Democrats and the 24-hour news cycle: Notes on waking up early in the morning

Published six hours ago, according to Google News, on the Washington Times website:

A veterans group opposed to Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid is initiating one of its largest ad campaigns to date with a TV spot portraying Mr. Kerry as an enemy sympathizer during the Vietnam War.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — which first raised questions about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record — says it's spending $1.3 million in targeted battleground states with an ad focusing on what it said was an unauthorized meeting Mr. Kerry had in 1970 with North Vietnamese communists even while American soldiers were still fighting in Vietnam.

What this story doesn't tell you is that the new Swift Boat ad flips back and forth between 1970s news photos of Kerry and Jane Fonda, and declares that while even Fonda eventually apologized for her betrayal, Kerry still hasn't. Then it asks if we can afford such a betrayer-president when our country's at war (the ad ends with images of fighter planes, the grotesquely expensive, high-tech kind that have proven so useless against a growing insurgency). The ad is being run in swing states only, and it's a bigger ad buy than before.

Calling all Democrats who can spin: move it. Get your fucking asses in gear. Your website, Moveon's website, the major networks and Google News show no signs of any response on your part, let alone a counterattack. You have about an hour and a half to come up with a devastating response that will nip this story in the bud by completely demolishing it. Find a crushing, harsh response that makes Bush look bad. Talk about your work with John McCain to recover the bodies of American soldiers, and how some of them were men you'd known, and so it makes you angry. Whatever you say, make sure you get very stern and pissed-off about the fact that this is a a total lie - that part is absolutely critical. That's what Bush would do, and he'd get away with it. Try it, and you'll find you can get away with it too. I don't know - it's your job, not mine, to get this response on the air.

But you're running a teensy bit late. You have about 90 minutes before it will be "drive time" in middle America, that block of time during morning rush hour when radio listenership is at its peak. On the east coast, it's already seven o'clock. Get it together now.