On the state of the race

The politics of Iraq:
Matt's observation seems to point to something. It seems the Kerry team has chosen to push the war issue because of the recent surge in violence and I think expecially because of the NY Times article from last week revealing that a July intelligence document painted a far dimmer picture of the situation in Iraq than the President has recently on the stump. As Matt said, the Kerry people are gambling that the Iraq War, which even conservative commentators aknowledge is the ultimate "swing voter" in this campaign, currently doesn't look too good for the President and if they can force the new "security moms" and "SUV dads" to focus on Bush's terrible mismanagement of the war-something nearly everyone can acknowledge-then they have a shot. It also is the only issue big enough to change the subject from Kerry back to Bush and after the pounding Kerry took last month they need to shift the focus back to Bush. As long as Kerry keeps hammering Iraq he drives the debate.

The documents:
It's amazing to me that during the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth month long media-sponsored coming out party, all the press and pundits wondered aloud when Kerry would hit back, despite the fact that everyone knew the Swift Vets were spouting lies. Then, when Kerry did fight back, they all said he had "lost control of his public image...waited too long to fight back...yadda, yadda, yadda." Yet a number of media reports come out about Bush TANG history(Salon, Boston Globe and then CBS, all containing different charges about how Bush failed to fulfill his committment to the Guard but somehow managed an honorable discharge) and all we can talk about are typewriters in 1972. Bush isn't expected by anyone in the media to actually answer any of these charges.

So, when I hear 'liberal media bias' it makes me want to scream. Republicans are having a field day with revelations that Bill Burkett, CBS' main source for the documents, tried to contact and in two seperate occasions talked with Max Cleland and Joe Lockhart apparently to relay his concerns about how the campaign was going and to suggest ways to defend against Republican attacks on Kerry's military records. How this leads wingnuts or anyone else, to imply that the Kerry campaign forged the documents themselves or others at the DNC did is oftly hard to believe. But lord knows the right wing bull horn is louder then ours and we must be on the lookout for press types who might seek to infer that the Democratic party or Kerry's campaign was behind these documents and again demand that Kerry "fight back" against these charges regardless of whether they are actually true.

The outlook:
All this CBS stuff is ultimately background noise and will disappaear as we approach the debates. Clearly, Kerry now has Bush squarely in his sites and when he sees him at that first debate...get ready to rumble.