You can tell that the left is getting nervous about a scandal when they invoke the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth campaign of 2004 against John Kerry.
As I noted on Saturday, Maria L. La Ganga at the Los Angeles Times did that as she described Planned Parenthood's attempts to fight back against the Center For Medical Progress's exposure of their baby body parts business. On Friday at the New York Times, in a story about how Hillary Clinton was "interrupting" her Martha's Vineyard vacation, Amy Chozick found a Clinton contributor who characterized her email and private server scandal as "somewhat of a tempest in a teapot," and also described it as "their (Republicans') Swift boat issue of 2015."
Here are the four relevant paragraphs which wrapped up Chozick's report:
Alan Patricof, a longtime donor and friend, said the pancake breakfast he and his wife, Susan, were hosting for Mrs. Clinton on Aug. 30, for up to $2,700 per person, had almost reached capacity at more than 300 people.
He said the criticism over Mrs. Clinton’s emails was just the latest attempt by Republicans to try to take down the Clintons. “Republicans have been on their case since 1991,” he said.
But, like many supporters of Mrs. Clinton, he said it was important for the campaign and its surrogates to explain that the subject was “somewhat of a tempest in a teapot.”
“To me, it’s their Swift boat issue of 2015,” he said, referring to the Republican attacks on John Kerry’s Vietnam War record that helped derail Mr. Kerry’s 2004 presidential candidacy against George W. Bush.
Look at the bright side. Unlike La Ganga at the LA Times, at least Chozick didn't describe the Swift Vets' efforts as "discredited" — because, despite leftist conventional wisdom which has seeped into supposedly objective outlets like Wikipedia, they never were discredited.
For starters — and this is enough to make the point (those who wish to go further can view five-part documentary episodes One, Two, Three, Four and Five) — 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1968, as he claimed on dozens of occasions over a two-decade period. He was obviously not in a position to whine as he did about how President Richard Nixon had put him there, simply because Nixon was not yet inaugurated.
However, Chozick does describe the Swift Vets' efforts as "Republican attacks." Too bad for her and others who buy into the mythology that the Swift Vets actually included Democrats, Republicans and independents, and that the Republican Party establishment denounced their efforts. As I noted on Saturday, "The Swift Vets acted entirely on their own, and incumbent Republican President George W. Bush called their efforts bad for the system.'"
The invocation of the Swift Vets by a Clinton contributor is the best indication yet that the truth is catching up with the presumptive Democratic frontrunner — because if it really does become analogous to a "Swift boat issue," it will be known to all objective observers that Mrs. Clinton's critics have the facts and the truth on their side.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
