Four Moore years?

4 November 2004

As many of my comrades in Blogovia have observed, the mainstream press’s obsession with “balance” has made it hard for the reality-based community to get its message across. As Brad deLong quipped, if the Republicans say the world is flat and the Democrats say it’s round, the next day’s headline will read “Opinions On Shape Of Earth Differ.”

So how do we get our message across? I regret that I cannot read the mind of the average swing-state voter. I can, however, read a graph.

Fahrenheit 9/11 was the summer movie that mainstream political journalists loved to hate. It was shamelessly partisan; it indulged in cheap shots; it insinuated all sorts of things that could not be proven. It is also the top-grossing documentary in history; it was endorsed by NASCAR champion Dale Ernhardt, Jr.; its release correlates, as you see above, with a 25-point jump in Kerry’s expected electoral votes. Moore didn’t beg the networks to give him equal time on the news, or whine about how his side was not fairly represented on the news; he created news.

I have my reservations about Moore as a journalist, but as a communications strategy for the left, the documentary looks damn promising.

(Note to self: The Hunting of the President is out on DVD now. Must see.)

I would love to see a documentary about Republican vote manipulation in 2004: how Congress established a commission to set voting-machine standards and then didn’t give it the money to do its job; how Republican front organizations conducted voter-registration drives and threw out Democrats’ registration papers; how easy it is to tamper with electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail; how challenges were used as a deliberate strategy to discourage voting in heavily Democratic districts. Heck, as a bonus, I’d like to see it mention William Rehnquist’s participation in the “Operation Eagle Eye” voter intimidation project, way back before he was a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

I don’t want a documentary that tells its audience, “Republicans stole the 2004 election.” (I don’t think that’s true, and even if it is, it’s hard to make the case without seeming like a sore loser.) I want a documentary that tells its audience, “Republicans use fraud to prevent Democrats’ votes from being counted.” I want such a documentary to tell such a compelling and unimpeachable story that the voters who believed Dubya’s promise to “bring honor and integrity back to the White House” will watch it, and think about it, and tell their friends…and when the Democrats complain of Republican dirty tricks in 2006 and 2008, those voters will think some more about which party stands for “moral values.”

I’m sure I’m not the only person with this idea, either.

• Later: What we are up against
• Earlier: Lessons learned, lessons to be taught