For the younger folks: Kerry got some seriously badass medals for his military service in Vietnam. People who had been on the same boat as he did, but at a different time, worked with the Republican party to claim that he hadn’t really done what he did. The press ate this up, and distributed it widely, costing him public support and likely the election.
If you don’t know that rather obscure reference the sentence turns into a garden path one.
I’m not even a American native so how should I know. Watergate I grok, this I’ve not heard of
If you give up on society this easy i think you are the problem, though.