So I'm sure most of us agree, the right has developed the power to create a slam on our candidates and make it true. Dean is an angry guy, they say. Too angry to be president. And then they look for any small sliver of reality they can pick up and play a thousand times until it becomes an incontrovertible confirmation of this fatal flaw.
Just like Gore was a big liar because of that pretty-much-true thing he said about the Internet.
And different-sure-but-still-kinda-like Clinton was Slick Willie from the moment he stepped on the stage.
And it's all true. Kinda. I mean, our guys are humans. They have flaws. But whatever flaws they have get magnified to the point that the message from the media becomes: these guys are flat-out unfit for office.
Meanwhile, where's the mainstream drum-beat that George Bush is an [insert simplified-slur-based-on-or-two-of-his-very-real-flaws-because-he-too-is-human here]? When does some small thing he said or did get accepted by one and all as proof that he's fundamentally unfit?
And now we've got the Democratic party worried more about electability than anything else. Don't get me wrong -- I've got that mindset too. And on the one hand, it makes perfect sense -- we're all part-time political tacticans nowadays.
But I wonder if there's also a piece of it that's "don't hit us again." Cuz we're all so tired of them brutalizing our candidates. And we'd all like to believe that if could just make the right choice in the primaries, we'd be able to shut down their unfit-for-office attacks once and for all.
But here's my fear. My fear is that it just isn't possible. Dean was the frontrunner, so he gets it first. If Kerry gets the nomination, he'll go into a northeast-liberal-patrician-out-of-touch-rich-guy-never-really-a-leader box. If Edwards gets it....
How do we break out of this cycle? And if we don't have the power to protect Dean in an election where only Democrats vote.... Well what exactly does that mean?
