It's Lit

It appears President Bill Clinton lit the fuse with his smackback at Fox's smugfaced Chris Wallace on Sunday. It's been building for months with various new-Dem candidates like Jim Webb and Ned Lamont, but the Democrats are finally, after way too long, fighting again. And not with each other.

John Dickerson has a fascinating take on "Clinton's Strategic TV Blowup" at Slate. His take:

Bill Clinton wasn't sandbagged, because he is a smart politician. He just spent several weeks fighting ABC over its interpretation of his administration's hunt for Bin Laden. He knew the question was coming and he took advantage of it. Forty-three days before the election, he has provided a moment to rally party activists and attack the GOP at the heart of its perceived strength on handling terrorism.

If true, one can only admire and, on my side of the fence, be exceedingly grateful to the Big Dog. Because what the Dems need to do to win this election is exactly the opposite of what they usually fall into, and exactly what Karl Rove always does: attack their opponent's greatest perceived strength.

John Kerry Vietnam War Hero (our side filled with combat and draft dodgers)? Swiftboat that sap and cast aspersions on his medals. Bring them into doubt. It's not so much that you have to convince; you just have to de-convince.

The only thing the GOP have to run on is fear, i.e. fear that any party other than them can effectively fight threats to America, specifically the inaccurately named "Global War on Terror". More specifically, their favorite platform plank, 9/11:

Clinton didn't just get the blood pumping among liberal activists. He made a policy critique aimed at the GOP election strategy designed to promote Republicans as the only party competent enough to handle terrorist threats. Each day people are discussing Clinton's performance or Wallace's questioning they will also be discussing which president did more to try to kill Bin Laden. Articles will revisit Bush's Aug. 6, 2001*, Presidential Daily Brief in which he was told al-Qaida was planning a major attack and to hijack planes, and producers will reinterview Richard Clarke, who says Bush dropped the ball. (Clarke's book, which is highly critical of the Bush team's pre-9/11 terror efforts, is in the top 10 on Amazon.)

With the Dems holding hearings (it doesn't get much play, but it ain't the GOP Congressional leadership that's invited former Generals to tell us the truth about Donald Rumsfeld's inability to win) on the Iraq debacle, it may just take a drummed up A-bomb attack by Bush on Halloween for the GOP to survive this election. Just check out the current individual House race poll numbers.

This is the moment where winners don't back down, they press their advantage without mercy until the final decision, and drive a stake through their enemy's chances to win. The GOP will be smearing across America all this upcoming month, so the Dems need to keep hammering home every single macacca.

And it looks like they are. Some appetite-whetting samples:

- Al Franken, potential 2008 Senate candidate challenge to Minnesota GOPer Norm Coleman, takes down the perpetually self-satisfied Tony Blankley on Hardball.

- Paul Waldman of fact-checking online crusaders Media Matters beats down half-wit rightist John Stossel who smears his site and then admits to not having read or being able to accurately recall anything he's just smeared them about having posted on their site.

- Congresswoman Jane Harman, who engaged the blogosphere after nearly losing her Primary race against a progressive opponent, has since been showing us cajones many thought atrophied if ever possessed. Today she revealed that there is a second National Intelligence Estimate needing declassification, this one focused even more singly on Iraq, and to date not even mentioned by BushCheneyCo. As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, she's calling for it's release.

- Young Bill Clinton supporters provide a hilariously unwelcome backdrop to Fox's inane Fox & Friends morning show. Watch as they eventually steer the camera away, the moronic host making a lame joke on the name "Bill" before just sweating through the rest of the segment.

- And after Condi's morally bankrupt smear that President Clinton did not leave them, as he claimed, a plan to fight Bin Laden, parsing it was not a "comprehensive" plan because in her caveat-seeking reading it did not somehow fully cover Pakistan the way they did after 9/11 happened on their watch, Hillary decided to git her sum', a stalwart defense of her husband as well as nice positioning as a fighter for 2008 -- Sen. Clinton hits back at Rice over 9/11.

Try to run against that, Condi. Read any good memos lately?