The Complexion of the Election Changes with One Tape

The transcript of a videotape, reportedly of terrorist dirtbag Osama bin Laden, could have been lifted directly from a Michael Moore movie - or a John Kerry for President television ad, for that matter. The tape, aired by the al Qaeda propaganda organ Al-Jazeera, is probably authentic - meaning that bin Laden has not yet arrived at his reserved spot in Hell, which is of course a pity.

In the 18-minute video, bin Laden lays out the bottom-line for his terrorist organization - that their principal concern is security. Therefore, they will not attack any country that does not attack either them or "Islam", whatever the hell that means. Clearly, bin Laden means to influence the coming Presidential election, though reasonable people can (and probably will) disagree over who the terrorist scum is supporting (and he does have a dog in this fight, I believe).

The fact that the best he can apparently muster 4-days before the election is a videotape (as opposed to a bomb) is something that I take guardedly as a positive sign.

I am not going to attempt to get into the head of this homicidal psycho. I will make no attempt to analyze what this religious fanatic is trying to say. All I'm concerned about right now is the politics of this. To wit ...

There are several reasons why this could reflect negatively on President Bush's re-election chances. First, bin Laden is still alive - that fact alone should be a negative. Second, in the video bin Laden directly challenges the President in language fresh from Farenheit-911, right down to the references to corrupt Arab governments (that pass from father-to-son, you know) and Bush's continuing to read to schoolchildren about "Pet Goats", or some such thing, in Florida on that fateful day in September 2001.

I hope the fat, obnoxious, Champaign-socialist, a-hole who claims to hail from Flint is very proud of himself for providing our sworn enemy his video talking-points. BTW, I hear his mockumentary is selling very well in Iran these days.

That said, there are two reasons why I think the airing of this video the Friday before our national election is a big loss for Kerry:

1) It ensures that terrorism will be the ONLY issue people are thinking about when they walk into the voting booth in 4 days (big plus to Bush as he commands a comfortable double-digit lead in the "who better to handle terrorism" question in every poll - 20-points in today's Battleground poll, for example)

2) There are people in Kerry’s base (the Michael Moore Kool-Aid drinkers and other assorted pinko, pacifist, blame-America-first "anti-war"-types) who will buy bin Laden's nonsense about ‘Don’t attack us and we won’t attack you’

If Kerry, who will eventually have to say something about this, comes out and says that we need to hunt down Osama and kill him, he loses the Michael Moore wing of his coalition. If he says something like “Well, maybe we need to take this seriously” then he loses everyone else.

Still, there are more than a few reasons why this hurts Bush (as outlined above), but does anyone doubt what his response will be? (Osama must die!) The fact that reasonable people can (and should) plausibly think of Kerry even considering the other alternative (the “can’t we all just get along” nonsense) should doom him with enough middle-of-the-roaders to make the election swing back to the President rather substantially.