Reality Check

Joe Trippi makes a necessary point about the Kerry FEC filing. Hardblogger doesn't seem to be link friendly, so you'll just have to believe me that I'm quoting him accurately:

The second thing I wanted to weigh in on is the Kerry Campaign’s complaint to the Federal Election Commission about illegal coordination between the Bush campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. It’s a total joke. I’ve been in politics for over 30 years now and everyone knows filing a complaint with the FEC is pointless. You could have pictures of Karl Rove writing the scripts and feeding these guys their lines and the FEC still wouldn’t take any action. And the same would be true, by the way, if it was the Kerry campaign that was violating the law. The FEC has never met a complaint it couldn’t ignore until after the election or maybe…forever.

You want to clean up politics? Give the FEC real teeth – like forfeiture of office if you are caught coordinating illegally. Today the risk is a slap on the wrist and a ridiculous fine. And when you are running for President of the United States I am sorry to say – a fine after the election is not enough to stop otherwise good people from doing outrageous things, including breaking the law. The equivalent of the death penalty – losing office ill got by breaking the law is something I think is long overdue.

There's no arguing with him on the FEC. The point of the complaint, however, seems to me to be more "meta"; in other words, the point is to shift the terrain from Kerry's service record 35 years ago to Bush's connections to a smear campaign today. The backlash is coming.