Well, the VRWC planted the seeds of doubt with respect to the authenticity of the 60 minutes Killian memos yesterday, and lo and behold! All of a sudden, it's leading media gospel! Listen, of course the memos are authentic. The White House didn't even come out and deny it. They didn't have to. Why bother when the media grabs a blog related story, and runs with it as the last word on the topic?
Now, hey, Kerry didn't get the benefit of the doubt with the not-so-swift boat liars, did he?
So, again, BushCo slips the noose.
It's disheartening. Clearly, the SBVT have had their bullshit charges against Kerry literally blown full of holes, but the negative impressions had already taken root by the time the story and its principal architects were figuratively disemboweled. Admittedly, this is partly the fault of the Kerry campaign in not addressing the issue earlier. Just as clearly, RoveInc., a subsidiary of BushCo, was ready and waiting for the Killian memos to come out. They had the talking points ready, and in less than 24 hours had focused editorial attention on the alternate story - "there's questions about the authenticity of the memos".
It's probably too late for the Kerry campaign to really do anything about this particular issue, but they should learn. And the Democratic Party leadership should learn. They already know some of the net negative issues against Bush that are coming down the road, and the DNC and Kerry campaign should be actively playing those stories even now. But they're not.
There are 53 days left. That's a lot of time - but there's precious little time left to fundamentally change the campaign strategy of the Kerry organization. There are a few Democratic political kibbutzers who are advocating the 'nuclear option' on BushCo (whatever that means). It's doubtful such a strategy would work at this stage, because Rove's done such a sweet job of innoculating his candidate against nearly anything that blows up in the next few months. More than that, the Bush campaign has somehow managed to paint the Kerry campaign as "desperate" - so any shit that hits the fan will be little more than "shit thrown by a desperate campaign" - never mind that all that TeamBush did in the first 6 months of this year was throw shit as they fell further and further behind in the polls.
At this point, I'm not sure how Kerry recovers momentum back and swings things back in his favor. I suspect that it will take some type of very negative event outside of the control of Democratic strategists, rather than anything that John Kerry says or does. No doubt there's plans in the works to regain the necessary momentum, but I sincerely hope we see the move soon.
Because if past performance is any indication of future returns, TeamKerry is in some serious trouble.
