Let me get this straight.

[July]

Smear Boaters' connections: Nixon/Colson ally, Admiral who benefited from a Bush administration contract, right wing publishing house, veterans who had political appointments from Bush, very large donations from biggest Bush supporter, Bush campaign lawyer, Rove pals. Etc.

Stolen Honor and Sinclair connections: producer who is a Bush supporter and appointee, writer who has a juicy homeland security contract, company that refused to show the memorial to Iraq war dead.

Vote Fraud group Sproul and Associates: funded by the RNC.

Connecting the dots, I see a series of attempts to sway the election in unethical (and in one case illegal) ways by BUSH'S friends, BUSH'S party, BUSH'S donors, BUSH'S appointees, BUSH'S campaign.

Why is it, again, that this isn't the Watergate of our time?

[StopTheMorans]

1. the fourth estate has been out to lunch for four years

n/t

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

2. Thats it in a nutshell -the average person would think that was a tin-foil

conspiracy of the highest order.

We know its true

[LisaLynne]

3. Connecting the dots.

Too much work for most people. When I'm feeling generous, I think that they are just so overworked and busy that they can't spare the time to think for two minutes. When I'm not feeling generous, I just start swearing.

[wiggs]

4. History of same tactics

Frontline was effective in pointing out in its special last night that these tactics have been used by Bush and Rove since the late 90's in Texas and through the 2000 election. Rumors, lies, and distortions are spread either directly from them or through the use of apparently "unassociated" other groups. This is a campaign tactic that pollutes the process. It doesn't matter to them if a claim is true or not, it matters if it works.

It is disgusting and has the effect of distorting information to the point that the public cannot make an informed decision. The basis of democracy is a well informed public (Lincoln).

Bad information = bad democracy.....which, by the way, is the only way to get a weak candidate elected or a terribly inept administration re-elected.

[Lexingtonian]

5. Yes, but this is The Normal to The Media now

Just look at the crew that 'reports' and 'edits' the news these days. They're generally white, maybe in their forties-fifties-sixties, and their political experience is the Conservative Wave- the post-Nixon Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties.

They aren't that smart. When they were younger maybe they thought the Liberal Return To Power was just around the corner- in 1988, in 1992, maybe even in 2000. They don't know how to understand the numbers and trends- they got burned back then for extrapolating them the wrong way- and they became pessimists. They saw their peers become political moron conservatives, ubiquitously or in such preponderance that they think the country is more so than it proves at elections. They saw the Democratic Party shifting and trying to modernize and its Old Guard break up, and the New Guard has little in the way of victory and lots of defeats.

In the process they've watched the ugly old politics of the Nixon era being continued- the occasional stolen election, the endless smear campaigns that made the Democrats lose their last elderly New Deal Democrats, the most useless and most coopted Democratic incumbents hanging on for 20 and 30 years, and the Christian Right enter into politics fully and unapologetically. No one got punished for Iran-Contra or any of the dozens of other breakings of the law or moral principle: the country has been morally close to bankrupcy their entire political lives.

So what 'the media' reflects is the post-defeatist pragmatism, but hopelessness, of its elderly quasi-liberal journalist corps. Then there's the Republican Chic middle aged journalist set that has never really seen anything other than the Conservative Wave in power and can't get its minds (such as there are) around the idea that any other kind of politics has ever taken place or ever shall. (Think Cokie Roberts, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, even George Stephanopoulos to a large degree).

So that's why their sense of outrage is limited: That's The Way It Is. As they see it, the Democrats' job is to convince the country that there is a different way worth taking- and fighting Republican last ditch desperation criminality is part of the testing that Democrats have to undergo to be worth of bearing the crown. That they themselves are only slightly morally responsible...well, that is part of the corruption the Republicans have created over the past thirty years. Regimes of the kind work by convincing each part of the society that wants to act with moral responsibility that they're alone; in this case, the Media- to the extent that it isn't corrupt- doesn't trust the People to do what is right in the face of outrage. One Iraq warmongering, one Florida election theft, one California electricity gouging...they're frustrated that the People tolerates this stuff and blames the Media for not making the stories sufficiently distorted, outrageous, partisan, inflammatory. The Republicans win because both sides feel disempowered and blame each other, rather than the culprits.

The good news is that nothing succeeds like success. A Kerry victory will not quite lift the media pessimism, though- it's the vigor and success of the followup (taking back Congress, destroying the Republican construct of privilege/excessive power for the rich, the gouging corporations, tax cheats, and the religiously insane) that will convince them.