Dress Rehearsal for the Fat Lady

Kerry is toast. His campaign is hopelessly clueless. Clueless in that it is relying on the way things used to be. The left used to be able to count on the 'mainstream' media to fight its battles. Kerry hasn't learned that the old media isn't as powerful as they once were, and they are losing their once monopolistic influence daily. His battle plan is effete, dated and ineffective. It's a new age. There's a new zeitgeist He hasn't a chance against the nouveau 'swarming' techniques of the adept Bush campaign.

"Swarming is a seemingly amorphous but carefully structured, coordinated way to strike from all directions at a particular point or points, by means of a sustainable 'pulsing' of force and/or fire, close-in as well as from stand-off positions. It will work best -- perhaps it will only work -- if it is designed mainly around the deployment of myriad small, dispersed, networked maneuver units. The aim is to coalesce rapidly and stealthily on a target, attack it, then dissever and redisperse, immediately ready to recombine for a new pulse. Unlike previous military practice, battle management is now mainly about 'command and decontrol,' as networked units all over the field of battle (or business, or activism, or terror and crime) coordinate and strike the adversary in fluid, flexible, nonlinear ways."

According to Hugh Hewitt's September 2nd blog:

While Bush-Cheney 2004 is not coordinating with Swift Boat Vets for Truth, is not sending out talking points to the talkers on radio row, is not hard-wired into Brit Hume's head, and most certainly does not run the center-right of the blogosphere, all of these forces are swarming around Kerry and delivering many serious blows to his credibility and his strategic plan. They are "inside the Kerry campaign's OODA loop," and the result is paralysis and recrimination within Kerry's staff.

Kerry was in serious trouble long before the collosally successful Republican Convention, but the convention will be the event that officially marks Kerry's demise as a serious presidential contender. His sophomoric little midnight rally right after the convention was just the final nail in his campaign coffin. There will be many more nails, to be sure...but they will be superfluous, because his campaign is already doomed. It's all over but the shouting and there will be a whole lotta shouting from here on out!