Could it happen that an ultra-conservative right wing idealogue's lesbian daughter could be used to make him look better to other ultra-conservative right wing idealogues?
Let's remember, being gay is (to most of the extreme X-tian right, which is arguably this administration's strongest base) not only a choice, but also a sin. You might think that having a gay child would appear to them as a sign of failed parenthood.
Kerry, in a prime example of douchebaggery, played the "your VP has a lesbian daughter" card in the last debate. Kerry obvioiusly hoped to paint the Bush administration as a bunch of gay-loving queer-raising hypocrites, who, while they may talk tough about protecting God-fearing breeder families from the gay scourge, were all the while creating homosexual offspring themselves. The horror!
But this was a retarded thing for Kerry to do, for several reasons:
1) Edwards already played the card, why reiterate?
2) As a "Masachussetts liberal," he's not supposed to hate gay people and use others' hatred of gay people as a political weapon. He's at least equally alienating his own base with this bullshit.
3) The ultra-Christian-right will never, ever vote for Kerry, no matter how gay Cheney's daughter is, due to some basic clashes of ideology (right to choose primarilly)
4) Now Kerry's ready to be painted as evil for bringing Cheney's daughter into the mess of politics
Of course, the Bush administration is now turning this into a scandal, rallying their base against those "vicious" attacks by John Kerry, but I remain unconvinced that these particular crocodile tears will have the desired impact.
Kerry never actually said anything bad about Cheney or his daughter, he only mentioned her existence in an effort to let the public connect the dots. It's pretty obvious how he wanted those dots to be connected, but there's nothing he said that can be quoted to make him look like he was criticizing Cheney - which is going to make Bush's attempted spin difficult. In the world of uninformed voters making decisions based on 45-second snippets on the local news and 30-second attack ads, if you can't produce a soundbyte to prove it, it never happened.
I'm no Kerry appologist, and it was certainly a stupid and annoying thing for him to say, but let's look at the bigger picture: mentioning that your opponent's running mate has a lesbian daughter, or rushing to war over false pretenses? Sorry W, you're still not convincing me.
Of course, neither is John Kerry.