My first diary post. A bit long, apologies all around.
One of the biggest obstacles that any Democratic candidate will face is the simple fact that the media as a whole is enamored of Bush, willing to let slide most of his misdeeds and lies, and to nit-pick on any perceived flaws in his opponent. The examples are already starting to pile up in Election 2004:
- The draft issue. Dean avoided the draft with a perfectly legit medical deferment. Admits that he didn't want to go to Vietnam, that it looks bad that he went skiing. Bush got special treatment to get into the Air National Guard, then went AWOL for 16 months. Dean's history gets the magnifying glass treatment, while Bush's gets . . . nothing. Or close to it. The only "mainstream" mention I've seen this fall was William Saletan's piece in Slate a few days ago. The news pages of the Times, WaPo, nothing. Not a single big liberal pundit has picked up on it.
- Gaffes. Dean says "the former Soviet Union," then says just "Soviet Union" a couple of times. Gets slammed right and left, with liberal pundits worrying over how bad this looks (can you imagine conservative pundits selling out one of their own so easily?). Bush says, well, stuff that just has no connection to reality on a daily basis, and nobody says boo.
- Secrets. Dean's archives are officially sealed. Bush's archives are labeled "open for viewing," but in reality are locked up tight. Yet the mainstream media goes with the "open for viewing" label, and slams Dean for getting his facts wrong. Again, liberal pundits and allegedly unbiased reporters indulge in this behavior.
This kind of thing absolutely killed Gore last time out, and it'll kill whichever Democrat gets the nomination. In part, that's because our "liberal" pundits have no sense of loyalty. Like
Richard Cohen in today's WaPo, they'll go out of their way to write about the Democrat's faults just to show they're not
partisan. God forbid.
Reporters who think of themselves as mainstream really have no excuse, either. They so often just get the basic facts wrong, or leave out relevant facts, as in the above examples.
So here's my question: what can we do about it? By "we" I mean each of us individually, as a collective, the groups that we are involved in (like MoveOn, etc.). My own individual work is to write letters to the editor or to the individual journalist. I used to work for a newspaper, so I know this has at least some effect, especially if a lot of letters come in on the same subject.
I guess I want to urge all dKos readers to do the same. Just because an article appears here in dKos or because you post a message here, doesn't mean that the idea gets out to anyone. I mean, does Howard Fineman or Michael Isikoff read dKos? I don't think so. So we have to write them.
Any other ideas for what we can do?