blog report

Hysteria Creeps into Campaign Blogs

October 21, 2004

Eleven days out from election day and the candidate’s blogs are fiercer than ever.

Over at John Kerry’s official blog, Dick Bell is doing his best to generate charges that Condi Rice is shirking her duties as National Security advisor in order to hit the campaign trail. He wants everyone to keep in mind four important facts: “1) ALL OF RICE’S VISITS ARE TO SWING STATES, 2) RICE DID NOT VISIT SWING STATES PRIOR TO THIS YEAR, 3) RICE RARELY LEFT DC BEFORE THIS YEAR, 4) RICE’S POLITICAL ACTIVITY IS UNPRECEDENTED.”

Also yesterday at the Kerry blog, Bill Clinton tried his hand at fundraising, asking readers to make a contribution to the Countdown to Victory Matching Fund.

At this point, the George W. Bush blog isn’t even pretending to hide its attempts to distort its opponent’s record with this entry, which claims that a Washington Post story from yesterday said that in 1994 John Kerry made it clear the loss of American life would “only be justified in a United Nations military operation.” Then the Bush blog makes the mistake of reprinting the Washington Post excerpt, which actually says something else altogether: “Kerry’s belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support.” (italics added)

Over at the unofficial Nader blog, Morgan Brown is featuring an article from the Pittsburgh Daily Courier that instructs Nader supporters how to cast a vote for Nader now that he’s been booted off the ballot in the Keystone state. Those going to the polls on Nov 2. not only have to write in the names of Nader and his running mate, Peter Camejo, but must also include the names of all 21 of Nader’s electors. Now that’s a dedicated voter.

Finally the folks over at Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik’s blog are peeved at the Fox News website for running an article on election choices for Libertarians without mentioning Badnarik once. Fox writer Radley Balko, says the Badnarik blog, makes it seem like the only choice for Libertarians is to choose the lesser of two evils — Bush or Kerry. Pointing out that Balko has mentioned Badnarik in stories on other outlets, the Badnarik blog team writes, “So tell us Radley, did FoxNews [sic] tell you not to mention Badnarik? Or are you that incompetent of a partisan hack pandering to the two parties? Perhaps it just slipped your mind, no?”

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A “partisan hack” who panders to both the Bush and Kerry camps? Now there’s a guy to have over to your next dinner party.

–Thomas Lang

Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.