HOW TO LOSE AN ELECTION (PART 2)! It isn’t that hard to debunk phony
spin. Let Jon Stewart—a comedian!—show you:
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2004

DUTY CALLS: We’re scheduled today for jury duty, and they say they
won’t let us phone in our verdict. But we want to finish our series
this week, so incomparably, our efforts continue.
HOW TO LOSE AN ELECTION (PART 2): In point of fact, it isn’t that hard
to debunk bogus spin-points—the scripted, repetitive, ginned-up claims
that now decide our White House elections. On Monday night’s Daily
Show, in fact, Jon Stewart showed how easy the process can be. By
Tuesday morning, we were flooded with e-mails about his effort, like
the one we report below. But then, we often get rueful e-mails about
Stewart:

E-MAIL (8/3/04): Did you see The Daily Show last night? Jon Stewart
interviewed Congressman Henry Bonilla and actually forced the issue
about the “number one liberal” statement, citing the National
Journal's actual lifetime averages. It's a sad day when we have to
rely on a “fake” news show to tell the truth.
Readers often note how sad it is—that Stewart, a comedian, debunks
this crap, but our “journalists” resolutely will not.
And yes, despite a few leading questions, Stewart did hammered Bonilla
around, although the clownistry of the point in question did make his
job fairly simple. As we’ve noted, Republicans cite the National
Journal when they claim—as they now do whenever they breathe—that
Kerry and Edwards are the first and fourth most liberal members of the
Senate. But as the Journal has clearly explained, those figures cover
2003 alone—a year in which Kerry and Edwards, out campaigning, missed
about half the relevant votes. (Note: That’s the way our system works.
While still governor, Candidate Bush spent seventeen months
campaigning outside Texas.) Indeed, as the Journal has made abundantly
clear, Kerry is far from the “number one liberal” if you measure his
lifetime record, and Edwards is nowhere near number four, the claim
voters hear again and again, recited by a gaggle of hacks who are sent
on the air to mislead them. But so what? RNC shills state their bogus
point—and millionaire “journalists” sit, drool and stare. For example,
here’s how Newt Gingrich began his closing remarks on this week’s Fox
News Sunday:

GINGRICH (8/1/04): I think what decides this race in the end is, do
you think America can go forward better with President Bush continuing
to lead, or do you really want the most liberal member of the Senate
and the fourth most liberal member of the Senate, people to the left
of Teddy Kennedy, people to the left of Hillary Clinton? And I think
that choice is going to be so wide and so clear by mid-September.
Did Chris Wallace challenge this scripted point—a claim which baldly
misled viewers? Of course not! Instead, here’s what he said when
Gingrich stopped speaking: “I've got to say, Speaker Gingrich, that's
the biggest bumper sticker I ever heard, but it was a good answer.” In
short, it’s easy to mislead voters this way. Our “press corps” is
happy to let you.
Which brings us back to that fateful moment when the RNC began its
campaign against Gore. As noted yesterday, the RNC made it clear, in
May 1999, that it hoped to make Gore a figure of ridicule; quoting
major Republicans, Alison Mitchell described the plan in some detail,
right in the New York Times (see THE DAILY HOWLER 8/3/04). The GOP had
run endless probes of Clinton, she noted, but they were planning a
different approach with Gore. “[W]ith Mr. Gore, Republicans are
betting that well-timed ridicule can be more devastating than any
inquiry,” Mitchell wrote. “In essence, they are trying to do to him
what Democrats tried to do to former Vice President Dan Quayle.” As we
noted in yesterday’s HOWLER, history is repeating itself; Republican
sources described a similar plan for Kerry in a front-page report in
Sunday’s Times. “Mr. Bush’s advisers plan to cap the month at the
Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr.
Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision,” Adam Nagourney
wrote. The plan he described was the very same plan that proved so
effective with Gore.

And the evidence is clear—in the case of Gore, the campaign of
ridicule worked. From March 1999 through November 2000, the RNC
churned a string of bogus stories about Delusional Gore, the guy who
“doesn’t know who he is,” and the mainstream press corps made little
attempt to challenge their idiot renderings. (Indeed, the mainstream
press corps took the lead in conducting the War Against Gore.) Al Gore
said he invented the Internet. Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal.
Naomi Wolf told Gore to wear earth tones. Al Gore misstated the cost
of dog pills. The tales were bogus—and never-ending—but the mockery
and misstatements worked. Mocking Gore became second nature. Minor
example: Right after Bush and Gore’s first debate, here’s the first
thing that Tom Brokaw said:

BROKAW (10/3/00): The conclusion of the first debate. The election is
just five weeks from today. It ran over—about five minutes altogether.
There were some very spirited exchanges. The two candidates kept to
their fundamental positions. You did have the feeling that if you'd
asked Vice President Gore what he had for breakfast today, he would
have said, “Two eggs over easy, coffee, and a waiter who was
complaining about the tax cuts of the Texas governor.”
True to the standard the press had developed, it only took Brokaw
about twenty seconds to offer his first mocking comment on Gore. But
this was routine throughout this election. After Gore’s convention
speech, for example, Margaret Carlson entertained other CNN pundits
with her mocking impression of the veep’s speaking style. The RNC had
hoped to make Gore a figure of ridicule. With the corps’ active help,
they succeeded.
And the RNC will succeed with Kerry—unless more pundits perform like
Jon Stewart. Everyone knows what the current spin-points are—we’ll
list them on Friday—and we’ll soon learn what the new points will be.
In most cases, these points are fairly easy to debunk, as Stewart made
clear Monday night. But last Friday, we saw a more typical effort—an
effort typical of what he saw from pundits in Campaign 2000 as well.
Performing his usual yawning vivisection, Sean Hannity ate Janeane
Garofalo for lunch, belched three times, then spat her back out (see
THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/2/04). Liberals, progressives, centrists—and all
Dems—have to stop accepting this level of performance. Democrats have
to tell Dem pundits—this hapless work isn’t OK.

Why, oh why, are Dem-friendly pundits so incapable of strong
performance? One thing is clear—your “press corps” won’t challenge
fake RNC claims until Dem pundits go out there and make them. Our
e-mailers ask us the obvious question: When a comedian, like Stewart,
can do so well, why can’t other pundits perform? The answer leads
straight to the DNC, an organization with which Dems should be
furious.

TOMORROW: Why on earth can’t Terry McAuliffe prep our major Dem
pundits?

WATCHING SPIN GROW: Your mainstream “journalists” sleep, snore and
burble. For example, here was Kate O’Beirne, pimping the script on The
Capital Gang:

O’BEIRNE (7/31/04): In a 45-minute speech, this is [Kerry’s]
fundamental problem, one of his problems, he spent 26 seconds talking
about 20 years of his public career. He acted as though he disappeared
after 1971, when he testified against the war in the Senate, and
reappeared magically 30 years later. But an object of the exercise in
Boston was to try to persuade people that he's not a Massachusetts
liberal, and of course, his voting record has him No. 1, the most
liberal member of the Senate, so he ain't gonna talk about that much,
even though he has 45 minutes.
Except in Cartoon Nation, of course, Kerry isn’t “the most liberal
member of the Senate.” But how are American voters supposed to know
that? Shields, Hunt and Carlson sat, drooled and stared. No one
challenged what O’Beirne said. This is how White House elections are
now decided, but your millionaire pundits—Hunt, Shields and Carlson—in
a phrase, just don’t really care. They simply don’t care if the rubes
are misled. They no longer care about that. How much longer will Dems
and their allies put up with their sit-and-stare conduct?
TOMORROW: Tom Vilsack, chumped by Bill Hemmer!

FROM THE GREAT PLANET WASHINGTON POST: On what planet does the
Washington Post’s editorial board now reside? In Tuesday’s paper, the
board expressed pride in Tom Ridge’s recent performance:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (8/3/04): In his statement, Mr. Ridge stayed
away from politics, although he did, as in the past, find it necessary
to attach a list of his homeland security achievements along with the
warning, which did reduce its impact.
Really? Mr. Ridge “stayed away from politics?” That came as news to a
letter writer whose missive appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. He
wrote from—yes—Ridgewood, New Jersey:
NEW YORK TIMES LETTER (8/3/04): I live in northern New Jersey and work
in Midtown Manhattan, near the Citicorp Center. I was listening
carefully to Tom Ridge's warning, as the sites he was mentioning for
possible attacks basically encompassed all of my daily life. Then he
said, “We must understand that the kind of information available to us
today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against
terror.”
I realized that I was listening to a paid political announcement and
turned the radio off. The credibility of the announcement had been
reduced to zero.
J— M—
Ridgewood, N.J.
“We must understand that the kind of information available to us today
is the result of the president's leadership in the war against
terror.” There was more to Ridge’s TV ad, but let’s keep it simple. To
the Post, that wasn’t politicization. Indeed, the Post went out of its
way to say that Ridge didn’t do that.
For the record, someone else noticed the politicization. And yes, you
guessed it—at The Daily Show, Jon Stewart played tape of that very
statement by Ridge, and his young audience hooted and groaned. So
let’s see. A letter writer in Jersey could see it. A comedian and his
comedy audience could see it. But the brilliant eds at the Washington
Post? Somehow, they just couldn’t see it—indeed, insisted it hadn’t
occurred! And readers, this is the context in which those spin-points
are being recited, embroidered and spun. And this is why Dems and
liberals must insist that their public spokesmen be better prepared.
Your mainstream “press corps” is asleep, snoring, absent. Dems must
remember Campaign 2000, and they must insist—they must insist—that the
hapless, inert, inept DNC not let this mess happen again. Your
spokesmen are good at losing elections. More on this problem tomorrow.

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