John Kerry - It's Moaning Again In America

John Kerry, who supposedly ran for president in 2004 (though to this day I couldn't tell you what he stood for), is complaining once again that the Democrats just can't get their message out. Jeff Jacoby discusses it in his column in The Boston Globe:

JOHN KERRY had a complaint. Six months after winning more than 59 million votes in his bid for the White House, the Massachusetts senator was lamenting to a roomful of columnists and editorial writers that voters can't hear Democrats above the roar of the GOP spin machine.

The right, he groused, is far more effective than the left at making itself heard. To peddle their ideas, Republicans and conservatives have assembled an elaborate communication network, one that relies on the likes of ''Cato and Heritage and Grover Norquist" -- two think tanks and a well-connected Republican lobbyist -- to make sure its messages get plenty of attention.

''Several times a day, their message is amplified," grumbled the former Democratic standard-bearer. ''We don't have anything like that."

Yeah, John, nobody pays any attention to CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, or any of hundreds of other liberal news organizations and publications. The media in this country is one giant Democrat spin machine. It's not that the Dem message isn't getting out; the real problem is that their message is reflected all over the place and the people are rejecting it.

I also think they have a big problem in the way their message is presented. Democrats are always moaning and complaining, and people just tune that out after a very short time. That's why liberal Air America has foundered since the day it started. Nobody wants to listen to that crap for hours on end.

Jacoby sums up Kerry's problem this way:

What Kerry and the others object to is not that there are only conservative voices in media circles these days but that there are any such voices. The right-of-center Fox News cannot hold a candle to the combined left-of-center output of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS. Scaife, Bradley, and Olin money helps leverage Republican messages, but its impact is dwarfed by the Ford, Rockefeller, Pew, Heinz, MacArthur, Carnegie, and Soros fortunes. The Washington Times is conservative? Yes, but The Washington Post is liberal -- and its circulation is eight times as large.
But for Kerry, Gore, and Clinton, even a few conservative outlets are too many. They grew up in the era before cable TV, talk radio, and the Internet -- the age when liberal dominance was unquestioned. Now Democrats have to compete in the marketplace of ideas, and voters don't seem to be buying what they're selling. Is it any wonder so many are grumpy?