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August 29, 2004

Sunday Morning Blogwatch: Cable News Hysteria vs. Reality

One thing that never ceases to impress me in the blogsphere is how a blog entry can highlight a source of information, which will then be echoed on another blog and paired with another piece of information to make a more complete picture. Mix and repeat.

On that note, I'd like to share a great analysis from a DailyKOS diary and toss in my own little comments (which are of far less importance, but eating at me nonetheless). It centers around the media spin and handwringing about the LA Times poll suggesting the stupid Swift Boat diversion has been effective against our candidate.

The relevant entry can be found here.

From Ruy Teixeira echoed via DailyKOS:

What that "Awful" LA Times Poll Really Means

The Los Angeles Times poll released Thursday August 26th has created substantial consternation among democrats. Not only the mainstream media, but many pro-democratic writers and commentators have accepted the polls' apparent message that the sleazy attacks on Kerry's wartime record have been successful and have allowed Bush to overtake Kerry in the presidential race.

The bad news is that this perception has been widely accepted. The good news is that it's fundamentally wrong.

The piece goes on to give an eye-opening look at the reality of the numbers and how different their conclusions are from the story that sells ad time on the cable news channels. In a nutshell, the Swift Boat diversion has, quite appropriately, backfired.

Paired with Ruy's writeup is a Ron Fournier AP article that interviews some rather nervous RNC delegates as they head off to NY:

NEW YORK - Nervous Republicans are urging President Bush to unveil a robust second-term agenda at his convention next week to shift voters' focus from the unpopular war in Iraq and other issues that are a distraction to his re-election drive. Some contend the party should ditch the GOP-fueled controversy over rival John Kerry's combat record in Vietnam.

"If he gets on the future and effectively talks about the challenges that are ahead that only he can meet, then he'll be fine," said Joe Gaylord, a Republican strategist from Washington. "But if this campaign continues to be about Vietnam and the past, I don't think he's going to do so fine. I think it's a little dicey."

The nervous GOP voter storyline is a believable one and it's the main focus of his story. What chaps my rear end, though, is hearing these delegates fretting over the election strategy and not the issues themselves. This is tantamount to saying they are more upset at their candidate's inability to sweep his horrible record under the carpet than they are about his actual record. So, following this logic, it's acceptable to know your candidate sent us into a tragic and costly war by lying to the American people as long as we focus on something else to win the election.

Of course, when I look at the "voice of moderation" charade that the RNC speaker list seems to indicate for this coming week, I'm not all that surprised. Saying one thing and doing another has been this administration's policy since the election race of 2000 (i.e. uniter not a divider or a stated opposition to nation building and the importance of being humble).

On a final note, I'll leave you with another link that profiles the RNC delegation this week. It's pretty fascinating but can easily be summed up as being a harder right group than the GOPs own base and certainly more conservative than the country as a whole.

Posted by amahler at August 29, 2004 11:30 AM

Comments

The whole point of this convention is to convince swing voters that it's really all of the Democrats who are extremists (and by Democrats, they mean Michael Moore) so they stop scaring away the swing voters. We must make clear to the swing voters that the Republicans are hypocrites who talk out of both sides of their mouth and will tell every lie they can conceive, will demonize a triple-amputee war hero, to be successful.

Posted by: Kat at August 31, 2004 11:04 AM