Fight Like Republicans

Atrios points out the utter impossibility of imagining Democrats in 1996 adopting the Bush tactics of 2004:

The Boston Globe editorial is pretty good (aside from the "Clinton/draft dodger" comment - Clinton was no more a draft dodger than Dick Cheney. Where are the "Cheney/draft dodger" snide remarks?).

IMAGINE IF supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole. After all, Dole was given a Purple Heart for a leg scratch probably caused, according to one biographer, when a hand grenade thrown by one of his own men bounced off a tree. And while the serious injuries Dole sustained later surely came from German fire, did the episode demonstrate heroism on Dole's part or a reckless move that ended up killing his radioman and endangering the sergeant who dragged Dole off the field?

The truth, according to many accounts, is that Dole fought with exceptional bravery and deserves the nation's gratitude. No one in 1996 questioned that record. Any such attack on behalf of Clinton, an admitted Vietnam draft dodger, would have been preposterous.

It wouldn't have just been preposterous, it would've backfired politically and lost Clinton the election. Why? Not because the Amurkan people would have been "outraged," but because fifty thousand attack poodles would have run on the air screaming bloody murder. It would have gone on for weeks and weeks and weeks. Every editorial page in the country would have freaked out the moment it started.

Atrios goes on to conclude that

The media are not passive participants in these things, and they need to accept and come to terms with that.

This is, of course, exactly right. But it's not the whole story. The simple fact is that the Republicans have built a better attack poodle...and they have more of them...and they're able to keep them all eating from the same packaged and reprocessed bag of bloody horsemeat. Consistency of message is one of the best weapons in the attack poodles' arsenal.

Also, the media, unfortunately, responds to bullying. Democrats have not yet learned to compete with Republicans' bullying attack poodles. Give the Democrats credit; they do try. But they just haven't mastered the shrill, ubiquitous, unrelenting whining which the Republicans use to effectively flood the airwaves with their message du jour.

In essence, the Republicans have learned to use the media's sense of fairness as a weapon against objectivity.

The media, as Atrios asserts, is no doubt complicit in this hijacking of objectivity.

But the rest of us need not sit idly by until such time as the media recognizes that they've been duped. As much as I hate to say it, Democrats and Independents need to learn to fight like Republicans.