I spent a few minutes this morning wandering the fever swaps over at Democratic Underground. Was nice to see there were a few sane folks over there, pointing out that the documents look to be forgeries. Alas, they were lonely voices crying out in the wilderness as their comrades told them in not-so-veiled terms to, uh, stuff it.

Meanwhile, Democratic Party leaders like McAuliffe are -- sure, 100% sure, I tells ya -- that nobody on their team would do such a thing. Furthermore (you knew this was coming, didn't you?) it was probably Bush who forged those documents which appeared so damning to his National Guard Service.

Finally, after CBS briefly announced there would be an "internal investigation", Dan Rather ist sticking to his guns: Everything's authentic -- move along folks, nothing ot see here -- and there will be no investigation.

Well, what are we to make of all this?

It seems clear that CBS is hiding something, as admissions have come out that they, themselves suspected something fishy when they noticed Killian's signature didn't match. Now, the big question: Is CBS just protecting their own butts or is this something bigger?

I suspect the answer is (B), for two reasons:

(1) They've repeatedly assured us they have "unimpeachable" sources. If the documents can be shown false, then it is clear the "unimpeachables" here must also be in on it. Yet if they're so darned "unimpeachable", why not bring 'em out so we can, uh, impeach 'em?

(2) This is speculation, and perhaps I give them too much credit, but I suspect they'd be willing to do a mea culpa if they were snookered and it revived their credibility. If so, their refusal points to bigger fish: Either Rather himself, or perhaps even (and I expect this would be far worse, from Rather's POV) someone with a "(D)" next to their name.

And I don't think I'd need to say what it would do to the Kerry campaign if they, or someone close to them, were caught in a "dirty tricks" scandal. Which, of course, this is if it's forged. And it sure did come from Bush's folk, unless, perhaps, you want to claim Rather is now working to protect Bush.

It was interesting to see how folks thought over at DU. Except for one or two "let's drop this" voices, there were two dominant strains of thought: (1) This is real, and it proves Bush sucks, and (2) If this was a forgery, it was created by Bush & co, which proves he sucks.

That third obvious option -- you know, that it was a forgery, perpetrated by someone who wanted to make Bush look bad (e.g. a Democrat) -- appeared to be unthinkable. Or at least unsayable.

Perhaps I'm being overly harsh, but that seems telling: When I heard about the memos, I wondered briefly if they might be true. But it smelled fishy, and already contradicted other things we knew, so I suspected we'd be finding out more about them soon.

And I was willing to believe Barnes' tale (that he pulled strings to get Bush in the Guard) might have had some truth to it too, although I found his sudden change in tone from 2000 to be suspicious. I might have spun it, sure: "So he did Bush a favor -- unasked-for. How does that make Bush wrong?" But I wouldn't have failed to consider it a possibility, even briefly.

But that's looking less likely too, now that his own daughter, Amy, it would appear, has gone on talk radio and said he'd admitted the charges were untrue, but said he'd planned to use them should Kerry drop in the polls. Hmmm... interesting timing.

(Should we take her word for it, assuming it was really her? No more or less than we should take her father's word about Bush, I'd maintain. Barnes certainly has an obvious motive, being a prominent Democrat.)

Bush-hatred can drive people to do some pretty stupid things.

But that's how hate works.

I suspect this, and/or something else, will blow up in Kerry's face. No doubt, Bush will be blamed, as he is for flabby thighs, bird droppings, and each terrorist's bomb which detonates anywhere in the world. But in the end, I've got a pretty strong hunch Kerry's campaign is done for.

And you know what that means.

Rather than, perhaps, spending a bit of time in introspection, and asking what they did wrong, I suspect the left will do the usual thing, the thing they're doing even now: Look to pin blame elsewhere, via any theory, no matter how absurd. Just as they did in 2002, when Democratic partisans took refuge in the theory that Wellstone had been assassinated, and the media, ever controlled by Bush (yes, Dan Rather is a crypto-Republican!) spun Wellstone's funeral into the hateful, grossly partisan affair we saw it to be.

Which means four more years of bubbling, seething rage and hatred, four more years of a need to resort to any conspiracy theory in order to render Bush fully without any redeeming trait -- and the left without any significant fault, other than perhaps their legendary (indeed, mythical even) "niceness".

Let's not kid ourselves, folks: This is about will-to-power, nothing less. And, denied, that desire will grow stronger. If Democrats are willing, at this point, to overlook MoveOn.org's rhetorical pulchritude and Kerry's blatant slams while hopping up and down in furious, hypocritical anger over alleged "hatred" at the Republican convention, I can't imagine what extremes they will find excusable in four years.

I'm not trying to pull a cheap rhetorical trick, but recall what motivated the German people in the 30's: The rhetoric of rightful power wrongly denied (the Treaty of Versailles), seething hatred, a willingness to believe in any conspiracy theory, no matter how contradictory or twisty, which lays blame for all ills at the feet of their chosen enemies, and a desire to restore their rightful place in the world: i.e. the position of being in charge, at the top.

This is also the fuel that powers the extremist form of Islam we see today.

Consider seriously that these conditions are also increasingly present on the left, and will be doubly-so when they lose the next election.