"Hey, Look Over There!"

I was waiting for something like this to happen. Invariably, as an election nears the home stretch, someone on the Democratic side commits some minor gaffe which every Republican politician, pundit, and blogger instantly seizes upon and treats as if it were The Biggest Thing Ever.

In 2004, it was John Kerry mentioning in the final debate that Mary Cheney was gay. It didn't matter that everyone already knew she was gay, or that Kerry's comment wasn't at all derogatory, or that whipping up anti-gay hysteria was central to his opponent's electoral strategy. None of that that did anything to stem the orgy of faux outrage that ensued.

Every election cycle has something like this. Unfortunately for Kerry, it looks like he has once again managed to find himself at the epicenter:

In his remarks in California on Monday, Mr. Kerry said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Mr. Kerry said that he botched a joke that his aides said had been prepared as follows: "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

Given that this isn't 1968 and we no longer have a draft, I think I'm willing to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt here.

It doesn't really matter, though, because no matter how convincing his explanation is, every Republican in the country is going to spend the next week accusing Kerry, and by association, every other Democrat, of secretly harboring a deep disdain for our troops in Iraq. Nevermind that Kerry and half of the Democrats running for office this cycle are decorated veterans themselves. Nevermind that nearly 3000 American troops have died already in an ill-conceived and thoroughly mismanaged war in Iraq. Nevermind that the Bush administration has all but admitted that it is playing games with our soldiers' lives by putting off making any course corrections until after the election. Nevermind that they did the exact same thing in 2004, and the decision likely led to unnecessary American casualties. Nevermind that Bush and his top officials have a track record of incompetence a mile long and have been feeding us nothing but happy-talk and propoganda for years.

Nope, none of this matters. What matters is that a Democratic Senator who is not even running for anything said something that, if read in the worst possible light, was insulting. In the bizarro world of Republican partisan politics, this is somehow THE issue.

So how should the Democrats react to this sideshow? Well, as Michael Caine says to Sean Connery at the end of The Man Who Would be King: "Brash it out, Danny. Brash it out."

The Democrats need to come across as confident and unflustered and save the recriminations and navel-gazing until after the election. This story is likely to dominate at least one more news cycle, but if the Democrats start sniping at each other or treating Kerry like a leper, the story will only gain more traction. If they haven't been asked already, every Democrat in a contested race is going to be asked tomorrow whether or not they stand by Kerry and his comments. Their answer needs to be this (more or less):

"I take Senator Kerry at his word that he misspoke. I think it's unfortunate how his comment came across, but we've all said things that just came out wrong. It happens. But instead of dwelling endlessly on a botched joke, maybe we should be paying more attention to the Bush administration's botched war in Iraq and botched policies here at home. Our Republican leaders are very good at distraction. That's how they've managed to avoid accountablity for their disastrous policies for so long. But it's not going to work this time. This is their accountability moment, the moment when the American people say enough is enough; it's time to put someone else in charge."

Unfortunately, getting Democrats all on the same page is almost impossible. A number of Democratic candidates will be very tempted tomorrow to publicly distance themselves from Kerry. If they succumb to that temptation, this story will gain steam. I'd like to think that a story this trivial and inane couldn't influence the outcome of the election, but given the current dismal state of our political discourse, nothing would surprise me.