Senator Kerry posted a diary on Daily Kos this week addressing the Republican fear-and-smear machine and how we all need to fight back against the right wing’s ongoing and underhanded pursuit of the politics of personal destruction:

I hate the term “Swiftboating.” I hate how the name of the boats we honored when we were in uniform in Vietnam has become a verb for the twisted politics of Karl Rove.

But today we need to fight the right wing’s tactics not just to reclaim a word, but to reclaim our democracy.

And for anyone who thinks, “we don’t even have a nominee yet, are the Republicans really attacking Democratic presidential candidates already?” — the answer is not just yes, but it matters (and, yes, some people are really asking that).

Just think back to April of 2003. Yes, 2003.

In the New York Times the Republican narrative was first introduced:

“Another Bush adviser said of Mr. Kerry, ‘He looks French’.”

In the same article, anonymous Republicans described John Edwards as the “Breck Girl”.

Bottom line — we can’t wait until we have a Democratic ticket to combat the right wing’s efforts to “frame” our candidates.

Yesterday, I sent out an email to Barack Obama’s email community urging people to fight against the vicious smears from the modern conservative movement (they began in a right-wing magazine) that have been bouncing around the Internet for months.

I’m supporting Barack Obama because I think he’s the right person for this moment, but I have — and I will — condemn and fight against these kinds of smears no matter who is the target.

In the last few years, I’ve defended Jack Murtha, Patrick Murphy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and others (including a candidate in a state house race in New Jersey) from the smears of the right wing, and I’ll defend many more patriots in the months ahead.

I’ll defend the nominee of our party, no matter who it is, and I’ll defend people like Mark Udall in a Senate race in Colorado, or Jon Powers in a House race in central New York, or state house candidates across the country.

The right-wing has nothing to offer but fear and smears, and they are gearing up to deliver plenty of it.

Already we hear of a conservative group with ties to the Bush White House — Freedom’s Watch — that plans to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on this election. I think we all know enough about how the right-wing operates to know that this money won’t go to helping voters make informed choices. That money will go to smearing candidates across America, up and down the ballot.

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I’ll be devoting some serious time, resources, and energy from both my staff and myself in fighting these smears and empowering all of you to fight them as well. I’ll have more on what you can do to help combat smears as we go forward.

We can’t let the right-wing steal another election with lies and distortions.