I Blame Dan Rather
Sep. 15th, 2004 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
billroperIf you are a Kerry supporter, this will probably give you indigestion. If you are John Kerry, it will probably give you apoplexy.
My gut reaction is that at least part of this is due to the fun and games taking place with the resignation of New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey -- carefully timed to prevent voters in the state from having an opportunity to vote on his successor at any time before the original term of office expires. This is the second major manipulation of New Jersey elections in the last two years, the first being the replacement of senatorial candidate Frank Torricelli on the ballot after the normal deadline for doing so when it became apparent that he was way behind in the polls. This sort of thing is generally guaranteed to produce a certain level of disgust with the party involved (except maybe in Chicago) and could well be producing a backlash that is hurting Kerry.
My gut also says that a chunk of this is due to the CBS/Rather/National Guard memo story that continues to go around, largely due to CBS insisting that the memos are "authentic". (This was downgraded to "accurate" today in a statement by CBS News President Andrew Hayward.) The problem is that the memos look -- to the naked, informed eye -- like modern forgeries, so much so that you can superimpose them on a document trivially created and printed out using Microsoft Word and see no difference that can't be explained by a few generations of photocopying.
Essentially, CBS News is saying to the voters "Who are you going to believe: us or your own eyes?" And I suspect that swing voters are tempted to believe their own eyes, which causes them to view this as a particularly clumsy partisan attack on Bush, no matter what they might actually think about his National Guard service.
I could be wrong, of course.
My gut reaction is that at least part of this is due to the fun and games taking place with the resignation of New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey -- carefully timed to prevent voters in the state from having an opportunity to vote on his successor at any time before the original term of office expires. This is the second major manipulation of New Jersey elections in the last two years, the first being the replacement of senatorial candidate Frank Torricelli on the ballot after the normal deadline for doing so when it became apparent that he was way behind in the polls. This sort of thing is generally guaranteed to produce a certain level of disgust with the party involved (except maybe in Chicago) and could well be producing a backlash that is hurting Kerry.
My gut also says that a chunk of this is due to the CBS/Rather/National Guard memo story that continues to go around, largely due to CBS insisting that the memos are "authentic". (This was downgraded to "accurate" today in a statement by CBS News President Andrew Hayward.) The problem is that the memos look -- to the naked, informed eye -- like modern forgeries, so much so that you can superimpose them on a document trivially created and printed out using Microsoft Word and see no difference that can't be explained by a few generations of photocopying.
Essentially, CBS News is saying to the voters "Who are you going to believe: us or your own eyes?" And I suspect that swing voters are tempted to believe their own eyes, which causes them to view this as a particularly clumsy partisan attack on Bush, no matter what they might actually think about his National Guard service.
I could be wrong, of course.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 01:38 am (UTC)My own tin-foil-hat theory is that Rather got sucker-punched by a Republican campaign operative. Which tells you something both about the Republican campaign and about Rather (the operative word in his case being sucker).
The truth is probably more complex. Regrettably, we'll likely never know the true story. However, if the memos were out-and-out forgeries, and from a Democratic source, then that source is a damn fool, and Rather more a fool for accepting and producing them.
Contrary to your theory, this has been all horribly counterproductive from the Democratic Party's point-of-view, because the memos themselves have no more information in them than other, validated sources that already have been released. It also wastes resources and time that could be spent supporting Kerry's virtues or emphasizing Bush's problems and failings, both personal and policy-wise.
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Date: 2004-09-16 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 01:51 am (UTC)Now that I think about it, though, it does match the evidence pretty well...
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Date: 2004-09-16 02:16 am (UTC)I simply do not see any connection to a presidential campaign issue and a local situation in New Jersey — or for that matter, a local situation having to do with Republican senatorial candidates in Illinois. ;-)
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Date: 2004-09-16 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 02:21 am (UTC)As to the frickin' memos, sorry, Bill, but I have to off for a second. I adore the Repub Expert Machine. The Swift Boat Liars know all about serving with Kerry even though they didn't; now everybody in the right-wing blogosphere is suddenly an expert on 1970s-era IBM Selectric typefaces.
What a crock.
However, this whole stupid smear has, as was intended, focused attention away from the big BIG BIG story:
The White House never argued about the content of the documents.
Did they say it was a big fat lie, that Dubya never disobeyed a direct order, that he showed up from thus-and-such a date to this-and-such date, here are some people who knew him (there are at least $60,000 worth of cash rewards out there for anyone who can verify they saw Dubya serving during those disputed months; no takers so far this year), how dare they impugn etc. etc. etc.?
No. As per usual, they sit back, keeping their hands as clean as possible, while letting their paid press lapdogs have at it. (Just like they're having at Kitty Kelley [granted, not the best-reputed pundit of all time, but at least she's honest about which side she's on], unlike, say, Matt Lauer.)
Did the press do this with the Swift Boat Liars? They did not. They gave them a million or two dollars of free air time by running their spurious, all-now-discredited charges as "news reports", and having the Dems defend themselves.
Yeah, this whole thing is a noisy, ugly fiasco... because that's the way the Repubs wanted it. This is, in particular, a standard Bush family technique, honed over time and as disgusting today as it was when they used it against Dukakis in '88... or Reagan in '80.
Who are you going to believe, Bill: the Repubs who have been lying to you, me, and all of us for years and years, or your own eyes?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 05:02 pm (UTC)Really, sometimes people do idiotic things just because they're idiots at the time.
URL: http://mcgath.blogspot.com
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Date: 2004-09-16 11:36 am (UTC)Oh, I dunno. Didn't the Republicans cheer for Tom DeLay's gerrymandering idea?
K.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 02:47 pm (UTC)Just because you made me curious, I went to try to look up some actual data on the Texas redistricting. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for via some cursory Google searches, but it's not clear -- absent the data that I can't turn up -- that the new Texas legislative map is either more or less representative of the actual Democrat/Republican vote split than the old Texas map. I've seen some commentary that suggests that the "old" map was gerrymandered by a Democratic-controlled state legislature back in 1991; then lightly adjusted by the courts in order to add two new districts after the 2000 census when the legislature deadlocked on producing a revised map. The current map was the first actually adopted by the legislature following the 2000 census.
But the key question would be how closely each map reflects the actual split of legislative votes in Texas, which is proving hard for me to find.
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Date: 2004-09-17 08:08 pm (UTC)K. [Quote: "Following the 2000 census, all states were obligated to redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts in line with the new population figures. In 2001, that process produced a standoff in Texas, with the Republican state senate and the Democratic state house of representatives unable to reach an agreement. As a result, a panel of federal judges formulated a compromise plan, which more or less replicated the current partisan balance in the state’s congressional delegation: seventeen Democrats and thirteen Republicans. Then, in the 2002 elections, Republicans took control of the state house, and Tom DeLay, the Houston-area congressman who serves as House Majority Leader in Washington, decided to reopen the redistricting question. DeLay said that the current makeup of the congressional delegation did not reflect the state’s true political orientation, so he set out to insure that it did."]
no subject
Date: 2004-09-17 08:29 pm (UTC)According to the article, the old map produced 13 Republican and 17 Democratic seats (43.3% Republican); the new map should produce 22 Republican and 10 Democratic seats (68.8% Republican). Since we don't have the total votes for House candidates to work with at the moment, I'm going to use the vote totals from the 2000 Presidential election which show 59.3% Republican, 38.0% Democratic.
By these -- admittedly flawed! -- numbers, then the old map underrepresented Republicans by 16%, while the new map overrepresents them by 9.5%.
Absent better data, then, it appears that the new map is more representative of voter sentiment in Texas than the old map. Neither, of course, is perfect.
Nor, to be honest, was either map intended to be perfect.
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Date: 2004-09-16 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 04:56 pm (UTC)It ain't over till it's over. (And maybe not for another month after that....)
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Date: 2004-09-16 05:51 pm (UTC)The sample number in that first link that Bill posted (n=734) means the results might possibly have some vague passing resemblance to the reality of millions of voters. What got me was the extended breakdown by category that followed the "bad news". That kind of overanalysis of a small data set is what my boss calls data masturbation and is *completely* useless. If there is only 1 left-leaning, asian union member in your 734 person sample, one missed keystroke can throw your percentages off by 100%! Think, people!
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Date: 2004-09-16 06:02 pm (UTC)Any poll can be devastatingly wrong. The one from New Jersey may well be incorrect due to a bad random sample. But for it to be wrong by enough standard deviations that a state that was thought to be safe for Kerry would show a Bush lead is unlikely enough to cause me to wonder if the state actually is safe for Kerry and why that might be untrue.
Which is why I posted.
But it's a long time -- in relative terms -- until the election and an awful lot can happen in the interim. In the meantime, poll watching is an interesting way to keep track of the "score", as long as you don't take it too seriously.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 07:24 pm (UTC)