Getting nasty

It's going to get bad.

Susan Estrich fired the opening salvo with her recent piece, Mad as Hell, in which she calls for the democrats to get down and dirty in these last few weeks of the election:

Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up? (Bush's Texas record has been sealed. Now why would that be? Who seals a perfect driving record?)
After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment. Could Dick Cheney get a license to drive a school bus with his record of drunken driving? (I can see the ad now.) A job at a nuclear power plant? Is any alcoholic ever really cured? So why put him in the most stressful job in the world, with a war going south, a thousand Americans already dead and control of weapons capable of destroying the world at his fingertips.

Joe Klein over at TIME seems to see nothing wrong with this. His latest screed, Tearing Kerry Down is all but calling for a dirty campaign to be waged:

After a week of gut-wound assaults on his character, Kerry finally fired back on Thursday night, assailing Bush and Cheney for having avoided service in Vietnam and for having "misled" us into Iraq. The latter may be an exaggeration, but after the G.O.P. assault, Kerry has a right to exaggerate with impunity. Indeed, if he hopes to win, Kerry will have to do much more of that. He will have to become a version of the young John Kerry not celebrated at the Democratic Convention the eloquent, passionate, uncoached leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War who caused the Nixon White House serious heartburn. Where did that fabulous young politician ever go, anyway?

What, Joe? Do you mean this fabulous young politician? Or this one?

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that John Glenn has resorted to the kind of talk that you would expect to hear from some of those unwashed protesters that were in New York this past week:

Former senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) took the defense a step further by comparing the Republicans' misleading statements to those of Nazi Germany. "You've just got to separate out fact from fiction. . . . Too often, too often, in this country, if you hear something repeated, it's the old Hitler business -- if you hear something repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you start to believe it," he said.

In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl, John. Or go senile.

Of course, what would be digging in the dirt without the skills of gossip monger Kitty Kelly, who is coming out with another one of those factually challenged books...this time about, you guessed it, the Bush family:

It reveals alleged sex offenses against minors by Dubya's father. It reveals the use of the White House by male hookers under Dubya. It reveals Bush's evil plans for YOU (details of which you will have to get elsewhere), which should alarm you. It reveals crooked business deals by every member of the Bush clan, including the oh-so-holy first lady, Laura "Round Heels" Bush. It reveals how former first lady Babs Bush is almost a practicing witch. It reveals how Dubya has had a very special friend in the mayor of a Tennessee city, who has has cohabited the Texas ranch many times. It reveals the details of embarrassing photographs of Bush that actually caused U.S. Govt. agents to perpetrate the anthrax mailings to destroy the building of National Enquirer and kill photo editor Stevens. It reveals how you can get surprisingly close to America's Darth Vader.

Please...call me when someone rational shows up speaking for the democrats.