I always thought "swiftboating" meant smears directed towards military veterans

[BlueStater]

Now it's supposedly "smears" against any politician.

Maybe we should stop using the term altogether. Those swiftboat assholes don't deserve that kind of recognition.

[LordJFT]

1. it originally started as just one specific group that targeted kerry and cleland

Over time it's gotten a broader and broader meaning. This is true of many words. POSH for example used to refer specifically to people who sailed on the port side on the way out and the starboard side home, but now is used to refer to pretty much anything high class.

[splat]

2. It outed those embellishing combat records -- not a bad thing -- now it's meaningless

Vetting, legitimate political debate are all called swiftboating so people won't consider them. It's more dumbing down.

[depakid]

3. "dumbing down" -similar to putting the suffix "gate" on ever minor scandal

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Huh?

It was total bullshit. Kerry didn't embelish his combat record, the Swiftboat group just made shit up.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Seeing as how it has been in existence for not quite 4 years

'always' is a bit of a stretch.

Here is what I think it means: a completely over the top smear against a political candidate that is then treated as if it had enormous merit by the bullshit media system, which proceeds to provide free airtime to the smear by replaying it or commenting on it in an endless loop for weeks on end. To be a true swiftboat attack the smear should attempt to negate a major strength of the candidate, for example Kerry's distinguished war service as contrasted to Bush's ne'er do well back home malingering. An extended swiftboat attack occurs when the original charges become dubious and unsustainable and the attackers, rather than bothering to defend them, simply move on to a somewhat different angle on the same attack. Once again the original Kerry attacks followed this pattern, although this sort of rhetorical tactic has a long history and did not start in 2004.

The Dean Scream was a pre-Kerry swiftboat event. It established that a candidate can in fact be destroyed overnight by a tape-loop.

The Wright-attack was more of a Dean-scream event, however it went after Obama's strength of racial transcendence and thus I believe qualifies as swiftboating.

[Cha]

7. Indepth analysis of Swiftboating by

WarrenStupidity..Thanks Warren. And hilary is in Full On Swiftboating Mode against Obama but Obama and his Elite Rapid Response Squad are right there with a Counterpunch.

[anonymous171]

6. Swiftboating is the act of

taking a lie (or a misrepresentation of truth) and repeating it as truth.