Mark at The Premise blows McCain and Clinton out of the water.

Fallout from the mugging of John Kerry seems to have fallen off, so I thought I’d tie up a few loose ends. For a wrap-up, including who supported Senator Kerry and who backpedaled in the face of the Republican onslaught, see Liberal Values and Taylor Marsh. For speculation about how this all might affect the elections, see Donkey Rising.

I was particularly glad to see Sherrod Brown, Eric Massa and Max Cleland standing up for Mr. Kerry. I’m not concerned about Harold Ford, Jr. or anyone else in a tight race distancing themselves, because I know they’ve put millions of dollars and years of their lives into next Tuesday. There are two people, however, who deserve a special place in hell, and I’ll be getting to them in a moment...

...Which brings me to 2008, and the first point I’ll make about the race for the White House. There are only two ways candidates can run: either emphasize national security, or ignore national security and run as a political personality. The leading candidates in each party, John McCain in the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party, are each respectively well-positioned for these approaches. Senator McCain is a veteran and a hawk, eager to expand the war in Iraq. Ms. Clinton has no national security credentials, but is fawned over as Democratic royalty. They are both clearly formidable contenders.

But they also share something else in common. When George Bush and the Republican Party decided to beat John Kerry down, John McCain and Hillary Clinton decided to pile on and add a few kicks of their own. Both of these people know John Kerry personally, they know the Republican playbook first hand, they’ve been abused by these same people themselves, and they know full well that John Kerry would never have disparaged the troops. But they both saw a political opportunity to profit by the bloody works of George Bush and Karl Rove, and they didn’t hesitate to take it.

John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The new Liebermans.