I think last week’s media explosion over Kerry’s botched joke was a good thing for the Democrats.
In case you were on the moon last week, let me go over what happened. Kerry was making a joke about Bush not having studied hard in school and ending up getting us stuck in Iraq, and left out the word “us.” Republicans decided to try to trick people into thinking that Kerry – a war hero who had volunteered to serve in combat after graduating from Yale – was “insulting our troops.” They sent instructions out to their echo chamber to pretend to be outraged. They cranked up the phony outrage across the internet, got the story onto The Drudge Report, got Rush Limbaugh to “run with it,” and then the TV networks started non-stop coverage and commentary. It was an instant, manufactured media frenzy. And then it went away. Just like that.
So here is why I think in the end this was a very good thing for the Democrats.
1) It distracted the Republican machine. Kerry isn’t running for anything but the entire conservative outrage machine spent 2 days attacking him instead of talking about anything relevant to the election and to the concerns of voters. Who CARES what John Kerry said? This is not to run down Kerry, but for voters to care it has to be about SOMEONE OR SOMETHING THAT MATTERS TODAY. In this election what John Kerry said just doesn’t matter because he isn’t running for anything.
But the Republican noise machine IS capable of influencing the public and doing real damage. That was two days in which they could have been causing trouble and instead they were entirely focused on something that just does not matter.
2) Crying ‘wolf’ too many times reduces the effect of crying “wolf.” (That’s why they call it “crying wolf.”) The Republicans cranked up their machine to absolute full volume over something that wasn’t true and just didn’t matter, and everybody had to listen to it. So the realization that these people cry “wolf” is sinking in.
John Kerry DIDN’T SAY WHAT THEY SAID HE SAID, and everyone knew it. And it JUST DIDN’T MATTER and everyone knew it. They were crying “wolf” AND EVERYONE KNEW IT!
3) It allowed us a peek behind the curtain. We’re becoming more and more aware of how the Republicans do it, how the sound machine works and how the phony outrage and smear machine operates. We’re learning about their techniques. So we’re watching and learning, and this week was like a lab experiment for studying conservative outrage and smears. We are learning how to react, how to keep from getting sucked into the defensiveness game, and how to fight back. Two years ago the swiftboating of Kerry cost him the election. This year Kerry – and all of us by extension – understood more about what was happening and responded effectively.
So yes, I think last week’s media frenzy was, on balance, very good for the Democrats.
Tag Archives: conservatives
Think That the Dems Will Win?
Anyone thinking the Democrats are going to pick up the House or Senate this year had better read this from a year ago. For Democrats, a Troubling Culture Gap,
Democrats Karl Agne and Stan Greenberg, who conducted the focus group, said Democrats need a reform-oriented, anti-Washington agenda to overcome the culture gap. At this point, Democrats are in no position to capitalize if there is a clear backlash against Republicans. “No matter how disaffected they are over Republican failures in Iraq and here at home,” they said, “a large chunk of white, non-college voters, particularly in rural areas, will remain unreachable for Democrats at the national level.”
I haven’t seen a reform-oriented agenda to overcome the cultural gap from the Democrats. Have you? More importantly there still is not any kind of coordinated campaign from non-Party organizations (“progressive infrastructure” (also see skippy part I, part II and video), that reaches out across America to regular voters and promote the benefits of progressive/liberal values and a progressive/liberal approach to issues.
Without reaching out to the public, explaining WHY liberal and progressive values are better for them, nothing is going to be getting better. Why SHOULD the public think our values and ideas are worth considering when we aren’t bothering to even TELL THEM what they ARE?? This is what the conservatives are doing — you can’t go anywhere without hearing, over and over, how conservatives are better than progressives or liberals, how their ideas are good and liberal ideas are bad, etc. The public is STILL not hearing anything to counter that.
If you want to help do something about this, send Commonweal Institute a healthy, healthy check.