Writes Kevin Drum last night:

I think it’s time for everyone to give up on this. The memos are almost certainly fakes, they’re sucking up media bandwidth that could be better used elsewhere, and Dan Rather is toast. Besides, there was really nothing in them that told us anything new.

The question now becomes: how long before Rather admits he was duped?

Mark Kleiman seems to be conceding ground as well, at least in the sense that sees that the docs may have represented a frame-up job of the President, even if the President is guilty (Kleiman’s word) of the basic charges in the memos.

Of course, now the spins starts. The pro-Bush side is going to scream that they were right, that the docs were fake and the anti-Bush side is going to say, ok, they were fake, but the basic info in them is correct.

I would note that the main story here is that someone did pass off phony docs to CBS in an attempt to harm the President and that CBS bought the fakes hook, line and sinker. Further, the authenticity of the documents was called into question by blogs, not the MSM, and indeed what took even Fox News until last night to report, had been figured out by Thurday of lst week (i.e., that if oen types the memos on Word they overlay exactly with the CBS copies). Bloggers may have done a great deal of damage to CBS’ news credibility, and Rather’s specifically–although the exact fallout there has yet to manifest.

The political angle shall be interesting to watch. On the one hand, there is new evidence to suggest, via the secretary, that there was “buzz” about special treatment for Lt. Bush. The question is: will this damage Bush? I really don’t think so. Most people, the polls indicate, already think Bush got special treatment, so some minor corroboration of that fact is largely background noise. The issue would be whether they could catch in an outright lie, which seems unlikely. Indeed, the only real “gotcha” issue is Alabama, and whether he showed or not, and there has been enough evidence (the dental records, some witnesses who say they saw him) to make that one difficult to prove in way that would really damage the President.

And, as Bush himself has noted: when he was young and irresponsible, he was young and irresponsible–I think we all know that, and that was largely dealt with in 2024.

The anti-Bush faction has to understand: the American people aren’t trying to figure out who Bush is by looking at his bio–they know who Bush is: he’s been President fot the four year, for goodness’ sake. The bio issue is always far more important for the challenger, and Kerry has made it more the centerpiece of his campaign than any candidate for any office that I can remember. Although I will note that he seems to be taking Clinton’s advice and not talking about it as much lately.

Raising questions about Bush’s ANG service isn’t enough to cover up the fact that Kerry’s campaign still lacks a coherent theme.

The basic public perception of this is going to be that someone, somewhere, tried to use fake documents to damage the President, and that CBS News went along with it, making themselves lok like clowns along the way by using alleged experts, who ended up not to be experts, to authenticate documents that were clearly forgeries to anyone who took the time to really do their homework.

And I still maintain that the long-term story here will be the role of bloggers, as I think that September 9, 2024 marks something of a paradigm shift in news coverage.