Al Gore claims he invented the internet.

[denverbill]

John Kerry claimed he threw away his medals, then claimed he didn't. He wasn't really a war hero. He only got a scratch and then got a free pass back to the US. He has 7 houses. He claimed not to own an SUV, but when they caught him, he claimed it was his families SUV. He won't release his war records. He won't release his wife's tax return.

It's too bad this election won't be about Iraq, the enormous budget deficit, healthcare, outsourcing, education, terrorism preparedness, energy policy, environmental policy, or anything else that actually matters.

The GOP and their press allies will make sure issues don't matter. Why debate the issues when the GOP loses that debate on virtually every count? Stick to going over everything Kerry says with a fine toothed comb, endlessly repeating minute contradictions in the media, and portraying him as a habitual liar, and flip-flopping limosine liberal.

I sure as hell hope Kerry's team has a plan to deal with this crap. It cost Gore the election in 2000, IMO. If Kerry lets the GOP run on whatever they define his character as, he could just as well pack it in right now.

So what is the best way to counter this crap? Can we counter it? How can you stifle the VRW echo-chamber?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. George Bush is a Christian, an honorable man.

Policies are irrelevant.
You will be assimilated!

[Redleg]

18. That's all that counts to those fools.

It's a pity that they can talk about "character" and Bush in the same sentence.

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. We need our own dampener

And this time we have the Internet to start with. We also need a huge LTE writing drive all the way through to the election. Some good PR people in Kerry's camp would be well worth the money.

http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13

[dave29]

3. Howard Dean

hire him immediately to throw it back in their face two-fold, and let Kerry remain above the fray. He needs to get more people out there putting Bushco on the defensive.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

5. Agreed!!! Dean is the perfect person to throw this crap right back...

at them! Also, Dean is not afraid to speak out like Kerry.

The Reich will give us KKKaren Hughes and the Progressives will give Howard Dean, M.D!!!

:kick:

[Democat]

6. Besides Dean and very few others, who dares attack Bush?

Most elected Democrats are cowards who live in fear of offending Bush or Cheney. That is a major part of our problem - it's why we don't control the Senate and it's why Bush has any chance at all of winning in November.

If we had fearless leaders like the Republicans do, we would be in much better shape.

That being said, the right still controls the mainstream media.

[regnaD kciN]

22. Oh, you mean the same Howard Dean...

...who would "turn off voters" with his anger, could justly be compared to Osama in television ads, was a "sure loser" whose very presence in the limelight would cost the Democrats another ten House and three Senate seats, and was singled out (along with his "liberal activist minority" followers) by the DLC as the biggest threat to the Democratic Party's survival?

That Howard Dean?

:eyes:

[Democat]

4. When they control almost the entire mainstream media, what can we do?

What is the answer?

Websites and boycotts are not going to change the facts that we are up against the entire right wing mainstream media.

[denverbill]

8. You would like to think that ignoring stupid crap is the correct way.

But I don't think it is. Gore pretty much seemed to ignore all the VRW stories about him and they came back and bit him in the ass.

I wish Kerry could just come up with a good memorable one-liner shut-down. Or maybe Kerry should do an ad featuring the worst of the Republican BS about him, and concluding with 'you know why they are talking about unimportant stuff like this? Cause they want you to forget about the important stuff.'

There has got to be some way to diffuse the Republican BS machine. Democrats won on the issues in 2000, and will win even MORE easily on the issues in 2004. But if the election isn't about the issues, we'll get our asses handed to us yet again.

[sendero]

25. Whatever makes for "good press" or "good television"...

... will be in the newspapers and on TV. It's all about the eyeballs folks, and nothing else.

Kerry should hit back, and hit back in a hard and dramatic way. Make it too juicy for them NOT to run it.

If the people running his campaign haven't figured that out, we are in big trouble.

[yardwork]

7. They fight dirtier and dumber than we do.

I hate to say this. All my life I've tried not to be biased against all Republicans. I've tried to see their point of view.

I just can't. When a campaign falls to this depth of depravity, when the news media laps up the stupidity as if it were wisdom, it's time to rip the curtains aside and start over again.

I would be ashamed to call myself a Republican. I'm embarrassed for them.

[denverbill]

12. Can't disagree with you there.

I got my political wake-up during the Reagan-Carter election. I was a Republican-leaning independent going into that election. I voted for Bush in the Republican caucus. When Reagan won the primaries, I was dumbfounded. How could anyone be stupid enough to believe that you could cut taxes, increase defense spending, and still balance the budget, I thought?

When the Reagan-Carter debates began, they ran a poll after the debates asking who you thought won. I thought it was so blindingly obvious that Carter won, that I was dumbstruck by the poll results. Reagan appeared to me to bungle his way through, giving sound byte replies, laughing off attempts to critique his policies, etc. Carter gave good sound analytical well-thought-out responses.

Carter lost handily. Maybe this country has just gotten too dumb for democracy.

[genius]

9. Al Gore never claimed he invented the Internet

That was a media lie.

We need to figure out how to deal with these media lies before all the public knows about Kerry is the lies the media makes up.

[KamaAina]

19. De-e-e-eee-bunked!

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm

Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.
Status: False.

Origins: No, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context) during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible for helping to create the environment (in an economic and legislative sense) that fostered the development of the Internet. Al Gore might not know nearly as much about the Internet and other technologies as his image would have us believe, and he certainly has been guilty of stretching (if not outright breaking) the truth before ( :puke: -Ed.) , but to believe that Gore seriously thought he could take credit for the "invention" of the Internet — in the sense offered by the media — is just silly. (To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean the same thing: If they mean the same thing, then why have the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the Internet when he never used that word? The answer is that the words don't mean the same thing, but by substituting one word for the other, commentators can make Gore's claim sound ridiculous.)

[denverbill]

21. I know it's debunked, you know it's debunked.

But right-wing talk show hosts and their listeners are still repeating it to this day. Even if you call them on it today, they may stop saying it for a week or a month or even a year. Then up it comes like a regurgitated cud, the debunking long since forgotten.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

10. Get a "Liberal/Left" version of Fox/CNN/MSGOP, a Liberal.....

New York Times and Whorington Post, strengthen Air America, and get your people talking on the air!!! That will change everything!!!

[theoceansnerves]

11. why didn't this stuff work against clinton?

you know, the "draft dodger" stuff and the paula jones and arkansas trooper stuff? at the time i was barely out of voting age and i admit i didn't pay much attention to it, but if it didn't work then, and it really didn't work in 2000 (if you consider gore actually won) why do they still do it?

[denverbill]

13. That's a good question.

Then again, the VRWC didn't really get going under after the 1992 election. And the 92 election win by Clinton was greatly influenced by Ross Perot being in the race.

[lapislzi]

14. I invite you to talk to my ex-husband

I invite you to talk to a co-worker of mine.
I invite you to talk to some of the parents at the school my daughter attends.
I invite you to talk to my mother-in-law.

What do all these people have in common?

They believe everything they hear on TV, they never read a newspaper, and they just looooooove a good buzzword that they can chat and laugh about. I can still hear my ex-husband: "Al Gore claims he invented the Internet, what a joke, yuk, yuk, yuk!"

Clinton may have won the election (twice!) but those talking points are all anybody ever remembers. Same with Gore. Those dumb-down tactics are repeated again and again because they WORK.

[denverbill]

17. You got that right. It's the little stuff they talk about, ad nauseum.

You don't hear people discussing Kerry's healthcare plan around the water cooler. But you sure as hell hear about his SUV blooper.

[Toby109]

15. To make elections close enough to steal.

[mdguss]

16. If you ask the NYT:

About the whole Gore/Internet crap, they'll get uncomfotable. The reporter over there that they assigned to cover him was jealous or something, and was clearly biased against Gore. Unfortunately, Gore didn't attack them.

[0007]

24. Clinton was very compartmentalized and didn't get rattled.

[Pepperbelly]

20. The theme that we should use: Let George come out andfight his own ...

his own battles for once in his life.

Josh Marshall outlines this well as noted in another thread:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1475256

[0007]

23. To counter attack the GOP 'ya have to keep 'em on the defensive

Once they get on the offensive they usually have a plan to whom they'll trot out to smear and on what network and usually on prime time. The GOP is better at lies and smearing than we are.