I'm going to be blunt about this: I believe it likely that people in the center of the Democratic party have considered staging attacks on themselves, of various sorts, in order to win sympathy and make conservatives look bad.

I've been telling a friend of mine this for several weeks now, and I haven't wanted to put this out there because I don't want to be giving anyone any ideas. But things have changed now, for reasons you'll see shortly.

Kerry's Imitative Campaign

Bush has been, as far as anyone can see, running a squeaky clean campaign. Though he has unmercifully attacked Kerry's policy stances, he has never demonized Kerry nor his service to the nation, but praises him given the chance. Besides annoying Kerry, this seems to have been working.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have been running one of the filthiest campaigns I've ever seen in my life, anywhere, from any party. Not just nationally, but in Missouri as well, where Clare McCaskill has plumbed new lows in her campaign against Matt Blunt.

Nationally, MoveOn.org likened Bush to that famous socialist Adoph Hitler. Liberals have gotten bad press for the violence, crudity, filth, and agression of the New York protests, and even smaller individual acts like ripping up a little girl's sign.

Life-shortening levels of frothing hatred in their peers aside, the Kerry campaign itself has also been relentlessly negative and deceptive, calling Bush and Republicans "crooks and liars", using the F-word profusely in public interviews, alleging world leaders have criticized Bush privately to Kerry, breaking a long-standing tradition of not campaigning during the opponents' political convention, and cooking up a "misery index" so dishonest it depicts the US economy under the Carter administration as the fond, halcyon days of yore.

Further Kerry's campaign has largely been imitative, and seems to have embraced every single tactic they have -- rightly or wrongly -- imputed to their opponents.

For example, I have recently heard reports that the Kerry campaign has run ads alleging Bush 'says one thing, does another', aping the content and language of successful Republican ads.

After the New York Republican convention, aware that the protests, with their obscenity, intimidation, fires, and violent attacks revealed a Democratic base full of rage and hatred, the Kerry campaign went on the offensive, depicting the Republican convention and delegates as full of "hatred", instead of the protestors.

Kerry falsely characterized "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth", which attacked Kerry's Vietnam-era activities, as a Republican creation. He even ran ads falsely blaming Bush for this "smear" -- the false charge itself a smear!

Though the charge of partisan creation and control was false, and the tactic allegedly reprehensible, Democrats then created "Texans for Truth", with similar name and tactics (though a lot less documentation), to attack Bush's Vietnam-era service!

In the new ad, retired lieutenant colonel Robert Mintz says he "heard George W. Bush get up there and say, 'I served in the 187th Air National Guard in Montgomery, Alabama.'

"I said, 'Really? That was my unit. And I don't remember seeing you there,' " Mintz says. "So I called my friends and said, 'Did you know that George Bush served in our unit?' And everyone said, 'No, I never saw him there.' It would be impossible to be unseen in a unit of that size."

After Kerry and his supporters depicted SVT as a "dirty trick", based in "lies", suddenly a number of forged memos whose content just happened to support Kerry's "Fortunate Son" campaign surfaced, and were dutifully portrayed as the real thing by sympathetic CBS producers. The memos, now revealed as "lies", are found to have all the marks of a political "dirty trick", and are apparently linked to the Kerry campaign!

So now with the Kerry campaign fearing that the public may see them as sponsors of underhanded, anonymous dirty tricks, I fear they may undertake actions to depict the Bush administration as sponsors of underhanded, anonymous dirty tricks.

In particular, I expect it may occur to them to attack themselves, to "even up the score" a bit and make Bush look as bad as they think they appear to the public now. As I have told a friend of mine, these attacks would have to be (1) untraceable, (2) would have to be clearly directed against Democratic targets in way that clearly impugns Bush supporters, and (3) would probably have rather minor harm, however dangerous they might "seem" -- nobody really wants to hurt themselves.

Are the Wheels in Motion?

Joshua Micah Marshall runs "Talking Point Memo", a leftist blog with an interesting name. Oddly, in looking at the timeline of 60 Minutes scandal, blogger Baseball Crank notes that Josh seems to have curiously presaged a number of events in the "Fortunate Son" campaign, asking "out of the blue" for Ben Barnes to come forward and start talking a week before he did, and then "pushing the Barnes-is-talking story" at the same time it ran in Salon, six days before Barnes was supposedly interviewed by Dan Rather.

Is Joshua getting "fed" from somewhere? Are Democrats attempting to orchestrate their charges using liberal bloggers? There are reasons to think so: In keeping with my theme of "projection", I'd note Democrats do constantly charge that's what Republicans are doing, and we now know that Atrios (of Escaton) is, in fact, paid by Soros.

I don't know, but even if he's just serendipitous, I found it curious that, in checking out his site, I found a link to this story, which seems to fit with my own predictions:

Vandals set fire to signs and wrote pro-President Bush messages on the front of Lafayette’s Democratic Party Headquarters, the second time the office was hit by vandals.

How strange, that Republicans, who are comfortably ahead and gaining ground in Louisiana, would now supposedly vent their frustration and "rage" against John Kerry?

Further, I found it interesting that the crime had happened on a day when the office would normally have been open: How could outsiders have known the change in plans or whether anyone would have been dropping by on that day?

The crime had all the hallmarks I'd predicted: Minor damage, untraceability, and and clearly-placed evidence which made sure it looked as though a Bush supporter, and not just some neighborhood kids, had done it.

But what Bush supporter would try to increase Bush's popularity by committing a crime and writing Bush's name on the crime scene?

Perhaps the next ones will be different, rather than using graffitti, will use "plants" who will go inside the Bush campaign, volunteer, and then suddenly quit, charging horrible things are going on, to the press. We've already seen several such "disguise" attacks ("Code Pink", Thomas Frampton, and fake "Young Republicans") take place at the Republican convention (and none at the Democratic convention). So there's clearly a precedent, and some Kerry supporters are already clearly thinking along these lines.

Or perhaps both tactics will be used in conjuction? Or something other tactic?

I would advise conservatives to keep a close eye on other Democratic headquarters, and attempt to catch anyone doing serious damage in the act.

Finally, let's note that liberal Susan Estrich has basicly promised that her peers will employ (more) of these "unfair" (in her own depiction!) tactics, even predicting (very closely!) the appearance of a group named "Dead Texans for Truth" or "Texas National Guardsmen for Truth"! (She also predicts some women may come forward and make scandalous charges against the president.)

Hey, it's all fair when you're behind in the polls, and have convinced yourself that any question raised about your candidate is "unfair" or a "lie", regardless of what the evidence or facts are. When you're in this mode, everything you do is ethically justifiable in your own eyes.

Who Resorts to "Dirty Tricks"?

When most of us think of "dirty tricks", we think of Republican Richard Nixon and his various illegal actions against the Democrats of his era. Like many, I grew up thinking dirty tricks were the exclusive domain of Republicans. Carter and Dukakis, though inept and perhaps even incompetant, were not, to my knowledge, purveyors of dirty tricks or personal attacks.

But it seems all that changed during the Clinton years, when attack dogs like James Carville brought us to new lows, responding to a Paul Jones' claim she had been raped by publicly defaming her, feeding the press statements like "Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find."

Today dirty tricks and smears seems to be popular among the left. As mentioned, Soros' "Hitler" ad set new lows for personal campaign attacks. Recently, Claremont psychology professor Kerri Dunn vandalized her own car. The CBS forgeries undoubtedly have leftist origins, and Kitty Kelly's lurid smears seem to have been completed and released just in time to influence the November vote in Kerry's favor. And then there was the AP article which put nonexistant "boos" for a sick President Clinton into the mouths of Republicans.

Dirty tricks come into play in three ways. Like Nero burning Rome, or Hitler with the Reichstag, they can be used by those already firmly in power as a pretext for asserting even more control.

For relative unknowns, they can be used to demonize opponents and gain attention, as Professor Kerri Dunn did when she vandalized her own car, or as Al Sharpton used Tawana Brawley's fraud. I'm also reminded of Michael Bellesailles, who claimed he constantly received "death threats" from conservatives (threats he strangely never reported to the police) for having written The Arming of America, which alleged America was largely a gun-free nation until after the Civil War. When the book was revealed to be a blatant fraud, I couldn't help but suspect the author's "death threat" allegations were just as reliable and honest.

But during a competition for power, dirty tricks are a tool of the desparate, unethical loser. Take Nixon: even though he was ahead in the polls, we now understand him to have been so paranoid that he felt he was in a losing position and had no other choice. And Watergate wasn't the first such trick, rather it was the next installment in a sequence of unethical actions.

Bush has been running a clean campaign this time around, and it seems to have been working. Why, when the current strategy was working, when he was comfortably ahead, would he suddenly change course and start pulling dirty tricks? Such a tactic would make no sense at all.

On the other hand, I can see how another group might find the idea tempting...

Wrap Up

I hope I'm wrong. This nation is divided badly enough without any more dirty tricks. Whether the perpetrators were liberal or conservative, it would be an awful thing for all concerned. And no matter what the truth, based on my current experience, I fear many on the left would blame conservatives in either case, no matter how strong the evidence to the contrary.

And, bad as I think of Kerry's top people now, I don't really want to have to think any worse of them. It give me no joy whatsoever. I want two good political opponents, not one or more horrible ones.

Perhaps Kerry's people will feel that they look bad enough from the 60 Minutes scandal that they'll think the public would suspect them if they pulled such a self-inflicted dirty trick. I don't know. But if Marshall's "Talking Points Memo" is named for what it truly is, then perhaps, horrifyingly, we "ain't seen nothin' yet".

As it is, I fear the worst, but am hoping for the best.