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It was NOT up to Kerry to raise the issue of votergate 2004 in a timely and effective way, as in 2000. In both instances, the inexcusable failures of Gore and the understandable reticence of Kerry (after the election)the progressive leadership failed to step in with a QUICK class action suit in defense of voter rights against disenfranchisement. In 2000, there should have been a class action suit on behalf of all disenfranchised black voters in the state that year. In 2004 it was those in precincts where there was a systematic shortage of voting machines in Ohio -- who were discouraged from voting as a result of the long lines this engineered. Sure it would mean bucking the system. But that's what I EXPECT (morally not epistemologically) of progressive leadership! They fail like clockwork.
During the campaign, the Kerry Democrats and the Party leadership AND the media were systematically silent about the flimsiness of the flipflop spin, and then, when that had reached its point of diminishing returns in mid Oct, the portrayal of Kerry as less willing to confront terrorism militarily than Bush in the Matt Bai article in the New York Times Oct 10. With all these 527s forbidden from coordinating with the campaign, you would think that some of them would use their cash to confront these 'forbidden' spins. But the media watchdogs, as is characteristic in the US political/cultural system down to the astroturf roots, didn't bark either. There's only the APPEARANCE of a free marketplace of ideas rather than the reality.
On the flipflop spin, I commented heavily during the campaign, starting with an email to Stephanopolous ("Ask George") before the Democratic Convention. But the Democrats weren't rocking the boat. It's the third presidential election out of the last five that they have thrown. But progressives trying to defy the agenda (and that seems to be a necessary part of the DEFINITION of an authentic progressive). There was nothing in the media of significance exposing it that I know of until AFTER the Republican Convention, even from the watchdogs like Factcheck (nothing) or spinsanity (sept 7 -- an early mention). Jonathan Chait in "The Invention of Flipflop" (cover story, Oct 18 issue of The New Republic, posted Oct 7) did the best review, but paid his dues to the imperative of justifying the lying by explaining away the fact that, although basically everything he said could just as well have been said FIVE MONTHS EARLIER, with a completely different political impact, it was just a matter of the press 'herd instinct'. Somehow the 'herd' instinct embraced media "watchdogs" not barking, the Democratic Party leadership, and the progressive leadership in and outside the Democratic Party.
When that spin peaked out (with nearly 60% seeing Kerry as a flipflopper up to the end -- PURE SPIN, no more true of him than any other presidential candidate, including Bush and other Democrats, as Chait outlines)Matt Bai came up with his distortion of Kerry on terrorism in the Oct 10 NY Times, garnished with a juicy 'nuisance' quote. The Republicans (parmesan that they are) milked the article for all it was worth with a chorus of protestation, and columns EVERY DAY in a tsunami for weeks, many magnifying Bai's distortions like Dick Morris' "Nuisance Nonsense" (NY Post Oct 12). Again Kerry failed to respond, AND SO DID ALL THE MEDIA COMMENTATORS WHO ARE SUPPOSEDLY PROGRESSIVE AND THE SO-CALLED MEDIA "WATCHDOGS". This phenomenon of packs of hounds that didn't bark is routine in US politics and presaged the more dramatically obvious media lockdown during Votergate 2004 -- with our democracy apparently s*at down to the Ukraine (where to the powers that pee, it rightfully belongs!).
Well, progressives did not fill the gap in a timely way. Jesse Jackson should not have appeared in Ohio Nov 27 but starting 10 days earlier, with a major rally the previous weekend to crack the media stonewall and a class action lawsuit filed BEFORE the Thanksgiving holiday. Sure the courts will throw out meritorious cases anyway, but this way at least the US public could be shown what is going on, and mobilized, a failure that should have been rectified from Votergate 2000.
Democracy cannot survive the powerful assaults upon the weak, justifying the lying laden system that we still maintain in appearance unless the courage of the Civil Rights movement is intensified, not dissolved into the teacup of craven lawyers and (mostly elite picked) leaders.
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