Maybe we shouldn't criticize Kerry's electoral strategy too much. He came close to winning the EV even though he lost the PV badly.
This plan was doomed. The inconsistancies in Kerry's positions and actions were glaringly obvious. There is nothing Kerry's team could have down to counter the Swifties that would have changed this basic fact. The damage done by the Swifties was a direct result of Kerry's actions before SBVFT had run a single ad.
Kerry did not loose the popular vote 'badly' - the margin was very narrow 50.73% to 48.27%. In fact the electoral vote was lost by a much larger percentage - 53.16% to 46.65%. It would be more accurate to say that Kerry barely lost the popular vote, and that the electoral college, as usual, favored the Republican.
As for the Swiftboat propaganda - this sort of falsehood always works well when used by the candidate of false, jingoistic patriotism against a relatively reasonable opponent. Of course the irony in this case due to Bush's draft dogding was lost on the target audience, for obvious reasons. In any case, none of the damage done by the Swiftboat fabrications had anything to do with Kerry's inconsistency about Iraq. The subject at hand was kneejerk patriotism vs. reason, and we all know which appeals to more voters.
