It’s going to take years for the Democratic Party to recover from the damage they’re doing to their own credibility in this presidential election. The latest example of deceptive DNC practices is revealed by Howard Kurtz: Some Kerry Spots Never Make the Air.

John F. Kerry’s strategists pride themselves on the sheer speed of their advertising effort as they churn out one response after another to President Bush’s attack spots.

Now it turns out that some of the Kerry commercials are being written, edited, produced and put on satellites for the purpose of generating news articles. They have not actually aired on any network or local station — except in reports about the Democrat’s campaign.

Since Sept. 1, the Kerry camp has released and publicized more than half a dozen commercials, on subjects ranging from taxes to health care to the war in Iraq, without buying time for them, either nationally or in battleground states. Others have run in only one or two markets after being unveiled with considerable fanfare. In effect, these have been video news releases purporting to be substantial paid advertising.

“We’re certainly not trying to be disingenuous,” Tad Devine, a senior Kerry adviser, said yesterday. “We’ve announced that we’ve created these and are prepared to use them at a time and place of our choosing.” He said the Kerry team had to be able to show Bush’s campaign “that the gun is loaded on this side, too.”

Evan Tracey, an analyst at TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising, called the phantom ads — which have routinely been covered by The Washington Post and other news organizations — “political product placement. But they’re getting away with it, because the press is playing them. When the press covers a new Bush ad, the story always adds ‘and Kerry released an ad of his own.’ He’s getting into the news chatter.”

Mark McKinnon, Bush’s media adviser, said the president’s campaign has never announced an ad that has not run.