The real stories on the Kerry quote: can Dems show strength?

We should demand by the millions that the mainstream press now focus on what is really going on with the manufactured fracas about Kerry. Here we have a non-candidate whose words are being construed and inflated by Republicans in a way obviously not intended by a person who himself was a combat veteran. What’s really going on is a desperate attempt to anger the base and get them out to vote. Another possible motivation is to provide covering fire for abandoning an American soldier upon the orders of a foreign official.

But so far, we are seeing the media do the Republicans’ bidding in treating this as a “firestorm” – as something that matters. Again, what matters for news purposes, most of all, is the methodology of the crassest-imaginable media and public manipulation. What soldier would have heard about it, the statement of a non-candidate, without Bush and Co. blowing it up and giving it a false meaning? None, but George Bush simply does not care if he thinks he can score cheap political points.

In the post earlier, http://scatablog.blogspot.com/2006/10/bush-digs-deep-in-attack-on-kerry-will.html , I described a second aspect of the story -- the mainstream media essentially working as an arm of the Republican National Committee and continuing to focus headlines on what Kerry said and whether he should or will apologize -- as a “side story.” There is nothing “side” about it. It is of equal importance to the reality of almost unimaginable Republican perfidy, but I suppose the two are sequential. You have to get the media generally to recognize the totally manufactured nature of the issue before inducing some to begin questioning their own behavior.

Democrats should stick together on this, and not get sucked into blaming Kerry for what he said in a particular environment to people who understood what he meant, or expecting him to apologize for an interpretation the Republicans knew to be patently false. That’s exactly what the Republicans want. But this is a thoroughly dishonest manufactured issue by the Republicans, pure and simple, and that should be the unwavering storyline. In fact, it should be used aggressively by Democrats as the a perfect example of their poisonous campaigning -- for a powerful “there they go again” blowback message.