“We are sinking fast. Passengers being put into boats.”

So Kerry is the deck chairs a bit, adding former Clinton spokesperson Joe Lockhart, among others, to his campaign Dream Team.
Joe Lockhart?
Let’s be serious: can anyone actually imagine Kerry, or his senior advisors, suddenly interrupting a staff meeting to declare: “We’re screwed! Get Joe Lockhart on the horn — he’s the only one who can save our asses!”
I don’t think so. Joe’s a nice guy and all, but a Rove-like Svengali he ain’t. Flacking for Oracle might be heavy on the dukats, but it isn’t exactly the political big leagues.
But forget Joe for a moment (who?). The even worse news for Kerry is that despite the exceptional job his campaign has been doing at executing political hari-kari, the Bush team hasn’t even started to attack him yet. All the damage thus far has been self-inflicted, or at the hands of the Swift Vets (also arguably self-inflicted, allowing that karma sometimes takes a while to come around — but it does come around). And don’t give me any nonsense about how Bush is behind the Swifties; these guys have hated Kerry’s guts for thirty years, and they show every intention of hating him for thirty more.
No, Kerry’s recent Swift-Vet-driven collapse is the political equivalent of a boxer being clocked by a random spectator on his way to the ring. (OK, a not-quite random spectator, more like one who’s been nursing a 30-year grudge). Somewhere, Karl Rove is sitting in quiet misery, gloomily considering the prospect that by the time he’s allowed to open up on Kerry with the big guns, the poor sod may have already self-destructed. Takes all the fun out of it.
So Kerry, fading in the polls, disliked by the electorate, faces the unappealing prospect of not only the traditional post-convention bounce for Bush, but that the true campaign hasn’t even started yet. Who knows what surprises Rove & Co. have in store for the hapless Senator? All we can know for sure is that they’ve got some, and they’re unlikely to be of the pleasant sort.
I think it’s going to be a rough September, Senator…