Does the left still fail to grasp the power of Internet, radio and cable news?

"This is the best $40,000 investment made by any political group, but it was only because of the news coverage that it got where it did," Cahill, a former underling to Sen. Teddy Kennedy, snapped Wednesday at Harvard University, where she appeared with Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager.

"In hindsight, maybe we should have put Senator Kerry out earlier. Perhaps we could have cut it off earlier," she fumed.

Sorry, Miss Cahill, you no longer get to decide what news to "cut off," outside of the New York Times, PBS, NPR, CBS, ABC, "Today" and the other shrinking Old Media outlets.

Mehlman noted that of course the ad created waves, because Kerry had made his few months in Vietnam decades ago the centerpiece of his campaign, rather than anything he might have accomplished in the Senate (which is very little) or as Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor.

"Because Senator Kerry was so focused on that part of his biography, it came out as an issue," Melman observed.

Even though it was congressional Democrats who sponsored legislation to renew the military draft, Mehlman acknowledged that the donkeys succeeded in fooling some ignorant voters into thinking that was Bush's idea.

"I think that was something that worked. It wasn't true, but it worked," he said.

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