When the Chips Were Down

Dave Johnson at Seeing The Forest has a great post today, read the whole thing. In addition to some comparisons between Bush and Kerry he has some excellent observations on the Kerry campaign:

Well, they started running a very effective ad, telling Bush "Shame on you!" for the smear. BUT THEN THEY TOOK IT OFF THE AIR because they THOUGHT that John McCain might not approve -- the same John McCain who is campaigning for Bush right now. The same McCain who said this weekend that he didn't see what else beside the smear could be causing Kerry's drop in the polls.

So I am not sure what to think today. Today it seems like the Kerry team has backed off from fighting back, doesn't have it in them to see this through, SEEMINGLY DOESN'T SEE THE LARGER ISSUE IN PLAY HERE. Is the Kerry campaign ready for the fight to come? It's going to get a LOT worse than just this Swift Boat smear. But Kerry is running against a fraud, a man who received a memo warning of a coming attack and went on vacation, who sat reading "My Pet Goat" for SEVEN MINUTES, after being told the country was under attack. Thinking purely in terms of being protected from terrorists, I do not want the Pet Goat man in office. I do not want to trust my life to the man who CREATED the terrorist threat that Iraq is now, but wasn't before. But to get that man out of office we need a campaign team that is willing and able to explain these points to the public.

People are scared and they want leaders who will protect them. Kerry needs to tell the public how he is better at protecting them against terrorists than Bush is. He needs to make a convincing case. That is what the public wants to know. That is the ONLY question today. The Republicans know this.

It's time to get down and run a serious campaign here Kerry people. Quite literally the fate of human kind could be riding on this election.