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ELECTION 2004: THE FIRST DEBATE
Where Do We Go From Here?

10/3/04

SUMMARY

Kerry did well in the debates and although I expect minimal shifts in the horserace numbers due to to this, it should help significantly strengthen voters' views of him as a dependable and credible leader. The work now is to keep doing what he did in the debate, EVERYDAY, for the rest of this campaign. Plus, his camp needs to aggressively fight the fabrications and spin from the GOP and the media.

OUTLINE

1. Debate Wrap-Up

1.1. What went well

1.2. Kerry picks a risky strategy

2. Horserace Update

3. The SPIN and FABRICATE Zone: Beware of the Media Talking Heads

3.1 FLASHBACK: After calling the first 2000 debate for Gore initially, they flip-flopped

3.2 FLASHBACK: How Gore lost the post-debate spin thanks to the fabrications of the media using GOP spin points

3.3 NOW: Kerry's performance was strong - making it tough for the talking heads to perpetuate GOP spin instantly, but the spinners are here again!

3.4 NOW: The fabricators are also here again - with Faux News leading the way

3.4.1 EXAMPLE 1: Faux News' Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron makes up s*** about Kerry from thin air - after the debate - and retains his job

3.4.2 EXAMPLE 2: Faux News makes up s*** about a "Communist" group claiming to support Kerry without fact-checking

4. The post-debate spin from the GOP (fake attack on Kerry's "global test") and what needs to be done

5. Concluding Message for Kerry

DETAILS

1. DEBATE WRAP-UP

1.1 What Went Well 

It is now pretty well established that Senator Kerry won the first debate. The victory has been clear enough that the debate opinion polls and the talking heads are saying the same thing. To Senator Kerry's credit, he showed his real caliber and debating skills - avoiding long-windedness and emphasizing important information with brevity and clarity. I particularly liked how he called out some of the basic, yet important, facts about President Bush's abysmal national security and foreign policy record that is largely ignored by the media in the U.S. An example from the debate transcript:

[KERRY]: ...First of all, what kind of mixed message does it send when you have $500 million going over to Iraq to put police officers in the streets of Iraq, and the president is cutting the COPS program in America?

What kind of message does it send to be sending money to open firehouses in Iraq, but we're shutting firehouses who are the first- responders here in America.

The president hasn't put one nickel, not one nickel into the effort to fix some of our tunnels and bridges and most exposed subway systems. That's why they had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican Convention was there. We hadn't done the work that ought to be done.

The president -- 95 percent of the containers that come into the ports, right here in Florida, are not inspected. Civilians get onto aircraft, and their luggage is X-rayed, but the cargo hold is not X- rayed.

Does that make you feel safer in America?

This president thought it was more important to give the wealthiest people in America a tax cut rather than invest in homeland security. Those aren't my values. I believe in protecting America first.

And long before President Bush and I get a tax cut -- and that's who gets it -- long before we do, I'm going to invest in homeland security and I'm going to make sure we're not cutting COPS programs in America and we're fully staffed in our firehouses and that we protect the nuclear and chemical plants.

The president also unfortunately gave in to the chemical industry, which didn't want to do some of the things necessary to strengthen our chemical plant exposure.

And there's an enormous undone job to protect the loose nuclear materials in the world that are able to get to terrorists. That's a whole other subject, but I see we still have a little bit more time.

Let me just quickly say, at the current pace, the president will not secure the loose material in the Soviet Union -- former Soviet Union for 13 years. I'm going to do it in four years. And we're going to keep it out of the hands of terrorists.

LEHRER: Ninety-second response, Mr. President.

BUSH: I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these promises. It's like a huge tax gap. Anyway, that's for another debate.
...

Note that Bush's initial riposte to Kerry was unbelievably moronic and should definitely be used by Kerry is an ad or two. The President of the United States is actually claiming there is not enough money to protect the country but is willing to expend hundreds of billions in tax cuts? Well, his priorities are quite clear, aren't they!

1.2 Kerry Picks a Risky Strategy

This debate confirmed to me what I have suspected for months now - namely that the reason that the Kerry camp has not really publicized or attacked Bush for his myriad flip-flops is that they plan to portray him as a wrong-headed, "stubborn" ideologue. Kerry is continuing this line of attack on the stump after the debate.

This strategy is NOT without risk. Granted, Kerry's base is likely to vote overwhelmingly for him regardless of this flip-flop label being draped all over him - however, this label is probably one of the most important reasons why Kerry's unfavorables in the pre-debate polls were high. Bush - who has not been tarnished by Kerry or the media effectively with the same label continues to get support from those who are against Kerry because of this label hanging over Kerry. 

Certainly, Kerry did well in this debate by pointing out that he has in fact been consistent all along on Iraq (supported by independent analysis) and that he differs mostly (but not always) on strategy and tactics not principles. Yet, I believe he lost a golden opportunity to pull the carpet completely from under his opponent. For example, he could have destroyed the fake $87B flip-flop charge from Bush, by pointing out that Bush threatened repeatedly to veto another version of the same bill. I simply do not understand why the Kerry camp has done an abysmal job of pointing this out - and I still think that if they continue to ignore this nonsensical spin point from Bush in the month ahead, they are going to continue facing fake attacks on his credibility and resolve. This is risky business and time will tell if Kerry was correct in his judgment.

2. HORSERACE UPDATE

As of this writing, the Newsweek Poll shows KE04 "up" by about 2-3% over BC04 (a tossup if you consider MoE). The Los Angeles Times poll effectively shows no change (~1% KE04 "bump"). Although the Newsweek poll shows a significant reversal for Bush compared to their last poll (BC04 ahead about 5-6 points over KE04), Chris Bowers at MyDD has shown that this is largely due to a change in the Party ID designation in the latest Newsweek poll, that reflects a distribution closer to what was the case (although still ~1-2% less Dems than there were) in the 1996 and 2000 election.

It is a bit early to tell if Kerry's debate win will have any lasting impact on the horserace numbers. In my mind, it likely will not. A lot can happen in the next few debates and in the weeks ahead. The electorate continues to be significantly polarized - so it is going to be hard to get much of a swing from one time occurrences such as this. This is what I had mentioned even before the Democratic National Convention.

The most promising development though is that Kerry's performance has significantly improved the internals in the polls so far. To me this is equally, if not more, important at this stage of the campaign because it is critical to ensure that the majority of voters trust Kerry's credibility and ability to be "commander-in-chief" even if they have not decided TODAY that they want to vote for him. Without this trust and respect for his leadership, it will be much more difficult to get the persuadable and undecided voters to swing towards him closer to November 2nd. 

Here's an update from Donkey Rising on the internals in the Democracy Corps poll:

New Democracy Corps Poll Finds Substantial Gains For Kerry as Result of First Debate

A new and methodologically innovative survey of 1318 likely voters who watched the first debate confirmed that John Kerry won a decisive victory in that encounter. In this sample, much larger and more statistically reliable then the smaller surveys conducted by ABC, CBS and CNN on Thursday night, Kerry was judged the victor by a margin of 45 to 32, confirming the trends found in the earlier polls.

Kerry’s victory resulted in a significant tightening of the overall race. While George W. Bush’s support remained at 50% both before and after the debate, Kerry’s support rose from 46% to 48%, significantly closing the gap between him and the president.

More important, the survey, conducted by Democracy Corps in coordination with Knowledge Networks, found that had Kerry substantially improved his image among voters in four key respects. The following quotes from the study’s summary and analysis indicate the scope of Kerry’s gains:

1. Kerry made major gains on personal favorability. John Kerry’s performance was very well received by the debate watchers, who gave him a 7-point increase in his thermometer score (up 8 points in “warm” responses and down 5 points in “cool” responses).

2. Kerry achieved broad increases on the issues pertinent to the debate. In a debate that covered issues that were considered by many to be Bush’s strongest points, John Kerry realized major gains. Kerry gained 9 points on who will do a better job on homeland security, 8 points on the war on terrorism, and 3 points on Iraq.

3. With the opportunity to be heard unfiltered for the first time since his convention, Kerry broke through on leadership qualities. Polling by Democracy Corps and other outlets has clearly demonstrated that consistent attacks by Bush and his allies have led to significant losses for Kerry on key measures of personal strength and leadership over the last two months. But after seeing Kerry’s
performance in this debate, likely voters gave him increases of 11 points on having good plans for Iraq, 9 points on strong leader, and 9 points on having confidence in him.

4. The critical bloc of Independent voters moved considerably toward John Kerry. Kerry’s most notable achievement of the night was the vote shift among Independents where his vote increased 4 points from 50 to 54 percent while Bush’s vote dropped 3 points from 45 to 42 percent. Kerry’s favorability among independents jumped 12 points, and he addressed many of their concerns, both on security - up 10 points on making America safer and more secure, and 16 points on having good plans for Iraq - and leadership qualities - up 13 points on strong leader, up 10 points in having confidence in him, and a drop of 11 points on flip-flopping.

Taken together these improvement in Kerry’s image and position have dramatically transformed the race, making the two remaining debates potentially decisive encounters.

For the internals in the Newsweek poll click here. I will try to post an update here once more polls are out (if there is anything unexpected and newsworthy in those polls).

3. The SPIN and FABRICATE ZONE: BEWARE OF THE MEDIA TALKING HEADS

3.1 FLASHBACK: After calling the first 2000 debate for Gore initially, they flip-flopped; some today are making up stories about who won back then!

Rob Garver in The American Prospect describes what happened in 2000 (bold text is my emphasis):

In 2000, television agreed on the first night that Al Gore won the debate. Then the spin set in. Look out for a replay. In case you were wondering whether or not to pay attention to the presidential debates over the next three weeks, CNN’s blowhard-in-residence Jack Cafferty delivered the verdict in advance on Monday morning.

“The presidential debates begin Thursday,” he said. “It remains to be seen whether they're going to be worth watching. My sense is they probably won’t be.”

The debates, he said, “[Have] been sanitized and choreographed and tied up in knots to the point where we're probably not going to see those wonderful spontaneous moments that we -- that we used to look forward to. My suggestion would be to put them in a room and let them have a food fight.”

That’s great, Jack. Thanks for the insight.

Sadly, this is how it begins: By preemptively declaring the debates to be meaningless political theater, the television news networks are giving themselves permission to cover them not as a battle of ideas but as a spectacle.

Ditto in the print media. Writing for The Washington Post on Tuesday, media critic Howard Kurtz derided the debates as “structured parallel press conferences.” (“Not that I want to give up a chance to go to Miami,” he added.) Clearly, if he has already decided that the whole thing is pointless, Kurtz isn’t headed for Florida to assess the candidates’ positions on the issues. He must be looking for something else.

Here’s a guess: Cafferty, Kurtz, and company will be watching Thursday night’s exchange hoping that John Kerry displays some annoying personality tic or that George W. Bush makes one of his more egregious malapropisms, either of which they will replay as a laugh line for the next five weeks, all the while bemoaning the lack of substance in the candidates’ discussion.

This, of course, is exactly what the mainstream media did in 2000, when it supplied exhaustive coverage of Al Gore’s sighs and his tone of voice, hammering trivial points home so thoroughly that viewers who originally thought Gore had won the debates began to accept the media’s alternate verdict of disaster for the vice president.

As Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler has exhaustively chronicled, the mainstream media’s coverage of the 2000 presidential debates was laughably divorced from reality. In a Gallup Poll taken immediately after the first debate and sponsored by USA Today and CNN, debate viewers generally rated Gore’s performance as good (51 percent) or excellent (25 percent). According to the same poll, Gore’s numbers slipped after the second debate (54 percent said his performance was “good” and 18 percent said it was “excellent”) but peaked following the third (49 percent said “good” and 28 percent said “excellent”).

Asked who had won each debate, viewers gave Gore two out of three. And fact, in the poll asking viewers about the second debate, in which Bush was favored, the sample was so heavily tilted toward Republicans that in its online write-up of the results, CNN felt the need to warn its audience that the results might be skewed in Bush’s favor.

By the time the elections rolled around, though, the majority of Americans, who had not actually watched the debates but were being told about them by cable television, were drawing a very different conclusion. Gore might have had more facts at his disposal than Bush did, viewers were told, but he had done serious damage to his candidacy by sighing too much, by correcting his opponent, and by being more aggressive in some of the contests than in others. The fact that Bush had been repeatedly mistaken about the content of his own campaign’s policy proposals was, remarkably, ignored.

In fact, the pundits seemed able to convince even themselves that the real story line was Gore’s personality.

On October 4, the day following the first debate, Chris Matthews had no doubts about who had come out on top, telling the audience on MSNBC’s Hardball: “It was clear to me, and I am no fan of either of these guys entirely, and I can certainly say that about the one who I thought won last night, that's Al Gore. I thought he cleaned the other guy's clock, and I said so last night, and all four national polls agreed with that. In fact, the ones with the -- the one with the largest sample, which was CBS, found a 14-point spread of those who thought that the vice president really leveled the other guy. I don't understand why people are afraid to say so, because it's simply a judgment as to performance.”

But for Matthews and the rest of the cable talk-show cohort, performance was being judged by a completely different standard just a few days later. On October 10, the day of the second Bush-Gore contest, Matthews previewed the debate by replaying some footage from the first meeting, and what he chose to highlight wasn’t the candidates’ disagreements over the issues. It was Gore’s facial expressions.

“Here he is, showing his demeanor,” Matthews said, introducing a video clip of the vice president. “You got to wonder about that facial manipulation. It's so, I don't know, condescending, like he's a teacher talking to the slowest first-graders.”

The 2004 debates will likely be the three events on which undecided voters focus in the few remaining weeks before the election, and with the margin between the candidates shrinking, the decisions made by those few remaining undecideds will play a large part in determining the election’s outcome.

If for no other reason than this, the television news networks owe the country more serious consideration of the debates than Cafferty, Kurtz, et al. seem prepared to give them.

Bob Somerby highlights how Howard [GOP] Fineman of Newsweek fabricated his own story about who won the first debate in 2000:

As we awaited the big debate, we read a piece by Newsweek’s Howard Fineman. And readers! Fineman agrees with every word we’ve written about the way his cohort functions. Where does the press get its spin on debates? Yes, he actually wrote this:

FINEMAN (9/30/04): Pivotal moments [in White House debates] aren't usually apparent at first glance. They are like an old-fashioned photographic print in a chemical bath; they take time to emerge. Often there isn't a pivotal moment, even a hidden one, so it takes even longer for the press to invent one outright, since drama is what we live on. In 2000, at UMass in Boston, I went on MSNBC after the first Gore-Bush debate and said I thought that Bush had “won” it by not losing it. I was right, as it turned out, but I did not get the real news—which, it became clear after a day or two, was all about The Gore Sigh.

Amazing, isn’t it? Since drama is what this cohort lives on, sometimes they just invent one! Fineman is stealing all our lines. He just doesn’t seem to see that he is describing journalistic misconduct.

By the way, did Fineman really say, after Bush and Gore’s first debate, that Bush had “‘won’ it by not losing if?” If so, he ought to alert the authorities. Here’s a chunk of what he said on MSNBC. It’s the only statement that Nexis records:

FINEMAN (10/3/00): The weak points for George Bush were pretty clear. He, obviously, doesn't know very much about foreign policy, and that was evident tonight. He is less presidential. Let's face it. He hasn't been in Washington, isn’t close to the office, and sometimes when he got down to the third level, third or fourth level of discussion on his proposals or Gore's attacks, he didn't answer them point by point.

And when he said—when he was asked, "What is the biggest crisis you face?" and "How have you handled it?" and he asked for the question to be repeated, that, obviously, wasn't a strong point.

But the key thing to remember here is that undecided voters, those voters in the middle who are looking for answers, are not necessarily going to add up the budget numbers. They are not going to argue to the third or fourth level of detail on budget projections that are probably fantasy anyway.

They're looking for someone who knows and understands them and who seems like a trustworthy decent guy who will bring the change to Washington that they may want, and I thought Bush, in the end, did a better job than some people might have thought in making that point to those particular voters.

That concludes Fineman’s only recorded statement. The full statement includes no remark about Bush “winning it by not losing it.” In fact, there’s no statement about Bush “winning it” at all. Meanwhile, Fineman appeared on Imus the next morning. Nexis provides a summary from Video Monitoring Services of America. According to the poorly-penned precis, here’s what Fineman said there:

VIDEO MONITORING SERVICES (10/4/00): Studio Interview—Howard Fineman, Newsweek, says that GW Bush survived this. Don says that they were hoping for some big disaster from this. Howard says that they are both highly regarded by many people don't really want to vote for them [sic] and there are many undecided voters who are watching the media more than the presidential candidates. Howard says that GW Bush learned a lot on education and Medicare and Gore, who is so practiced over this, won this due to coming in on this and GW Bush doesn't know the arguments enough here.

We’ll check to see if we have the tape, but it doesn’t sound like Fineman said Bush “won” the debate on Imus, either. In fact, the Hotline quoted Fineman from both these shows, but they don’t have his “Bush won” remark either. But you know the way this cohort functions! Maybe Fineman invented another “drama” while typing up yesterday’s piece.

3.2 FLASHBACK: How Gore lost the post-debate spin thanks to the fabrications of the media using GOP spin points

It is easy to forget the fact that the media had open contempt for Gore in 2000. Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler has chronicled this extensively and here's a recent piece where he reminded readers of this:

In Campaign 2000, we had a “catty and frivolous press corps” that was trashing Al Gore every chance that it got. It’s absurd to think that the crucial, post-debate trashing of Gore happened because the GOP put on a better spin effort. Indeed, Marshall has discussed this very phenomenon in the not-too-distant past. In August 2002, that catty corps was gearing up to trash Gore if he entered the 2004 race. On Reliable Sources, Marshall described their long-standing “disdain and contempt” for the Democrat hopeful:

HOWARD KURTZ (8/10/02): Josh Marshall, don’t a lot of reporters believe deep down that Gore ran a horrible campaign and doesn’t deserve another shot?

MARSHALL: I think it’s even more than that. I think deep down most reporters just have contempt for Al Gore. I don’t even think it’s dislike. It’s more like a disdain and contempt.

And the gentleman’s truth-telling wasn’t finished. “[T]his was, you know, a year and a half before the election, I think you could say this,” Marshall continued. “This wasn’t something that happened because he ran a bad campaign. If he did, it was something that predated it.”
According to Marshall, you could see the press corps’ “contempt and disdain” for Candidate Gore eighteen months before November 2000. And Marshall’s remark is perfectly accurate, as we incomparably said at the time (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/12/02). But today, we’re back to a certain default position. When Josh describes the remarkable spinning of that first Bush-Gore debate, we’re told that the Bush campaign was brilliant and the Gore campaign somehow failed to perform. But we don’t hear a word about the press corps’ “disdain and contempt.” An obvious element of this story has once again disappeared.

A classic example of the widespread "journalistic" malpractice against Gore in 2000 is outlined in this Somerby post - which shows the exact spin points and fake tales from the media that changed the momentum from Gore towards Bush after their first debate:

Yesterday, we asked a great question about liberal career writers: Are they willing to tell the truth about the conduct of the press corps—the press corps in which they’ll earn their future livings? More specifically, will liberal writers ever tell you the truth about the press corps’ trashing of Gore during Campaign 2000? To see how strange the narratives get even at our most “liberal” sites, consider Sean Aday’s bizarre report at the liberal (and worthwhile) web site, Gadflyer.

In his piece, Aday discusses the lessons Bush and Kerry should learn from Campaign 2000. At one point, he offers this bizarre account of what happened to Gore in September of that year:

ADAY (9/28/04): Most importantly, both candidates should understand how abruptly things can change, and why. In 2000, Gore's momentum turned on a dime during a brutal five-day period in mid-September marred by self-inflicted wounds—notably claiming falsely that his mother-in-law paid more for the same prescription drug for herself than he paid for his dog, and that his parents sung him a union lullaby as a child that wasn't written until he was an adult (the fact that Gore was joking was lost on the press, who played it as a serious act of deception)—that played directly into the Republican caricature of him as untrustworthy.

The press, which just days earlier had virtually anointed Gore president, turned on him with a vengeance. His poll numbers quickly plummeted.

That presentation is simply bizarre. Aday refers to a pair of damaging stories that spun up in mid-September 2000. In the first story, published on September 18, the Boston Globe’s Walter Robinson claimed that Gore had misstated the facts about the cost of dog pills. In the second story, published on September 20, USA Today’s Walter Shapiro claimed that Gore had told a whopper about an old union song. As Aday correctly notes, the press corps “turned on [Gore] with a vengeance” when this pair of stories arrived. Al Gore is a liar, just like Bill Clinton! The pleasing tale was widely re-bruited, and Gore began to sink in the polls. This formed the prelude to that first debate, when the press corps seized on small errors by Gore and ignored his opponent’s large howlers. And yes: This is the way the press corps behaved all through Campaign 2000, even if many “liberal” writers prefer to semi-forget.

Aday is right about several points. This was a deeply damaging week for Gore; indeed, this was a Week That Was, a week that transformed the 2000 race, a week we promised to discuss back on September 7. But how bizarre is Aday’s presentation? He himself notes what became crystal clear—Gore’s comment about the union song was a joke, a joke he told at a union event, a joke at which his audience laughed. But so what? Even knowing that Gore’s remark was a joke, Aday trashes Gore for it anyway, describing it as a “false claim” and a “self-inflicted wound” that “played directly into the Republican caricature of him as untrustworthy.” Logic like that would be strange and depressing even from a conservative writer, but here it is at a liberal site, typed again by a liberal writer. And Aday doesn’t really let himself wonder why the press corps engaged in this conduct—why the press corps trashed a candidate for daring to tell a pointless joke. Instead, he blames Gore for telling the joke, even describing it as a “false claim!” This is the type of puzzling nonsense we read today at “liberal” sites.

But let’s not stop with the spectacle of Aday trashing Gore for telling a joke. Let’s consider that first story too. Is it true, what Aday writes? Is it true that Gore “claim[ed] falsely that his mother-in-law paid more for the same prescription drug for herself than he paid for his dog?” Did Gore make a “false claim” in this matter? Your press corps has never backed off from this claim, and obedient Aday recites it again. But did Gore really make a false claim? Unless Aday has come up with new information, we’re amazed to see this claim at an excellent liberal site, pushed by a liberal writer.

Did Gore “claim falsely” about doggy pills? As noted, Walter Robinson filed the Globe report, one of his many odd reports about Gore’s alleged lying. But try to believe that it really happened! Although Robinson’s report became a cause celebre, he had no record of what Gore had actually said—didn’t present a single quote in his entire report! Plainly, Gore had said something on August 28, when he held a meeting with Florida senior citizens and discussed the cost of prescription drugs. But what exactly had Gore said? As far as we know, no one ever produced a full record of what was actually said that day. And sorry—the fragments we have of Gore’s remarks all do seem to be accurate. In the interest of brevity, let’s work from Gene Lyons’ real-time summary of this scandal in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

LYONS (10/11/00): Then there was the flap over Gore's mother-in-law and his dog. Again, the real problem was creative reporting. Speaking to Florida seniors, Gore said that pharmaceutical firms often charge humans more than pets for the same drugs. He cited an arthritis potion taken by his mother-in-law and his Labrador retriever.

According to The New York Times, “Mr. Gore, speaking of the drug Lodine and its prices, said, 'While it costs $108 a month for a person, it costs $37.80 for a dog.’” A Boston Globe reporter tried to learn if those exact sums were being paid to treat Tipper's mother and Shiloh the dog, although it's not clear that Gore ever said that they were. (The article paraphrased his remarks, often a tip-off to spin.) Challenged, his campaign said Gore took the numbers from a congressional report whose accuracy nobody disputes.

So here’s the run-down. Gore cited accurate numbers from a congressional study—numbers which other major Dems had often publicly cited. As he did so, he noted two more accurate facts—his mother-in-law was prescribed the drug in question, and so was his arthritic Labrador, Shiloh. But you know the way the press corps worked in the 2000 race, even if “liberal” writers don’t want to discuss it. As they did all through the 2000 campaign, the press corps went to work extra-hard, trying to torture another “false claim” from this trivial, pointless story. To this day, we know of no full record of what Gore said, and we know of no evidence that he made a false statement, even deep down in the weeds where the press corps, as always, went to search.

That remarkable week in September 2000 was very much a Week That Was. First the dog pills, then the union lullaby—the mainstream press went back to work, trying to call Gore a liar. Their conduct that week was deeply cracked. Just how crazy and cracked is your press corps? Eventually, Bob Novak and the USA Today editors came up with the solution for Gore. Both acknowledged that Gore had been trashed for telling a joke. But did they attack the press corps for this? No—they had a different solution. Gore should just stop telling jokes, these two crackpot worthies now said.

It couldn’t be the press corps’ fault; it had to be Gore’s, for telling a joke! Four years later, liberal career writers still peddle this nonsense, covering up for the depth of the press corps’ misconduct and preferring to say that Gore “falsely claimed.” Our question: Will these weak-willed, self-serving boys ever dare to tell you the truth? Will they tell you the truth about the press corps, in which they will make their fine living?

Don't remember how the polls shifted away from Gore in late Sep/early Oct 2000?

The following charts show the difference between the votes in favor of Gore vs. those in favor of Bush in the polls conducted before the 2000 election. Note that the votes corresponding to "Other/Unsure" are excluded - so keep those in mind, as well as the error bars, when you interpret the data...

3.3 NOW: Kerry's performance was strong - making it tough for the talking heads to perpetuate GOP spin instantly, but the spinners are here again!

This time around, the Kerry campaign and the DNC - along with the lefty blogosphere (example DailyKos) - have followed up Kerry's strong performance in the debate by exerting more control over the media's narrative. This is excellent because they have shown they have learnt something from 2000. This needs to continue.

But, let's not forget this is an hourly job that needs to be done every hour! The talking heads slant towards the GOP whether we like it or not and it is only because of Bush's bizarre but well-known behaviors during the debate that the DNC has been able to keep the pressure on the media to not spin things in favor of the GOP. For example, here's Dana Milbank in the Washington Post (bold text is my emphasis):

As Democratic nominee John F. Kerry criticized President Bush in Thursday night's presidential debate, Bush scowled, squinted, clenched his jaw and appeared disgusted as he hunched over his lectern -- images that were beamed into millions of American homes.

The episode was reminiscent of the first debate of the 2000 presidential campaign, when Al Gore's loud and pained sighs made the Democrat appear contemptuous and condescending, turning what could have been a victory into a political debacle for him. On Thursday night, it was Bush's aggravated demeanor that contributed to the impression that Kerry won the debate.

...

For the current president, the performance could be particularly damaging, because part of his advantage over Kerry is voters' perception that he is likable while Kerry lacks the common touch. Democrats on Friday moved quickly to maximize the damage. The Democratic National Committee posted on the Web a video titled "Faces of Frustration," showing Bush in various stages of consternation as he listened to Kerry. "He was defensive, annoyed, arrogant, even angry, and showed it," said DNC Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe.

...

Bush has flashed such expressions -- and worse -- at reporters when they ask him hostile questions. But the public has generally not seen the president's more petulant side, in part because he is rarely challenged in a public venue. He has held fewer news conferences than any modern predecessor, Congress is in his party's control, and he has a famously loyal staff. In rare instances when Bush has been vigorously challenged -- most recently in interviews with an Irish television journalist and a French magazine -- he has reacted with similar indignation.

As questions continued about Bush's demeanor on Thursday night, his aides have changed their explanation of it. On Thursday night, adviser Karen Hughes said: "On his face, you could see his irritation at the senator's misrepresentations." But by Friday morning, Mehlman said: "I don't know that he was irritated."

As with Gore's sighs, Bush's scowls were at first overlooked by many of the people covering the event. In the press room at the debate site at the University of Miami, the direct television feed of the debate did not have the telltale split screens and reaction shots that most Americans saw at home. Bush may have been so expressive in part because he thought the debate rules disallowed such reaction shots -- although the Bush campaign knew such rules would not be enforced.

Having said that, the spinners are active and are just waiting for the first acceptable GOP spin point. Media Matters provided an early example from CNN:

In the buildup to the first presidential debate, some CNN commentators called the event "a decisive moment"; a "key opportunity" for Senator John Kerry; "the most important night of John Kerry's presidential campaign"; a chance for the candidates to win "the very big prize" of undecided voters; or "a pivotal moment." After the debate, these same CNN commentators said Kerry performed well -- but then downplayed the significance of the debates.

CNN host Wolf Blitzer:

PRE-DEBATE:

A pivotal night in this presidential campaign, perhaps a decisive moment. A key opportunity for the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, to break through, to try to establish himself as a formidable candidate in this race.
[...]
That's a huge audience. A lot of people, of course, most of that audience has already made up their minds. But those undecided voters are still critical.
[...]
A defining night. I think everybody agrees potentially. This certainly could be a defining night. Historians will be writing about this for many years to come. [CNN, live debate coverage, 9/30/04]

POST-DEBATE:

So even if John Kerry decisively won the debate, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions, let alone on the final outcome on November 2, but even if there will be a significant movement in the poll numbers, the real polls, not these instant polls over the next three or four or five days. [CNN, News From CNN, 10/01/04]

CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield:

PRE-DEBATE:

So you're planning to spend 90 minutes watching the candidates debate tonight? Millions of you say this is going to help you decide who you are for. [CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, 9/30/04]

For all of the hype, and God knows there's been a ton of it, this is the most important night of John Kerry's presidential campaign. He knows he's behind. He knows that 60 to 80 million people will be watching, and whether or not he can make that connection that he apparently has not yet made may be the pivotal point of the whole campaign. It actually is one of those events that we're not overhyping. [CNN, live debate coverage, 9/30/04]

POST-DEBATE:

I think John Kerry did a better job in debate terms. That's what -- you know, that's what the snap polls showed. That's what most of the experts, even the New York Post, a very pro-Bush paper, had its bipartisan panel say that Kerry actually did better.

But that's a different question from asking did they sway voters, because it's entirely possible that if a voter -- if enough voters have made up their minds, if the undecideds are smaller than our poll and the Bush campaign thinks it is, then it's perfectly consistent for people to say, well, I think Kerry won the debate, but I'm still voting for Bush because I think he's better on terror or Iraq or whatever. That's what we're not going to know for another two or three days.

And remember, four years ago the first snap polls of the first debate showed that Al Gore had -- quote -- "won on points." But two days later when the stories appeared about his sighing and a couple of mistakes he made, then the opinion changed.

So, I really think, you know, much as I know, we're all fascinated by snap polls and voters with dials, we've got to wait a day or two to see whether or not this is going to have a political effect. [CNN, American Morning, 10/1/04]

...

CNN news anchor Miles O'Brien:

PRE-DEBATE:

[T]he debates are now set. That obviously is going to be a pivotal moment in this campaign. [CNN, Live From..., 9/21/04]

POST-DEBATE:

Well, by now we've seen the numbers, the major post-debate polls indicating the winner was Senator John Kerry over President Bush, but not to sound flip -- or flop, for that matter -- so what? What does Kerry's apparent win in the first of three debates mean for the race for president? [CNN, Live From..., 10/1/04]

3.4 NOW: The fabricators are also here again, with Faux News leading the way

Of course, it's not just spin. Blatant fabrication by the media is also being elevated into a higher art form, especially by Faux Fox News.

3.4.1 EXAMPLE 1
Faux News' Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron makes up s*** about Kerry from thin air - after the debate - and retains his job (funny how the Faux guys were going after CBS and Dan Rather):

Josh Marshall of Talkingpointsmemo has been doing the heavy lifting on this story. Here is how the story unfolded.

It started here. 

If you go to the front page of the Fox News site, there's a link right there up front to "Trail Tales: What's that Face" [eRiposte note: this has since been removed - but read on].

Link through and you find this ...

Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday.

With the foreign-policy debate in the history books, Kerry hopes to keep the pressure on and the sense of traction going.

Aides say he will step up attacks on the president in the next few days, and pivot somewhat to the domestic agenda, with a focus on women and abortion rights.

"It's about the Supreme Court. Women should like me! I do manicures," Kerry said.

Kerry still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his performance was strong enough to rally his base and further appeal to voters ready for a change.

"I'm metrosexual — he's a cowboy," the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.

A "metrosexual" is defined as an urbane male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.

Did Kerry really say that stuff? Stuff that sounds like classic winger parody? I looked around on google and no other reporters seem to have gotten those choice quotes from Senator Kerry. A source on the Kerry campaign told me Kerry certainly didn't say anything remotely like that.

So what's the story from Fox? Are these quotes real? Made up? Unidentified parody? Straight-up fabrications?

Josh did some checking and found that the quotes mysteriously disappeared later.

Now Fox has pulled the article from the front page without explanation. And on the article itself the passages I quoted in the post below have all been removed -- again, without explanation.

Then he confirmed that the quotes were fabrications:

Late this afternoon I spoke to Fox spokesman Paul Schur who told me the following ...

“Carl [Cameron] made a stupid mistake which he regrets. And he has been reprimanded for his lapse in judgment. It was a poor attempt at humor.”

So the Fox reporter covering the Kerry campaign puts together this Kerry-bashing parody right out of the RNC playbook with phony quotes intended to peg him as girlish fool and somehow it found its way on the Fox website as a news item.

Imagine that.

Then Faux published a retraction:

Fox News has now posted a retraction and apology for the piece with the fabricated Kerry quotes ...

Earlier Friday, FOXNews.com posted an item purporting to contain quotations from Kerry. The item was based on a reporter’s partial script that had been written in jest and should not have been posted or broadcast. We regret the error, which occurred because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice.

The only retraction doesn't name the reporter in question, Carl Cameron, which was noted in the statement Fox News gave TPM this afternoon.

Josh then pointed out something more about Carl Cameron and his coverage of Kerry in the past:

On Monday Kurtz discussed a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs that showed that Fox News coverage of Kerry was overwhelmingly negative.

Kurtz got these quotes from Cameron's boss Brit Hume ...

Brit Hume, Fox's Washington managing editor, whose "Special Report" was examined by the study, says he's surprised by the anti-Kerry findings. "Our day-in, day-out coverage by Carl Cameron has been extremely fair to Kerry, and the Kerry campaign has recognized this," he says.

"We did a lot on the Swift Boat Veterans. We thought it was a totally legitimate story and found it an appalling lapse by many of our competitive news organizations that were treating that story like it was cancerous." But even there, Hume says, "we were abundantly fair to John Kerry's side."

"Extremely fair" to Kerry? "Abundantly fair" about the Swift Boat stuff?

The same reporter who made up these 'Kerry quotes'?

"Women should like me! I do manicures."

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!"

"I'm metrosexual — [Bush's] a cowboy."

Kurtz could do us all a favor and get Hume on the horn to see if he's still willing to call Cameron "extremely fair to Kerry."

Another follow-up from Josh:

A few questions and points about Carl Cameron's Kerry-bashing fabrications on Fox, or A Guide for the Perplexed (media reporters) ...

1. How long did the fabricated quotes run on the Fox News website?

2. Fox News says Cameron has been 'reprimanded.' 

How? Are there any consequences? What happened to him? How was he reprimanded? Fox spokesman Paul Schur, who first spoke to TPM yesterday afternoon, told The Daily News "We're simply moving on from this, we have no further comment." And that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that the 'reprimand' is anything more than a 'Carl, Don't post any more fabricated quotes on the website.' Meanwhile, Schur declined to tell the LA Times what if any discipline Cameron faced.

3. Just for the sake of discussion, can there be any question that Carl Cameron has contempt and disdain for John Kerry -- contempt and disdain that he has great difficulty keeping a lid on?

4. Shouldn't Cameron be taken off the Kerry campaign beat? Assume for the moment that Cameron's fabricated story wasn't supposed to run on the site. If Cameron sits around writing up phony news stories only for Fox News colleagues which portray Kerry as a swishy fool, can he really credibly cover the campaign as a straight news reporter? The answer is obvious, I think. Of course, he can't.

5. Fox says Cameron made an "error" because of "fatigue and bad judgment." What was the error? Making up the fabricated quotes? Sending a Kerry-bashing parody around to colleagues at Fox News? Posting it on the website as a news story?

6. Did Cameron post the material to the site himself, not realizing there was a problem? Or did a tech person or editor at the website get a hold of Cameron's fabrications and post it not realizing it was a fabrication?

7. How tired is Carl Cameron and will Fox News be requiring him to get more sleep?

8. Why did comments very similar to Cameron's fabrications come up again and again from Fox commentators on debate night?

9. If CNN's John King posted a story on the CNN website with fabricated quotes that had the president joking about funneling money to Halliburton or telling a crowd how only saps went to Vietnam, what would the fall-out or consequences be?

In all this, let's not forget this Carl Cameron flashback from 2000:

A Quicktime clip of Outfoxed (6MB) is now available online.  Here's the key excerpt:

[CARL CAMERON, Fox News Senior Political Correspondent prepares for an interview with candidate and then-Governor GEORGE W. BUSH.]

CAMERON: My wife has been hanging out with your sister.

BUSH: Yeah.  Good.  [Laughs]

CAMERON: ...been all over the state campaigning, and Pauline has been constantly with her.

BUSH: Yeah, [?] is a good person.

CAMERON: Oh, she's been terrific!  To hear Pauline tell it, when she first started campaigning for you, she was a little bit nervous.  But...

BUSH: Hitting her stride?

CAMERON: She doesn't need notes, she's going to crowds, and she's got the whole riff down.

BUSH: She's a good soul.

CAMERON: She's having fun, too.

BUSH: She's a really good soul.

NARRATOR: And in any other news organization, in fact in CNN that very summer, there was a producer whose husband was a lawyer for the Gore team.  And this was a producer who would have naturally covered Gore, who was immediately told you're not to have anything to do with campaign coverage, either covering Bush or covering Gore because of the possible conflict of interest or the perception of a conflict at interest.  At Fox, they didn't care.  The fact that the senior political reporter whose wife was actually campaigning for the Bush campaign at a time when this guy's covering them, that didn't even register.  It never would have occured.  

CAMERON: All right, you guys ready?  All right.

BUSH: [Laughing] That's great.

CAMERON: Here we go governor.

[BUSH laughs]

CAMERON: See?  Little things that get disclosed.

BUSH: I like that.

CAMERON: [Serious voice] Thank you for joining us, sir.

BUSH: [Serious voice] Yes, sir.  Thanks, Carl, it's good to see you.

CAMERON: Just a few days away from the convention, now...

NARRATOR: ...Through the act of having some sort of basic journalistic integrity that is just missing from that organization.

3.4.2 EXAMPLE 2: 
Faux News makes up s*** about a "Communist" group claiming to support Kerry without fact-checking

For a one-two punch from Faux, here's Atrios:

Is anyone ever going to hold this network to any standard?

Of course, there were some Kerry supporters in attendance who had no doubts whatever about their candidate.

"We're trying to get Comrade Kerry elected and get that capitalist enabler George Bush out of office," said 17-year-old Komoselutes Rob of Communists for Kerry.

"Even though he, too, is a capitalist, he supports my socialist values more than President Bush," Rob said, before assuring FOXNews.com that his organization was not a parody group. When asked his thoughts on Washington's policy toward Communist holdout North Korea, Rob said: "The North Koreans are my comrades to a point, and I'm sure they support Comrade Kerry, too."

It is unclear whether the Kerry campaign has welcomed the Communists' endorsement.

All Fox had to do was click on the "About" link:

"Communists for Kerry" is a campaign of the Hellgate Republican Club, a tax exempt non-partisan public advocacy "527" organization that exists for the purpose of;

"Informing voters with satire and irony, how political candidates make decisions based on the failed social economic principles of socialism that punish the individual by preventing them from becoming their dream through proven ideas of entrepreneurship and freedom."

Our members help elect candidates who support economic growth through Entrepreneurship, limited government and lower taxes. Communists For Kerry is separate and distinct from the Communist party of America and any of its organization. None of it's members are members of any communist organizations.

Media Matters also has a lot more on other cable TV outlets, including fake "fact-checks" about Kerry's claims.

Readers, this is what the American TV media is all about today. Don't trust them!

4. THE POST-DEBATE SPIN FROM THE GOP (fake attack on Kerry's "global test") AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

Bush is now attacking Kerry on the stump and with a fake ad about how Kerry will wait for the permission of foreign governments before taking action against America. Why? He is using Kerry's words in the debate about American actions having to pass a "global test" .

If this is not a fake, fabricated attack I don't know what is. This is just an example of what is likely to unfold over the next few weeks. The Kerry camp has responded (also see here), but all the media has to do is read the debate transcripts to see why this is a fake spin point. Let's see if they do.

Here's the transcript first with bold text being my emphasis.

LEHRER: New question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry.

What is your position on the whole concept of preemptive war? 

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way? So what is at test here is the credibility of the United States of America and how we lead the world. And Iran and Iraq are now more dangerous -- Iran and North Korea are now more dangerous.

Now, whether preemption is ultimately what has to happen, I don't know yet. But I'll tell you this: As president, I'll never take my eye off that ball. I've been fighting for proliferation the entire time -- anti-proliferation the entire time I've been in the Congress. And we've watched this president actually turn away from some of the treaties that were on the table.

You don't help yourself with other nations when you turn away from the global warming treaty, for instance, or when you refuse to deal at length with the United Nations.

You have to earn that respect. And I think we have a lot of earning back to do.

LEHRER: Ninety seconds.

BUSH: Let me -- I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test," you take preemptive action if you pass a global test.

Bush blandly lies by claiming that Kerry somehow said you have to first pass a global test before taking preemptive action. Kerry said exactly the reverse. That, he will take preemptive action whenever needed, and if and when he does it, he will ensure it is done in a way that passes the global test - defined as "where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons." Note the emphasis on "did" it - not "will do" it.

What this shows is simply that the post-debate spin is just beginning. The Kerry camp needs to fight very hard - they have to fight BC04's fabrications and they have to fight in the media spin zone.

5. CONCLUDING MESSAGE FOR KERRY

Let me first highlight what I said before. 

Kerry and the DNC of course need to translate the [near] dead-even race to a win for Kerry - this is going to be a challenge especially if Bush springs an "October Surprise" or two. But, I will not try to second-guess the Kerry camp's strategy at this point (as Liberal Oasis has wisely advised) since they know the internals of all these polls and the pulse of the electorate better than anyone else. 

Overall, Kerry did well in the debates and although I expect minimal shifts in the horserace numbers due to to this, it should help significantly strengthen voters' views of him as a dependable and credible leader. The work now is to keep doing what he did in the debate, EVERYDAY, for the rest of this campaign. Plus, his camp needs to aggressively fight the fabrications and spin from the GOP and the media.