Rove cheated in both elections. On top of that, in 2004 he ran the most outrageously dishonest smear campaign in memory, and the mainstream media (supposedly "liberal" the rightwing claims) treated the smearers as if they were credible sources.
In fact, every single claim the Swiftvets made (none of whom actually fought with Kerry, and only a few who'd ever even met him) has been proven either a total fabrication of a gross distortion of fact.
There is also the issue of the Diebold machines (their CEO promised to deliver Ohio for Bush and controlled 800,000 votes there) and the fact the exit polls showed Kerry had won not only in Ohio but several other key states. So it is perfectly possible that the election was actually a tie in terms of vote counts, but that Kerry should have won. As we know Gore beat Bush in 2000 as well, and was cheated out of it.
Clearly, smear campaigns, paperless voting machines and the other dirty tricks Rove-Bush used should be made illegal. But in the meantime, do not blame Kerry for being smeared, blame the rats who smeared him, all of whom I might add turned out to be funded by extreme rightwing corporate money. It was no grassroots campaign at all. And they did the same thing to McCain in South Carolina in 2000, another war hero who they called "coward, traitor, liar, no hero".
Finally, I would add that Kerry did as well as any democrat could have done, and nobody has yet been able to figure out how to combat a major smear campaign which the media reports on, espcially if the charges are 40 years old and almost impossible to prove one way or another. |
