WaPo's Terry M. Neal writes
This Year's Democratic Attacks May Be Next Year's Republican Fodder.
It's an honest attempt to discuss how Democratic infighting is counterproductive to beating Bush, but it assumes that media spin is what will determine the election, equating "conventional wisdom" with Beltway pundit soundbites, and therefore makes poor predictions about the Dean candidacy (and the hopes of the Democratic party in general).
Here's my attempt to help him understand what he missed by only paying attention to the punditocracy....
Your recent column about the attacks on Dean from other candidates as a kooky anti-war radical becoming conventional wisdom was interesting, but I think it missed a few important points in its analysis.
First, and perhaps most important was that the Dean campaign's primary response to the shadow group attack ads was not, as you implied, Joe Trippi's open letter. The primary response was to use the ads to raise another $600,000 in a few days.
Every time the Dean campaign is attacked, they use it to raise money from thousands of supporters--in other words, they both increase their coffers and give people a way to directly respond in words (on the blog) and with their checkbook.
Every time the Dean campaign announces something positive, such as Gore's endorsement (which was horribly, horrible covered in the media as "time to play Gore-pinata again, and look how hurt the beatific Lieberman is"), the campaign uses it to raise money and excitement.
Think about it--the media reported Lieberman's handling of his "betrayal" as a huge win--and I think he was able to raise about $10,000 out of it. In the same period, on the same issue, Dean raised about $500,000. Sure, it's a more entertaining story to paint Lieberman as the jilted lover than to discuss how Dean's candidacy resonates with the ideals of the vast electorate embodied by Gore, but it's bad journalism.
Second, is your definition of "conventional wisdom" being that which the Beltway pundits say--with your examples being the center-right heavily corporate Andrea Mitchell and the hard-right heavily corporate Carl Cameron.
"Their attacks, repeated over and over again, are beginning to become conventional wisdom. Media reports since Sunday have played off the theme of whether Dean can survive the positive news of Hussein's capture."
Most people these days, even if they end up believing what they hear on the media because it's the only source of information, recognize that the media has little interest in framing news in ways which actually inform them on the truth.
For example: the popular meme that's attached to the "Dean can't survive Saddam's capture" is "Dean said that Saddam's capture doesn't make America safer, and that makes him out of touch with the American people". The theme of whether Dean can survive is based not on facts, but on a desire for catchy soundbites.
Polls show that the great majority of Americans agree with Dean's assessment. The Pentagon agrees with that assessment. There are even a number of conservatives who publicly agree with that assessment.
I guess my point is that for those who get all their information about politics and the world from television commentators and editorial columnists, then yes, they would believe that Dean is an unelectable loon.
But nowadays enough people get information from other sources--I hope--that they'll be able to look past the Beltway spin and look at the facts.
How about writing a Talking Points on how it might become conventional wisdom that Bush is unelectable because of the 9-11 Commission's implications that he could have prevented it if he didn't deliberately ignore Richard Clarke and shunt him into stopping "cyberterrorism" instead of Al Qaida?