Who is Jonathan Chait? Can somebody give me some background?

[Mass]

Asking because I fell on these two gems in one sentence.

The second gem is normal in some circles in DC (remember Nagourney saying that everybody had more charisma than Kerry), but I thought the LA Times had proofreaders that would have caught the first one.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-chait12nov12,0,6112116.column?coll=la-opinion-columnists

Four years ago, George W. Bush won reelection in large part because he happened to be in office Sept. 11, 2001 (and also because nobody could stand John Kerry).
...

[karynnj]

1. Which is why he handily won the primaries.

Isn't there some transitive property that means that this was even more true for Edwards, Clark, Dean, Gepheart, etc.

[ProSense]

2. I sent him an e-mail yesterday!

Snarky BS!

[Island Blue]

3. Maybe time passes more quickly in LA.

:shrug:

For sure he knows nothing about John Kerry.

[MBS]

4. he's a senior editor at the New Republic

From Wikipedida: "Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic and a former assistant editor of The American Prospect. He also writes a periodic column in the Los Angeles Times. A liberal hawk, Chait supported the invasion of Iraq, but is a vocal critic of the Bush administration, including its handling of the war and occupation."

Here's a 2003 Washington Post article that gives a little more background:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46805-2003Oct18?language=printer

Chait often drives me crazy. I'll add that last quote to my list of reasons why.
By the way, Nagourney also drives me nuts, for many of the same reasons. (Mark Barrett recently described Nagourney as the "new Judith Miller" ).
In general, I've lost patience with gossipy inside-the-beltway negativity, cynicism, and lazy parroting of press releases posing as reporting
Wish we could have a clean sweep of the MSM, to parallel our victories in Congress.

[wisteria]

5. I wrote a letter to the editor on that one. It was unnecessary and

incorrect to bring that up. The commentary was on the Bush loss. I think these people must be getting paid to discredit Kerry. Bush's administration did this, why not our own party operatives that have other objectives than seeing our primaries play out with some fairness.