The pushback on behalf of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has begun.  Blumenthal has come under fire after the New York Times revealed that he made misleading statements about his Vietnam service:

We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

Now the DSCC is pushing back, releasing video from this year where Blumenthal makes clear that he did not serve in Vietnam.

Marc Ambinder chimes in:

The facts are not unambiguous. The best the Times has is statements where Blumenthal talked about "returning" or "getting back" from Vietnam, but there are plenty of instances where he acknowledges that he never served overseas. That said, he never seemed to correct the impression that he did serve overseas.

I'm extraordinarily cynical about politicians lying, but if this is the best Blumenthal can do, he's in trouble.  First, a politician who lies about what he's going to do in office or having an affair is one thing; lying about military service in Vietnam strikes me as being on a whole different level of problematic when the public is evaluating a lie.  Second, contrary to Ambinder's impression, I don't think voters grade these things on an average.  If you plainly misstate facts in 1/4 of your speeches, you don't get an overall "C" for truthiness if you state things correctly 3/4 of the time.  Unless there's video of Blumenthal going back and correcting himself in the same speech, or issuing retractions shortly thereafter, there's not much of a defense to this.  The best thing Blumenthal has going for him is that this is May, not September.

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