I don’t have any evidence for this, it’s just a feeling I have as the Vietnam evidence against him snowballs. Krazy John wasn’t able to respond effectively to the first Swiftvet charges, and that’s turned out to be just an opening jab that prepared the public for what will likely be a knockout punch, his baseless testimony on war atrocities that was used against US POWS by the North Vietnamese. As more and more people discover the particulars of his meeting with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in 1970 as part of his protest effort, even die-hard Democrats will abandon him.
Democrats, more than most, love front-runners. Once Kerry starts to visibly slip, they will turn on him with all the ferocity of the unthinking rodents that they are at heart. They don’t actually like Kerry, and remember, another Massachusetts liberal was leading another Bush by 17 points prior to the Republican coronation. By November, he was absolutely destroyed in a historic rout. And Willie Horton and the infamous tank-driving episode don’t pack one-tenth the punch that Kerry’s cumulative Vietnam debacle will.
Remember, too, that Whackjob is an exceptionally and unusually proud man. He doesn’t fall, he assures us even as we see him getting up from the snow. He doesn’t fail. He is too proud to be willing to get crushed – crushed – by a mediocrity such as George W. Bush, and too self-centered to give a damn about what his late pull-out will do to his party. The only way that Kerry can salvage his bizarre view of himself is to declare himself too noble for the dirtiness of modern politics and end his campaign. He won’t have failed, it was the system, the vets, the Republican attack dogs, etc, anyone but him.
Edwards would cheerfully leap in and play sacrificial lamb, in order to give himself a leg up for the nomination in 2008. But as one veteran trader, who was the first to suggest this possibility to me, has pointed out, Kerry will have to quit in mid-September for Edwards to participate in the first debate. Interestingly enough, the POW documentary starts in two weeks….
It’s just speculation at this point, but there is a certain compelling logic to the concept.