Swift Boating

Pat Buchannan's latest article is entitled "Will Bloomberg Swift-Boat Hillary?" By Swift-boating, Buchannan apparently means make more difficult to run.

How so? First, the mayor is Jewish and is best-known and most loved among Jewish voters and denizens of the Big Apple, where he is more popular than Rudy. Both constituencies are Democratic.

Even in his 49-state triumph, Richard Nixon won only a third of the Jewish vote. In his 49-state landslide, Reagan carried even less. In 2006, by one survey, the Jewish vote went 88 percent Democratic. As for New York City, that has long been the Democrats' key to New York State.

The first effect of a Bloomberg candidacy would be to siphon off perhaps 2 million votes from Hillary in New York, putting the state in play for the Republicans. The same would be true in New Jersey and Connecticut.

That Buchannan is a bit focused on the Jews won't surprise many.

Frankly I'm more surprised about the expansion of the term Swift Boating to include simply running against somebody. Swiftboating originally meant lying about a candidate's past/bringing up unpleasant truths about a candidate's past (depending on what side of the fence you are on - personally I think the Swiftboat vets were liars). Now it means any action that could be detrimental to a campaign. Apparently.