(TND) — Political experts doubt that voters will care about Republicans’ attacks on the military career of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

“This is the traditional Swift boating that we saw against John Kerry,” Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University, said Monday. “It’s not clear that it will work.”

Kerry – a Vietnam veteran, senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate – faced a barrage of negative ads from the political advocacy group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during his losing campaign against Republican President George W. Bush.

This group accused Kerry of lying about his military record, just as Republicans led by Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, are now doing about Walz.

And there’s another similarity. Chris LaCivita, co-manager of President Donald Trump’s campaign, played a key role in the Swift Boat ads two decades ago.

Vance attacked Walz’s decision to leave the military and the way Walz characterized his service.

Both men are veterans.

Walz spent 24 years in the Army National Guards of Nebraska and Minnesota.

Vance served in the Marines from 2003 to 2007 and was deployed to Iraq.

Vance criticized Walz’s decision to retire from military service in 2005, shortly before his unit was deployed to Iraq.

At that time, Walz was running for a seat in Congress.

Vance also criticized Walz for, as he put it, “lying about his own record.”

Vance was referring to a 2018 video in which Walz, who had never served in war himself, told a crowd that their efforts to combat gun violence were to ensure that private citizens did not have access to “the weapons of war that I carried in war.”

The Harris-Walz campaign team said on Saturday that Walz had “misspoken” in the 2018 video.

Vance told CNN in a Sunday interview that Vice President Kamala Harris made a “serious error of judgment” in choosing Walz as her running mate.

Seth McKee, a politics professor at Oklahoma State University, said the dynamics at play this time are very different from those in the Swift Boat attacks 20 years ago.

At that time, the country’s wounds were still fresh from the September 11 attacks and American troops were fighting in Iraq.

“I think it worked because voters at the time viewed the Republican Party as a tough, warmongering, anti-terrorist party that was in charge because at the time of 9/11, George W. Bush was president,” McKee said.

Now Trump and Vance are presenting themselves as “isolationists who put America first,” McKee said.

And although Vance has military credibility, McKee said, her campaign team’s foreign policy positions could make it difficult for this line of attack to gain traction against Walz.

Belt said Walz is still such an unknown for many voters that it could be difficult for Republicans to get their criticism across.

Belt said the Trump campaign has stalled somewhat following Harris’ successful run as the Democratic surrogate candidate to President Joe Biden. And the attacks on Walz’s military record are an attempt to tarnish the shine of the Harris-Walz campaign.

“You can all throw spaghetti at the wall now,” Belt said.

But how will this debate be received by veterans?

Allison Jaslow, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said veterans are not a “monolith” when it comes to voting. Some are on Vance’s side, others are on Walz’s side.

However, she praised both campaign teams for selecting veterans as candidates, particularly those who had served in the ranks after 9/11.

And she said that should be the focus.

“In the age of the all-volunteer army, these are two men who volunteered to serve and wore the uniform when so many other fellow Americans did not. Overall, this should be something we should be proud of and celebrate, not something we should fight in the mud about,” Jaslow said.