If they call you a dog, you bite the hell out of them.

This from Salon's Tim Grieve:

"The bad news for John Kerry: Talking about the Swift boat smears won't make them go away. The worse news for John Kerry: Nothing else he can do is going to work, either.

"The Swift Boat Veterans' charges have largely been debunked. Reporters at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have both dismantled the allegations; on Tuesday morning, an L.A. Times editorial declared: 'These charges against John Kerry are false. Or at least there is no good evidence that they are true.'

"But in the non-condemnation condemnations of the president, in the slippery 'If so many people say something it must be true' logic of former Sen. Bob Dole, in the echoes that bounce back and forth between Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and spill over onto CNN, the allegations against Kerry have taken hold. Even if they're not true -- and by all credible accounts, they're not -- the allegations raise doubts in the minds of voters paying just enough attention to know that there's some 'question' about Kerry's war record.

"The Kerry campaign clearly sees some advantage in keeping the issue alive -- in further debunking the charges, in tying them ever tighter to George Bush and Karl Rove -- but Democratic strategists are increasingly concerned."

I think he is very, very wrong. The conventional wisdom among many people - and particularly journalists who believe everything they write is devoured and digressed by the American people - is that negative campaigning always works against you.

It does not. It is very effective.

The Bush Brown Shirts were not going to let this story play out quietly. As soon as those ads were run in limited number, all of the conservative big-mouths on radio and TV and in their columns immediately said the charges were serious and HAD TO BE INVESTIGATED. The ones on Fox were wondering why the Washington Post was not on top of this, since it was even bigger than Watergate.

Kerry had to go on the attack. It was the right thing to do.

Quoting old Bill Clinton, who had a fair number of these attacks waged at him during his campaigns and presidency, "you never let a lie lie. You attack it and you attack those who perpetrated it. If you don't, then the lie becomes a fact in everyone's minds."

The media just can't get it. They had investigated and found all the charges fraudulent, built with incredible contradictions by the ad spokespersons. And they have reported it. Isn't that enough? No - because the President of the United States refuses to discuss it without a smirk. The implication by the President of the United States is that it is true. So, what next?

You do what Kerry is doing. Tie him to it and keep hammering.