Via JWF, who’s as incredulous at Kerry’s critique of mindless political sloganeering as I am. Never mind “Yes we can”; anyone remember how he and Edwards couldn’t agree on their own dopey campaign slogan, quibbling over whether it should be “Help is on the way” or “Hope is on the way”?

Had things worked out a bit differently in Ohio, Waffles might have been in his sixth year as president right now. Horrifying possibility: We might have been better off.

A testy U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday blamed clueless voters with short attention spans for the uphill battle beleaguered Democrats are facing against Republicans across the nation.

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday…

Democratic consultant Phil Johnston, former chairman of the state party, jumped to Kerry’s defense, saying, “That’s absurd. He’s just making the point that people have real lives to lead and most people are not spending a lot of time worrying about politics, particularly in a tough economy. I’ve known John Kerry for 35 years and he doesn’t look down on people.”…

“I think a lot of the anger today – while it’s appropriate because Washington is broken – is not directed at the right people,” said Kerry. “Barney is prepared, as others are, to explain what we’re doing. I think when people hear the facts and they see what we’re doing, it frankly makes sense.”

Apparently it was Bill Jacobson of Legal Insurrection who first caught Kerry’s comments and brought them to light. I’m not sure which slogan Waffles is referring to here — presumably it’s “death panels,” a.k.a. rationing, although (a) in the latest AP poll probing voters’ confusion about what’s in ObamaCare, only a quarter said that rationing panels were a concern, and (b) er, rationing is a concern, according to the left’s own big thinkers. Speaking of polls, though, how do we square Kerry’s indictment of the sheeple who’d surely vote Democratic this year if they just opened a damned newspaper with this new data from Pew?

Independents are thinking harder about their vote in 2010 than they did in the big Democratic wave year of 2006, as are Republicans of course. In fact, there’s only one group that fits Waffles’s description of maybe not paying as much attention as it should. Which is it?