Operation Fortunate Son Working-Kerry on rise Veterans Vote

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8660

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But lo and behold, it would appear that "Operation Fortunate Son" has worked.

According a recent poll by FOX, Bush's lead over Kerry among veterans stood, on the September 21 and 22 dates on which the poll was conducted, at the single-digit margin of 48 percent to 39 percent. You'll recall the CBS poll in August, at the height of the Swift-boat frenzy, showing that Bush had grabbed a “gaudy,” as the sportswriters say, 23-point lead among veterans (matters were about even before the Swiftie blitz). Well, it's been shaved by well more than half, and Bush is below 50 percent, which means that Kerry could fight the veterans' vote back to a draw.

Don't sit by the television waiting for the cable gabbers to make a big hoo-ha of this, as they did the CBS poll showing Bush's huge lead. You and I know it doesn't work that way. But if anything (assuming, of course, that this poll is accurate), this is an even more remarkable development than the Bush surge in August. "Fortunate Son," while it's gotten plenty of press, didn't get anywhere near the play the Swiftie barrage received; beyond that, it ceded much of the narrative space in the "what-they-did-30-years-ago" story line to the Dan Rather/documents controversy.

It proves that attacks work. There's no point in being self-righteous about them. There is, of course, an important distinction to be made between attacks that have at least some relationship to the factual record and attacks that are outright fabrication and slander. But one can abhor the latter without opposing attack politics in general. Any pursuit of victory involves exploitation of the opposition's weaknesses, and why Democrats chose to strip themselves of this weapon during their convention has always mystified me. Kerry, it seems, has figured out what a silly mistake that was and has delivered a series of speeches recently hitting Bush pretty hard on foreign policy.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. The veterans' vote is critical in the following states

Pennsylvania
Ohio
Wisconsin
Florida

One can't be too obvious. This will make or break us in the very close states.
This is great news.

[kaitykaity]

2. Thank you for posting this.

Forwarded it immediately to my favorite wacknut, the one
who crowed and crowed and crowed about the Bush lead among
veterans.

Cool.

[RamboLiberal]

3. I'm hoping the vets will look past the SBL to the lies AWOL

are telling to the current military and the country.