The progressive community (myself included) was all up in arms regarding the ABC 9/11 hack job,
The Path to 9/11. The broadcast did motivate us to contact ABC affiliates and advertisers, countless diaries and news stories were done, and the media dissected it left and right. But looking back on it 2 months later, it didn't really matter much.
Why?
- The documentary was preaching to the choir. The same people that believed this docu-drama as fact are the same people that thought we had found WMD's in Iraq. These people were never going to vote for a Democratic candidate anyway.
- 9/11 was not an issue in the election, nor was domestic security. The 2 main issues coming out of the election were Iraq and republican corruption. I don't think I even heard the phrase "9/11" in the month before the election. I saw some bin Laden images used, but that only reminded people that he hadn't been caught.
One positive thing that did occur is that the movie did remind us to keep vigilant on the kind of stuff that is disseminated by the media. (
Media Matters does a GREAT job monitoring this). I think that the current political realignment in the Congress will keep egregious lies like this from being created by the MSM in the first place, hopefully.
Update: My original intention of this diary was to say that the movie itself had no effect on the election. I think we were afraid that the movie would turn people against the Democrats.
However, as it has been pointed out in the comments - the uproar, including the smack down of Chris Wallace by President Clinton, did contribute to our aggressiveness in the last 2 months before the election. After the movie hype subsided, it was almost as if 9/11 became a non-issue. Did the other side burn out the issue so it became unusable?