Josh Marshall is channeling my deepest convictions. He's inside my head eloquently speaking my mind.

The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making. And he needs to make it right now.

Relax Josh. All of us reached a high level of outrage over the blatent lies directed at Kerry this last week. Kerry's handling it like an experienced prosecutor should, meticulously making that very case from the ground up, exhibit by exhibit, so that by the end of the day we the jury will be able to reach no other reasonable conclusion than Bush is quilty of malfeasonce in office, dereliction of duty, and a complete breach of his fiduciary duty to us.

Not only was Kerry a consumate prosecutor, he's got a pretty good second chair in Edwards to carry his briefcase. This Swifty thing is the Mother of all Backfires. Kerry saw it coming the day he decided to run for the nomination and has been waiting, prepared to expose the coward's dissembler nature right before our eyes. Kerry is walking the line of strong reasoned indignation to illustrate his victimization while putting Bush on the defensive.

Much like Josh Marshall has been trying to succinctly explain the nexus between Bush's failed presidency and his lack of moral fortitude (which he nails, please read the whole post), I have been saying since abu Ghraib that we are no longer mere voters. We are a Jury consisting of 270 or more electoral votes.