Jan 22, 2008

Kerry on Swiftboating

Kerry Kries Karl Foul as Obama Swiftboat Sails. Not Rove, methinks, John.

Sen. John Kerry is calling on Democrats to help presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama avoid the fate he endured in the 2004 election -- "swiftboating" by political foes.

Kerry sent an e-mail to Obama's supporters:

"I support Barack Obama because he doesn't seek to perfect the politics of Swiftboating -- he seeks to end it.

This is personal for me, and for a whole lot of Americans who lived through the 2004 election.

We must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears," he continued, alluding to a false and bigoted email that continues to circulate about Obama." (whole email here)

What Kerry doesn't say is that this is all coming from Obama's Democratic opponent - and it's not John Edwards.

Why else would the Clinton Campaign have removed volunteers who were caught forwarding racially charged email, and Clinton surrogate Bob Kerrey recently had to apologize to Obama after repeatedly making related remarks that, what a surprise, gave those nasty smears one more news cycle of airtime?

This is not the work of Karl Rove, John. This is the Clinton Machine.

While Kerry's support almost got a 'Kiss of Death' notice from me a couple weeks ago - this e-mail actually shows the fractures in party unity. If the Democrats, and specifically Hillary don't end the smearing of fecal matter on the wall - the electorate will simply turn to the Republicans (again) because they will be so sick of hearing this crap for twelve to six months - depending when they tuned in.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What the hell is "swiftboating", can it be found at urbandictionary.com? Sounds like something that goes on in Boystown

Capn said...

Perhaps you slept through the 2004 Kerry snorefest?

Capn said...

Swiftboating is American political jargon that is used (primarily) as a strong pejorative description of some kind of attack that the speaker considers unfair or untrue—for example, an ad hominem attack or a smear campaign.

The term comes from the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth (formerly "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth") and their widely-publicized [1] attacks on 2004 Presidential candidate John Kerry. [2] (For a similar example of a pejorative verb based on a historical incident, see "borking," coined as a result of the fight over the nomination of Robert Bork to the United States Supreme Court.)

Originally, terms like "swiftboating", "Swift Boating", "Swift Boat tactics", etc. were mostly used by people who disapproved of the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth. It is now in mainstream use.

Anonymous said...

Kerry is known for having a gigantic chin and enormous mellon. Poo poo to your swiftboating sillyness

Anonymous said...

So "swiftboating" is just that lazy, BS tactic of taking a perfectly cromulent, unassuming noun and verbitising it? All because people 1. cannot spell "ad hominem" and 2. do not know what the term means? So much for our educated populace.

Further. Dude. How pissed it Edwards at Kerry these days?