OK, I fully understand about media bias. My stance has always been, even before Dean, it has to be survived. No one with a drop of sense in this country has any illusions about the pundit/chatter/over paid members of the press. Esp. TV.

I see the Dean Trippi appraoch as keep on plugging, stay IN the media, which front runner status will assist, and you reach all you can, etc. I also see a sea change in how the population is reacting to certain of the media hype. Perhaps some is exhaustion from decades of PC (I am done with most of it) or what, but I read about 20 editorials following the Nov 1 CFlag flap, 6 in the south, and what I saw ws the message was getting thru.

But, on to the reason I ran away from dKos this am came here. What is deadly is the operatives on the net, a form of whisper campaign. And the ordinary people who buy into it. Support it.

I would not buy into the same from the paid operative workers seeking to denigrate Clark (with whom I have MAJOR issues) Kerry (oh please) etc.

But there is a reliable group that falls in line behind the operatives and then denigrates the Dean supporters (in ways I NEVER would write about those supporting any candidate).

11 months to go and I wonder how bad this will get. I understand the onslaught will be enormous. I wonder at the supposedly educated netizens to recognise what is happening.

Now that I have written too much, I will have more coffee to calm down. Again.
Marisacat | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 12:10 pm | #

I agree Aziz. I've done my fair share of complaining in recent years. I'm tired of it. I'm just going to work the best I can to get Dean elected and try not to let the idiocy of the press get me down.

Besides which, I have a general feeling that many of the same media whores who positively HATED Al Gore actually have a grudging admiration of Howard Dean. Hell, even Howard Fineman has done some nice pieces on him!
Chris Andersen | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 12:11 pm | #

Aziz-

When I heard Dean say "Soviet Union" the cynic in me though it would be all over the front pages the next morning. But I've been doing Google searches and so far it only shows up in the usual suspects: Limbaugh, that weird Washington Dispatch, and Brit Hume's column on the FOX News site. (Haven't watched much TV, though.)

We're actually lucky that Bush was so woefully ignorant about foreign affairs when he ran, because he's lowered the bar for this kind of "gotcha" jounalism and made it harder for the other side to use these little mistakes as an attack. Heck, Dean could quite easily run several oil companies into the ground and get arrested for DUI between now and November 2004 and still be in the clear.

For this, let us all thank the president.
Keith Bubblo | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 12:47 pm | #

depressingly, the Soviet Union thing was given mention by Sam Donaldson this morning on the radio. sigh.. et tu, Sam?
Aziz | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 1:03 pm | #

I read myself to sleep last night, on the words of Al Franken, the Wellstone memorial chapter specifically. I think it just highlights the importance of the Dean Defence Forces (are they still even operational?) in times like these. The right takes the seed of a statement, and then it literally gets blown so far out of proportion that it becomes unmanageable. Clearly, everyone knows that he meant the 'former' Soviet Union. But do not discount the efforts of the right to mischaracterize until a candidate looks like a parody of himself. We need to remain vigilant for our candidate and counter that insidious echo chamber.
harveythechainsaw | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 1:42 pm | #

yes, DDF is operational. there is also the dean rapid response network.

as for brit hume and fox, last night on brit's show mara liasson and mort kondrake (! yes that mort !) defended dean's "soviet union" statement. they said he said "former" to begin with and they even brought up the ananlogy about bush not being able to name pervez musharraf (sp?) of pakistan during the 2000 race. they defended him well, and although brit kept trying to slap dean, liasson and kondrake were good defenders.

my god, did i just type that?
anna | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 2:10 pm | #

Hmmm. Well, some of the arms deals were between the Soviet Union and Iran, pre-new-Russia, if memory serves.

So...some just wanna make hay -- and as I gleefully note, the attacks on Dean from the right more than ever make his nomination seem rather inevitable. Must be driving Kerry, Gep and Clark nuts! They are all like:

"Attack me! Attack me!"

Yeah we should avoid debates like this -- they mostly devolve into "who is the bigger hypocrite" and one thing Bush has done effectively it is too simply not comment and let things blow over while looking as if you are standing above it.

Seems that we are getting pretty good at that, too.

And, I think our -- Dem and Rep -- critics wanna "get Dean" about this interview because it was such a goor interview, very effective.
Scott Trammell | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 2:18 pm | #

Well, it was hardly the lowlight of the interview, but the point is simply: if Bush had made a similar mistake, or pronounced nuclear not to your liking, you'd be all over him. Period.

Begala is just one that harps on that as a sign of lesser intellegence; what should he say of this gaffe?
PB | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 2:21 pm | #

Dean did say "former Soviet Union" in an answer to a different question, earlier in the interview. The transcript cited for this particular exchange is essentially accurate, however.
buddhistMonkey | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 3:38 pm | #

PB, i could give two flips what paul begala thinks and quite frankly it's an irrelevant straw man. the subject of this post is not paul begala; it's howard dean.

can we get back on topic por favor?
anna | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 4:23 pm | #

That is the point of this thread. Everywhere you go, you hear complaints about how Bush pronounces nuclear, about his mangled grammer, etc. Yet a huge trip up like calling Russia the Soviet Union four times is brushed off. My comment is, yeah it should be brushed off, he meant Russia, and Bush means the same thing when he says nu cu lar instead of nuclear. Don't you think its somewhat deserved when one side and its supporters get snarky about something that when their guy does it, they have the same comments coming right back at them?
PB | Email | Homepage | 12.03.03 - 6:04 pm | #

PB - I think that part of the reason Bush gets blasted on things like 'nu cu lar' is because he seems kind of, well, dumb. I mean, haven't we all been waiting for the guy to spell potato wrong? You have to admit, he isn't a great orator, and people give him a hard time.

I think you are confusing laughing at/with someone and having a valid policy debate. I mean, I know what Dean meant, and I know what Bush means when he mispronounces words. But at the same time you are visiting a Dean site, so if we make fun of Bush a bit, who cares? Bush really isn't given that much heat for his mistakes in this area, and he doesn't really help himself out much, either - remember the pretzel thing? Or the "fool me once ... can't get fooled again" line? I giggle just thinking of it!
Diana | Email | Homepage | 12.04.03 - 12:24 pm | #

Of course people are going to tease Bush on a Dean site, but that should in no way invalidates the point that you use his mistakes to say he "seems dumb" yet if I used the same thing against Dean to say he "seems historically challenged" (not to mention out of touch about Iran-Russia), you'd object. I thought this was about ideas, not about this being your playground.
PB | Email | Homepage | 12.04.03 - 1:36 pm | #

But the point has been made above, in quoting Mort Kondracke and Mara Liasson, that Dean said "former Soviet U." earlier in the interview - so you are beating a dead horse PB.
Chi | Email | Homepage | 12.04.03 - 3:00 pm | #

This is about ideas, but that doesn't mean we can't tease the other guy. And if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen.

But there is a greater question you still haven't responded to - you claim Dean gets a free pass. I could say the same about Bush. So many stories - dodging the draft (and really dodging it, not just having a medical deferment), how he made is fortunes (insider trading, anyone??), drunk driving, the Iraq war (was he truthful, mislead, or uninformed, and which of the three is worst??, or even the staged British Airways and turkey thing and - never made it into the mainstream press.

Who is really getting a free pass here? My money says Bush.
Diana | Email | Homepage | 12.04.03 - 4:05 pm | #