Among the many wonderful ironies of this campaign season, we see the efforts of the Democrats and MSM to attach the Swiftees' advertising to the Bush campaign backfiring badly. The absurd charts showing the 'web of connections' between Republican activists and the SBVT ad campaign made their position clear: blame the campaign for anything said by their allies.

So now, we have Dan Rather, who has spoken at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Texas, whose daughter is a party activist, and whose CBS News colleagues have a definite tendency to lean leftward, peddling forged documents to slime George Bush. Simultaneously, the Democratic Party runs commercials on the internet using CBS footage of Dan Rather interviewing Ben Barnes (whose own daughter says he is lying) about Bush's entry to the Texas Air National Guard.

So, in the public mind, thanks to the Democrats' efforts, Rather is seen as part of the Democratic Party effort, no matter how much he might protest his journalistic independence.

As a further benefit to the Bush campaign, and longer—term to the entire conservative movement, the MSM is increasingly understood to be biased. After the campaign began, Evan Thomas of Newsweek estimated that media support would add 15 points to Kerry's vote. That figure is surely too high, as of today. Every day the CBS disgrace drags on, it gets lower. A revelation implicating Democrats in Rathergate could drive it into negative numbers. The elite media are not popular among the broad American public. Years of looking down with condescension on the broad American public have not gone unnoted.

Thomas Lifson  9 17 04