Swift-Boat Revenge

[Jai4WKC08]

A short article from New York Magazine. Interesting take on how to "out-swift" the GOP.

Swift-Boat Revenge
How one New Yorker beat Republicans at the attack-ad game.
* By Geoffrey Gray


(Photo: Todd Selby)

They weren’t as famous as the stem-cell ads with Michael J. Fox, but the anti-Republican spots created by Jon Soltz (who served in Iraq as a captain in the Army), and his New York–based group VoteVets.org, also seemed to have hit their targets. Think of VoteVets as the Democratic version of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Two years ago, Soltz was on leave, sitting on his couch in Pittsburgh and slurping down a bowl of ramen noodles, he says, when John Kerry, whom he’d met recently at a campaign rally, called him and asked him to volunteer for his presidential run. He did, and then watched the Swifties rip Kerry. This year, Soltz changed tactics. He moved to New York to start VoteVets, a spinoff of a like-minded veterans’ nonprofit that needed a political arm and more funding. “I was telling my friends I would be the Swift Boat Captain of ’06,” Soltz, 29, says. He arrived in January with no friends and no apartment, so he slept on the floor of a closetlike office in the East Village.

Things started moving swiftly after that. Soltz also recruited big names like Wesley Clark and Bob Kerrey to sit on his board and had Bill Clinton headline a fund-raiser. In the past five months, Soltz says, he scooped up about $2 million in donations from longtime Dems like Tony Coelho, Al Gore’s former campaign chairman; Chris Heinz, Kerry’s stepson; and Republicans like Edward Vick, ex-chairman of Young & Rubicam. He then used the money to produce aggressive, Republican-style attack ads.

“You have to get them in their own backyards and on their own issues,” says Soltz, who was trained as a military logician. “You’ll find a lot of Americans against the war, but not many Americans are against the troops.” He also had to compete against Vets for Freedom, a group with links to the same GOP consultants who floated the Swifties. Soltz says he made it a priority to strike first. In August, he spent a meager $14,000 (some of it on his credit card) to produce a controversial spot against Senator George Allen in Virginia. It featured a vet of the Iraq war unloading an AK-47 into outdated body armor on a firing range. Then the vet blames Allen for not voting to buy modern equipment. Cable news and the blogs went wild. So did the Vets for Freedom, who “strongly denounced” Soltz’s “deceitful” commercial. But with his ads running, Soltz was able to solicit more donations, which paid for body-armor ads in other tight Senate races, subbing in the names of other Republicans in tight Senate races: Rick Santorum, Conrad Burns, Jim Talent, and Jon Kyl. Then Soltz created spots featuring vets in wheelchairs and with amputated arms; he says he spent $2 million overall. “We were on offense, and they were on defense the whole time,” Soltz says. “It was awesome.” And, of course, Allen, Santorum, Burns, and Talent all lost.

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/24104/

[williesgirl]

1. Vote Vet ads were great & effective - thanks to them - recommended

[qnr]

2. Congratulations Jon! n/t

[AZBlue]

3. To me, saying he "swift boated" them is incorrect.

I think of Swift Boating as using attack ads that are false and deliberately deceiving. He just pointed out the truth - he didn't lie or manipulate the facts. In my opinion, I'm not even sure that qualifies as an attack ad either - usually attack ads go after someone for something completely unrelated to politics, for a personal reason. Soltz just told it like it is.

On a personal/local note: for my job, I was working at home on the computer with the TV on for a good bit of the weeks before the election, and I never saw any of these ads used against Kyl (and Kyl's the only one listed that won re-election).

[electropop]

6. It's the opposite of Swift-boating.

The key element of a swift-boating is a blatant lie.

[diva77]

40. even more specifically, the key element of swift-boating is

the Rovian approach of attacking someone on their strengths -- Kerry was a war-hero, the Swift-boaters attacked him for that.

[Pacifist Patriot]

14. I object to that as well. Important distinction.

[Jai4WKC08]

17. I agree with how you define swift-boating, but notice

That the article calls them, "the Democratic version of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."
We should expect a Democratic version to be truthful, right? ;)

That said, Stolz calls himself a "Swiftboat Captain of 06" -- I assume he meant only that he would play agressive and hard, going for the jugular so to speak, which I think is a good thing.

To tell the truth, my own definition of "swiftboating" would probably apply specifically the targetting of veterans, attempting to tarnish or falsify their military records. By that definition, none of these ads were swiftboating.

I do, however, consider them to be "attack ads," because they attacked our opponents. Granted, they stuck to the issues and didn't get personal, but the idea is playing offense, not defense. I also like what Stolz says about getting out there first instead of waiting to react. These are lessons we MUST learn as a party.

Fwiw, I live in the KCMO market and I didn't hear their ads here either. But I don't listen to local broadcast TV much, so may have missed 'em. And I would assume they may have targetted the more rural areas of MO, where McCaskill was thought to need more support (she ended up doing pretty well there, I think). My son however called me from Topeka KS, where he doing his National Guard duty, and he heard the Clark "Because of Iraq" ad on Fox.

[AZBlue]

28. "We should expect a Democratic version to be truthful"

LMAO! You are so right!!

[opihimoimoi]

4. Soltz's boat uses rounds of TRUTH, Reality, and Sanity....Not BS

[Nite Owl]

5. Those ads were wonderful

and I am sure that they went a long way towards helping our candidate.
The GOP hates this group, it exposes the truth and that is something that they can't stand up to.

[dubykc]

7. Great job Jon. Thanks for all the help.

[Autonomy]

8. Swift-boating or not

it's a beautiful thing. Seeing the pubbies given a dose of their own poison... revenge is so sweet. :cry: These are tears of joy.

[alfredo]

9. The "From where I sit" ad was heartbreaking.

[Mend]

10. Independents I know were impressed that Democrats were

finally tough enough to fight back. I think the ads were accurate and fair but they were tough and that is what is needed. The biggest complaint I heard from Indies against Gore and Kerry was that they appeared weak against attacks. So be it. We need those votes.

[blm]

12. The DNC didn't have a hate-mongering machine that controlled media like RNC has had

in place since 1994.

[KittyWampus]

21. Will you ever stop making excuses for Kerry's shitty, weak responses?

According to you, all Kerry had to do was show up at debates and win and everything else was someone else's responsibility.

[blm]

24. If you understand what Soltz did, it was a BACKUP for those vets being attacked - something that the

Dem party never had in place to counter the GOP machine that had been in place since Drudge.

Why is that so difficult to understand? If these candidates were helped by a machine that was put in place to counter the GOP efforts to smear them, then why is it hard to understand that this type of organization would have been helpful in 2004 to counter the RW smears against Kerry?

Damn right that one person cannot do it all - if that were true, you'd be believing that Bush did it all, and never had an RNC or RW message team do it all for him.

[mtnsnake]

29. You took the word right outta my mouth!

Kerry did nothing wrong. It was everyone elses fault. lol

[NewYorkerfromMass]

38. the bin Laden ad did it for Bush

Kerry was doing just fine until the last minute video of bin Laden.
Truth is-All's models were correct, but there was no accounting for the last minute deciders breaking for Bush over Kerry.
Also, Kerry had very few defenders when he was being smeared- at least they weren't appearing on TV the way the swift boat ads were.

[Laelth]

27. As I would expect.

The "Democrats are wimps" meme needs to be countered, and Jon Soltz was willing to stand up and fight hard (even mean) to get the truth out. That's exactly why we must impeach Bush. We can't expect the American people to trust us to protect them from terrorists if we won't even try to protect the Constitution from being shredded by Republicans.

-Laelth

[blm]

11. Swifts could EASILY LIE because of the RNC's attack machine already in place in 2004.

That is something the DNC never even really contemplated back then, and was unable to counter in kind.

Glad to see vets got together to fill that void the Dem party has had for so long. When the corporate media is working fulltime AGAINST you, it does take serious ad time to counter.

[KittyWampus]

22. Well, did Kerry have people running ads for him or not? HE was responsible

for his inability to produce and run hard hitting ads.

[blm]

25. Swifts weren't run by RNC or Bush-Cheney. Just like Bush didn't respond to Move-On.

.

[The Wizard]

36. The corporate media and

the Republican Party have a symbiotic relationship, each relying on the other for backing and cover.
The Swift Boat ads were all over the news as if they were real news stories giving Bush many hours of free propaganda, and an unsuspecting portion of the electorate bought the lies about Kerry.
Until the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated and the media monopolies are broken we can expect more of the same of what we've witnessed over the past few years.
The Republican Party has adopted the Goebbels Doctrine and effectively made it more reprehensible in this age of mass communication.
Now that the Democrats control the purse strings and tax policy and Bush has been neutered, the corporate toadies will be sniffing the behinds of those with the power. They must realize that alternative media like DU and Kos have more sway than ever because the corporate media fell behind the curve and the Zeitgeist has shifted.
Keep reminding your Congressional representatives and Senators to vote for Net Neutrality.

[JNelson6563]

13. Brilliant stuff

I hope he's planning on continuing his great work in 08.

:toast:

[KittyWampus]

23. Me too, cause the weakknee pablum that our Dems have been using as ads

in the last decade or so are inexcusable.

[civildisoBDence]

39. Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire, and sometimes you need to fight fire with

dynamite.

Water just doesn't work against the kind of fires the Republicans and their hate radio thugs are willing to set.

Newsprism

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Brilliant! It is a civil war, afterall, and we do need military strategists

figuring out where the next war front will be.

[progressoid]

16. “It was awesome.”

Yeah baby!!!

[CitizenLeft]

18. good for him...

...damn glad he's on our side!

And I too disagree with the "swift-boating" analogy, though, true, he called himself that. But those ads weren't anything like what those fascists did to Kerry. Not the same ballgame. But so good to see he had support from the big name vets!

[Bitwit1234]

19. Not Swift Boat Ads

This ads were not the type of ads the Swift Boats ran. These ads were the truth...not one of the Swift boat ads were true they were mud slinging and lies..that's the difference in the democrats and republicans. These ads might have been tough on the republicans BUT THEY WERE TRUE AND THAT'S WHAT COUNTS AND MAKES THE DIFFERENCE. I am proud to be a democrat because we ARE THE PARTY OF MORAL VALUES.

[Joe Chi Minh]

20. Another American, "Can-Do" activist hero makes the Republican't

chickenhawks eat dirt.

[Straight Shooter]

26. I saw his ads on YouTube (and here).

VoteVets' ads didn't swiftboat anybody. They did, however, bludgeon a few politicians with the truth. It's about time.

[Acryliccalico]

30. It was beautiful

Thanks :kick:

[AnotherMother4Peace]

31. The ads were poignant. They made us see what this administration

has done to our brave soldiers. And it showed that our soldiers are back, and want justice.

[blue neen]

35. Amen to that. n/t

[Arugula Latte]

32. This is the type of stuff we've been screaming for for years.

These Chickenhawks need to be put on the defensive and have their noses rubbed in their messes.

[calimary]

33. K&R! AND bookmarked.

We ALL could take a page from this guy's playbook. Glad he's on OUR side!

:toast:

[FrenchieCat]

34. For 2008....we are going to be hitting hard and taking numbers....

not "Defending"...but rather we will be on the offense. Wes clark, we've got your back. Run, Wes, run!

[ProSense]

37. Soltz is great!

A Friend Of Mine: Jon Soltz

[demdiva]

41. Good for him

and those in the Dem Party that have supported him. The Swift Boaters is something we as a party cannot let happen again.