Yes pundit but he is the candidate for real change, I know he said so last night. I guess omehow his supporters actually believe he will withstand a good sound swift boating! Ah well, if he gets the nomination we shall see. I can't wait to see Obummer travel to South Carolina and eat pork barbecue, that'll fix those swift boaters!

The Dems need to start a "Swift Boot" fund to Swift Boot the Swift Boaters.

You know the old saying "be careful what you wish for..." The GOP just might get Obama -- and the landslide that will put him into office.

Huck, for once I agree with you (will wonders never cease?) -- Kerry did promise to fight for every vote and on election night, when his lawyers in Ohio were begging him to challenge the Ohio vote since there was plenty of evidence of vote tampering, he just conceded. And he had $50 million squirreled away for the purpose of challenging vote fraud! (I wonder where that money went?)

I also recall when the Swift Boat charges first surfaced in August of 2004 I was sitting in a bar with some Viet vets and we were watching one of the SB liars smear Kerry on TV; the vets said if their courage in combat was distorted or denied by anyone, those would be fighting words and they would come out swinging. We expected an outraged Kerry would angrily refute the ridiculous charges within a day, if not hours. Yet Kerry said nothing for more than a week and, when he did, he couched his 'outrage' is such long-winded senatorial hoohah that he sounded like he was delivering an economic report rather than defending his honor. I ran into one of the vets later and he said he could never vote for Kerry -- as he put it: "The man doesn't have the balls to defend himself from a bunch of liars -- what's he going to do as president?" Indeed. He may have been courageous at one time, both in combat and when he came out against the Vietnam War, but too many years in politics apparently turned him into a wealthy tedious gasbag and a sniveling eunuch.

We can only hope the Dem candidate this time around will see this coming and display more smarts, and spine, than the reprehensible Kerry did in 2004.

No where in the article does it note that Kerry participated in his own defeat. Kerry asserted before the election that "every vote would count, and every vote be counted." Yet despite the claims of voter fraud in Ohio Kerry capitulated without challenging the result. Sorry if I cannot cry on Kerry's shoulder now.

In December, the Ohio Secretary of State released an independent analysis of Ohio's vote in the 2004 presidential election. The report stated that the Diebold/Premier voting machines could be hacked with a Blackberry.

One business day later, the Repug Secretary of State for Colorado certified the Diebold/Premier machines for statewide use in the 2008 election. A few days later it was disclosed that his campaign manager (the Sec of State is running for congress) is also Diebold's lobbyist.

This egregious attempt to cook the vote in Colorado has been ignored by most of the national media and the candadates in Iowa and NH.

The Repugs stole the presidentcy in 2000 and 2004. However, if we stand by and let them steal 2008, as the Colorado incident indicates is their intention, the days of America being the "land of the free" are over.

In November of 2008, we are going to elect a President that could name the replacements for three liberal Supreme Court Justices:

John Paul Stevens b 1920
Ruth Bader Ginsberg b 1933
Anthony M Kennedy b1936

Everyone must fight to protect the sanctity of the 2008 vote.

Bush, Cheney, and Clinton ought to be serving a life sentance and share the same prison cell where they can live what is left of their worthless lives serving the prison population on thier knees. End of story.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a long time member of Veterans for Peace who went door-to-door for both MoveOn and the Kerry campaign in the fall of 2004, and worked on the anti-election fraud effort at polling stations on that election day for the Michigan Democratic Party.

Christopher Hayes article focuses on a big, important development taking place in long term two party US political dynamics that's happening right in front of everybody, while the Democratic party's leadership sits by quietly and oblivious.

For the last six years, Karl Rove's GOP has been steadily cultivating a new bloc of base voters they hope to add permanently to augment the tax cutters, the evangelical culture warriors, the nativists, the NRA, the right to lifers, and the traditional big business country club set that makes up their 30% sliver of the electorate pie. Add now into that Republican Party mix a new rabid militarist Homeland Security cult - warriors for perpetual security abroad - with veterans groups like the Swift Boat/POW fellows marching at the head of the parade contingent, alongside and hand-in-hand with the womens' auxiliary of hearthside enablers.

Why do you think Bush spends so much time making speeches at military installations?

Why do you think he shucks off all questions about changing course in Iraq by telling critics that decision belongs to the commanders in the field?

Why do you think the White House has drawn ambitious, pre-selected active duty generals like Petraeus and Mixon directly into the partisan debate among the civilian politicans stateside?

Who do you think all those wealthy war profiteer contractors like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Halliburton, and KBR will be recycling their cash flow back towards, in the form of campaign donations?

The original Swift Boat group was a surrogate response team cobbled together by the Nixon White House for the specific purpose of destroying the credibility of John Kerry when he created a splash coming out against the war before the Fulbright Committee. Throughout the 1980's, those who would demagogue about our withdrawal from Vietnam championed the cause of legions of missing POW's being held in captivity in SE Asia, awaiting rescue by Rambo and Bo Gritz.

These folks kept alive the notion of how the troops in the field had been stabbed in the back by the media and politicians back home. And Little George has been licking and licking to reopen old wounds (and cut some new ones), ever since 9/11 threw the door wide open to engage in such fear mongering.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 shot itself in the foot right at the starting gate by pretending John Kerry was only a war hero, and was never a hero of the antiwar movement as well. That biographical credential - which should have been his great strength as a presidential candidate pledged to end the occupation of Iraq - instead became his Achilles heel, when the Swift Boaters held their 2004 reunion and came after Kerry a second time with all too eager, outrageous avengence.

As Hayes points out, these same guys are reinventing themselves yet again, gearing up for the 2008 race, now mysteriously adding a POW connection to the marketing niche popular Swift Boat brand on their letterhead.

But don't worry.

Whoever gets the Democratic nomination will no doubt counter this sleazy onslaught as cleverly as the Kerry campaign did.

All you got to do is stand Wes Clark or a retired admiral or two in a business suit at the back of the candidate's podium, and the American voting public will see right through all those wolves and bears and bearded boogeymen coming in the next wave of TV attack ads.

Bill from Saginaw

Kerry was a joke how he caved in.
"I give up. I urge all my supporters to support Bush!"

Democrats...

Kerry did hi job in '04, he handed GW a second term. The man is not worth discussion, did you see how he handled the incident at the university of South Florida, he just stood there with his wimpy, John Kerry, no body listens to me cause I don't have anything to say voice, droning on, while that poor kid got tased. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiWCS10C5s

Doom and Gloom - A "Swift Boot" would be nice, but not likely.

"Don't Kerry me, bro!"

Yesterday 0.001% of the population decided that Obama is up for swift boating this year. Fasten your seat belts it will be entertaining to witness Obama go under in a tsunami of slime. Race, Islamic name, madrassah attendance, Low IQ, Muslim, muslim,muslim...furriner...

I don't think John McCain is a "stand up guy." In my view he's just a yes- man for corporations and wealthy Republicans. The other day I heard him scape-goating Rumsfeld for promoting the wrong military policy in Iraq (not using enough troops for the job) as though by claiming this all the other decision makers in the Bush administration are absolved of their incompetency, including the decider himself. If McCain is really the patriot and "stand-up" guy his public relations people and supporters say he is then he'd be calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Instead he bows and kisses the rings of those jack-asses and that in my view negates any virtures he may lay claim to.

My problem with the "Swift Boat" accusations is that they were utterly beside the point.

The Vietnam War was an illegal crime against humanity, and while commanding a swift boat on the Mekong Delta, Kerry reportedly comitted a number of murderous atrocities - one of which was loosely reenacted in the "sampan off the port bow" scene of the movie "Apocalypse Now".

Then, he comes back, and with stunning opportunistic cynicism and cutzpah, gives that "who will be the last to die for a lie" speech. A brave Vietnamese NLF fighter should have cut him in two.

In my opinion John Kerry lost the election (or lost his best shot) because of one thing: the absolute refusal to have a position on anything at all. Current political thinking is, of course, that the less you say the fewer potential voters you will alienate, I'm hip to that (except it is a losing philosophy for a challenger). However, as time has passed I have come to think that the real reason Mr. Kerry took no positions is because, at bottom, he didn't have any. He was a terrible candidate, and would have been a terrible president (worse than Bush? Let's not be silly!)

When the Swift Boat/Silver Star crap came along he only needed to say one thing: "I did not award myself the medal, and that's all I'm going to say about it." He was far to mealy-mouthed for that, of course.

I think Mrs. Clinton's ship is sinking (and I'm not much of a fan anyway) for pretty much the same reasons--I have really no idea what position she has on anything.

Sooner or later there is going to be a military draft. There has to be. There are not enough troops now, and less and less are joining because they are at least able to get a job at Wendys'.
The Iraq occupation of the war we just won (according to our distinguished President) will go on for years and years--and nobody has any idea how long-truthfully.
There will then be demonstrations and marches and and violent civil acts when this happens. The question that also has to be answered is "will we draft women?"
Meanwhile the American Economy will go the way of the Dodo, because of many things. Mostly because the country is controlled and run by SCUM.

Twoblueday, I think Kerry lost the election for three reasons: 1) He refused to attack Bush during the Dem convention or afterward; 2) He couldn't give a concise answer on any question -- by the time he made his point, most people had tuned him out, and 3) the aforementioned waiting to respond to the Swift Boat charges against his war record.

Well, and then there's the blatant theft of the election in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida (read Harvey Wasserman, Greg Palast and Mark Crispin Miller's stories on this), which Kerry refused to do anything about, even though he apparently was aware that the Republicans stole the election, but he just didn't want people in Washington to think he was a spoil sport. Thanks for fighting for every vote, John.

Pundit and Chunga's Revenge, I'm from Obama's home state and he's a smart cookie -- here, when he was running for the senate, he was being pursued by a GOP dirt merchant with a video camera following him around trying to catch him saying something they could use to smear him. Obama countered by introducing the guy to local media, blowing his cover and getting a good laugh from the press. It was a week-long story in the Chicago media. The GOP 'oppo research' guy disappeared in embarrassment.

BTW, that idiot George Allen tried the same thing in VA a couple of years later, but he's such a clod he bungled it and actually said something -- 'macaca' -- that could be used against him.

Barack might do much better against the Swift Boaters than you expect, he's a great counter puncher -- certainly much better than wet-noodle Kerry.

I read that some of the Republican caucus members were allowed to switch parties because of loose rules. It was said that at least some of those crossed over to vote for Obama because he was the one the Republicans wanted to face in the general election.

RSJ,

That could be true :)