that he doesn't deserve to be taken seriously on matters of national defense -- a conclusion most Americans will be sure to draw. This is the electable alternative to Howard Dean?

Kerry has other problems, too. One is that he's from Massachusetts, and Northeastern liberals have a way of turning off most of the rest of the country (Americans haven't elected a Northeastern Democrat since John Kennedy in 1960, and that was before the Democratic party had fallen off the far left end of the political spectrum).

Kerry's personality won't help him, either. In his speeches throughout this campaign, Kerry has come across as the most uninspiring and stiff Democratic presidential wannabe since, well, Al Gore. And career senators simply don't get elected president. As The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes put it: Kerry is Bob Dole without the wit.

The Democratic establishment leaders think they've found their cure for the Howard Dean problem. They're wrong. In their panic brought on by the Dean surge, Democrats instead played right into Republicans' hands. The juxtaposition of Dean and Kerry made the Massachusetts senator look like a moderate, mainstream and, most important, "electable" candidate. But as Democrats will find out come November, this Mike Dukakis on stilts is anything but.

Andy Matthews is the editor of rightturnonly.com.