So the Dems lose in CA-50, and do what they must to minimize the losses.
We forced them to spend money. Bilbray ran behind Cunningham, behind Bush. Margin of victory. Who cares about San Diego. All about immigration.
To which the responses go like this: first, a Minuteman Independent took about six percent of the vote, so the right-of-Busby vote was more like 53-54%, entirely in tune with the voting patterns of North San Diego.
More important, as the old Arizona State football coach Darryl Rogers used to say, W's are W's and L's are L's. Moral victory is French for defeat, and the Dems will have to start winning soon or retrench again.
Most important is this: the Dems made every effort to show CA-50 as a bellwether. (I smell a Safire column.) And, as George Will pointed out years ago, if you want to play Babe Ruth and point to the centerfield flag pole, you'd better deliver.
Well, enough of that.
The real fun, going back to last night, is Mary Mapes's latest Fake-But-Accurate screed. Coming in a few days after John Kerry's recent "I have the hat, I have the hat," performance, Mapes's continued defense of Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" TANG memos is a great reminder how W. won re-election in 2004: a six-week run starting in middle August.
To re-capitulate, in chronological order:
1. Mid-August: The Swift Boat Ads hit as Kerry hoards money for September and October. What everyone seems to have forgotten is how the first ad did very little to move hearts and minds. Very few people (myself included) could not care less if Kerry was or was not in Cambodia on Christmas or January or February or whatever story he finally settled on. We don't care if his turn was too wide or he shot the sniper in the back instead of in the chest. Most people, myself included, generally felt that Kerry served his country with valour and left it at that (if only he could leave it at that). It was the second ad--the one detailing Kerry's accusations of war crimes against his comrades-in-arms--that grabbed everyone's attention. Here was something that could not be disputed or denied; these were Kerry's own words being used to hang him. Devestating. And a clue as to how Kerry made no attempt to attack the substance of what he was charged with, but rather moved heaven and earth to keep the Swift Boat Vets from stating their piece. What could Kerry have possibly claim? "I didn't say those things"?
2. August 30-September 2: The GOP brings its convention off flawlessly.
3. September 3: The morning after Bush's acceptance speech, August unemployment figures are released, showing 150,000 new jobs.
4. September 8: "60 Minutes II" airs the fateful Bush story. What follows are 12 days of delirious blogging and reporting while Rather digs himself in deeper and deeper, even going so far as (on September 16th) dragging that poor TANG secretary out of some nursing home, putting her before the cameras . . . and then having her say, No, she didn't think those memos were real either, though they did represent the officer's thinking at the time. The left grabs onto this detail for dear life.
5. September 21: Rather issues partial retraction through gritted teeth. Bloggers rejoice; the first skin is on the wall.
What transpired for Bush in late summer, 2004, was a six-week run of sustained good fortune that card and dice players know comes maybe once a lifetime. W's run was enough to build just enough of a lead not to lose by what otherwise might have been fatal: his stammering, exhausted performance during the first debate on September 30th.
Nowadays, hearing the continued defense and explanation from anchor Rather and producer Mapes is like driving down a deserted road at sunset just as a favorite song from college comes on the radio. Take it away, Mary:
As for document analysis, it is a mind-numbing and arcane discipline, an imperfect undertaking reserved for courtroom use, not for headlines or Internet political battles. Document analysis is certainly not meant to be done at 11 o'clock at night by someone with no training or experience sitting in front of a glowing computer nursing a grudge and spoiling for a fight. But that's precisely how the right's attack against Dan Rather and CBS News was launched.
That first anonymous analyst (who turned out to be a Republican activist lawyer) raised questions about the memo using only a single shot of a faxed document digitally transmitted to his computer screen. Those kinds of transmissions radically change the way a document looks. His analysis was worthless.
The laundry list of problems that critics claimed they saw in the memos has turned out to be bunk. There never has been any definitive proof that they were forged or falsified in any way, despite a multi-million dollar investigation into the story by Viacom. The reasons we put them on the air remain valid: the content of the memos was corroborated by people familiar with Bush, his unit and his commander; the dates, times and details intricately matched what we know of the record; and two experienced and respected document analysts, who examined copies that had not been faxed or digitally recreated, concluded that the papers showed every indication of being real.
I don't believe we will know the truth about the memos until after the Bush team is out of office and people with information are no longer afraid to come forward.
Ah, good times. Good times.
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