Someone named Peter Daou presents a Grand Unified Theory of Everything, on the topic of why Democrats lose elections. Of the three hypotheses that get trotted out as to why we lose elections (the other two being that conservatism has historically been the fallback ideology that prevails in American elections, or that some dark conspiracy operates to thwart the true will of the electorate), the one trumpeted by Daou, that it’s due to massive brainwashing of the public by the MSM, is the one that I find most frustrating.

Daou writes:

The same holds true for the Swift-boat sliming of Kerry: much has been made of the Kerry campaign's response or lack thereof, but there's another angle less discussed: the story was a cable staple for days and weeks, unchecked. Had the cable nets and other media outlets covered that story with more balance, more dignity, more judiciousness, more responsibility, it would have been a sideshow. And this has nothing to do with deflecting blame - the Kerry campaign should have known that their enemy wasn't a vindictive crackpot like John O'Neill, but the many 'journalists' and media outlets who rammed the story down our collective gullets.

To suggest, as Daou does, that the allegations made by the “Swift Boat Vets” were “unchecked” by the media, including cable news outlets like CNN (the “news network” run by Rupert Murdoch clearly doesn’t operate under the same standards of purported impartiality as its competitors; its useless to whine that its not being fair to liberals, since that its entire reason for existence), is ludicrous. In fact, the media (incl. that noted totem of the loony left, Chris Matthews) went after the story more vigorously and with greater determination than John Kerry did (see here, here, here, here, and here); in fact, it did so more devastatingly than the lefty blogosphere. If you don't like the fact that when the ads first were aired, CNN could do little more than report the controversy, rather than dig up government records discrediting the claims, repeal the First Amendment.

I know Kerry’s defeat is still a bitter pill to swallow, and that his tepid, lackluster response to the sleazebags who alleged that he was a traitor who faked his military heroism still rankles, but the media’s response to the Rove-generated attack ads was almost universally negative. It may have taken a week or two, but the media did its job. The ads ended up hurting Kerry because he refused to fight back during a crucial period, making him look weak even to voters who were skeptical of the SBV claims, while providing ammunition to those who didn’t like him in the first place.

Furthermore, to imply that those allegations were trumpeted in the same obsessive fashion as the Holloway disappearance or the Lewinsky investigation is disingenuous, to say the least (if you don’t believe me, just compare the number of Nightline episodes involving Monica, or the number of Larry King shows about Ms. Holloway, with the number of times either show focused on the SBV’s during the summer of 2004). In August, 2004, the media, presented with a particularly nasty set of ads, as well as a “victim” who seemed reticent about defending himself, gave the story appropriate play, When, after a few reporters performed the hard, arduous work of examining events that occurred some thirty years earlier, it came down heavily against the SBV’s, to devasting effect against those who had so loudly trumpeted their claims.

Media bashing (or, to use the more dignified term, “media criticism”) is cathartic, easy, and provides ambitious bloggers with a convenient scapegoat to kick. But working the ref is no substitute for having a gameplan for winning. Revisionist history is best performed when the principal actors have been dead for a few decades; it ill-behooves us to perform it immediately afterwards, when the record is much easier to check.