...recently. Wasn't DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shulz sitting there during his remarks? I watched her face, and she clearly had something to say, but was never given the chance...thanks to Chris Matthews taking over the conversation.

I agree with your comments, and what you bolded from the article, completely. At some point, I hope Democrats take on this issue and make clear the differece.

especially as I feel that a major segment of the party actually used his supposed non-reaction to the attacks for a second unjustified attack - because he would not rule out Presidential aspirations.

The fact is that until 2004, the ONLY course someone would take when all the official records are 100% in their favor, the accusers were already proven liars and the Kerry team proved they were funded by the same people and shared a lawyer with Bush/Cheney - is to present those facts to the media - which he did.

It was a disregard of both journalistic ethics and honesty that they pretended that neither side had the complete truth. It still makes me angry that, to my knowledge, not a single reporter took the time to review all the fitness reports and report on them. They actually really show an incredible, mature, compassionate young man who anyone would feel was a good leader. (I do admit I only read them because someone mentioned the records on the Kerry blog - when people were arguing over the color of his eyes. The records provided the answer - hazel. I then looked to see the other records and was amazed by the level of praise and the almost amusement of at least one superior that his guys were as incredibly loyal to him as they were. Those records written at an incredibly difficult time refute a lot of the aloof elitist nonsense.

...especially about the media seemingly ignoring the facts when given them. Your words:

"The fact is that until 2004, the ONLY course someone would take when all the official records are 100% in their favor, the accusers were already proven liars and the Kerry team proved they were funded by the same people and shared a lawyer with Bush/Cheney - is to present those facts to the media - which he did.

It was a disregard of both journalistic ethics and honesty that they pretended that neither side had the complete truth. It still makes me angry that, to my knowledge, not a single reporter took the time to review all the fitness reports and report on them. They actually really show an incredible, mature, compassionate young man who anyone would feel was a good leader. (I do admit I only read them because someone mentioned the records on the Kerry blog - when people were arguing over the color of his eyes. The records provided the answer - hazel. I then looked to see the other records and was amazed by the level of praise and the almost amusement of at least one superior that his guys were as incredibly loyal to him as they were. Those records written at an incredibly difficult time refute a lot of the aloof elitist nonsense."

The media's laziness (and I'm being generous here) allowed Kerry's integrity to be smeared...because TPTB knew general public knowledge of his integrity would garner him the votes to make him President.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/01/the_boffo_awfulness.php

Late Update: A few people have written in to say I’m wrong to call this ‘swift-boating’. I guess Swift-boating is in the eye of the beholder. So let me explain what it is I mean. In the main, the premise of this ‘documentary’ seems accurate. Mitt Romney wasn’t an entrepreneur in the sense most of us think of the term. He was a private equity guy, which at its best is the tip of the spear of capitalism’s creative destruction. At its worst, it was a very mercenary and destructive type of takeover operation in which a lot of companies had short term value ‘extracted’ from them and then got junked. Either way, that’s part of the economy we now live in. But it doesn’t look good held up to the light of day in a dismally bad economy. And as the basis for the claim to be a ‘job creator’ it’s either painfully laughable or laughably painful. So if you’re definition of ‘swift boating’ is simply character assassination by falsehood, I agree the term probably doesn’t apply.

But a broadly accurate story run through the stygian apparatus of swift-boatery I think I can still identify as such. This looks to me like it comes right out of the David Bossie chop shop world of right-wing phantasmagoria — the Islamophobia documentaries, the portentous voice, the quaking real Americans snuffed out by the shadowy figure with furin’ connections, the rustling dark clouds.

This doesn’t strike me as a disinterested review of political economy. I think I know this stuff when I see it. I can’t say I’m too broken up about it. But I know it when I see it.

No, I can't agree. I don't recall it being about ascetics at the time. It was about taking something that was the truth (Kerry's service was unassailable even if you disagreed with his politics), and then making an alternate "truth" up from whole cloth!! That was the particular perniciousness of swiftboating. They made it up and had ZERO proof to back it up. No one but Kerry kept a diary or wrote letters home at the time. He was literally the only guy you could go to for evidence apart from the official Naval record which even the Bush Administration said was beyond reproach.

But frankly, you just have to sigh about this stuff. Some of us get it, but most of the DC crowd just don't. For them it's all a game, and for Josh in particular, he was more concerned about strategy at the time than examining the lies themselves. Remember? The Bitch Slap:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003295.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_15.php

(As an aside, reading through these archives, I kinda miss the old TPM where it was just Josh talking. You could disagree, but he really is an interesting person to read. I still read TPM every day but miss his voice which only comes in occasionally.)

Still, sounds like Chuck Todd was a lot worse.

He seems to be speaking of the style of the SBVT attacks - and I do remember the parodies of swiftboating - like Hamsters for truth and a Comedy Central that used the same tone to question Kerry's having saved the life of a chocking Republican.

However, I would suggest the better comparison might be not to the SBVT that started with complete lies, but with Michael Moore. In common with him is all he said in the first paragraph of what was said being true. But, like Moore, it is cherry picked and dots are drawn sometimes a bit too freely.

The big difference is that the Kerry smears were both more personal and completely not true. Not to mention, there is the wholeissue that this is the way these people repaid a brave young man, who had a wonderful family, fiancee and friends and more connections than can be imagined, but who still risked his life rather than having "other priorities".

The "bitch slap" nonsense really shows that he didn't get it and partly saw it as a game.

or people co-opt the term "swiftboating," but the situations are never analagous.

In Kerry's case, it was a pre-determined and well-funded character assassination aided by the media's hands-off approach to objective reporting. The "he-said, he-said" reporting was ridiculous.

Eric Boehlert's analysis showed the extent of that reporting, and the subsequent denunciations in editorials like the Boston Globe's proved that there was enough to reject the attacks long before the election. In fact, it would have required no investigative work because the facts were out there.