First he mentions the charge of the media's complicity in promoting Republican spin:
"As Democrats see it, the flip-flopper allegation is this year's equivalent of how the GOP four years ago portrayed Al Gore as a chronic truth-stretcher, and now, as then, blame the news media for accepting and promoting a caricature."
Then Harris demonstrates how true this is by depicting Kerry thusly:
"Iraq, however, has been the source of the most damaging charges of
equivocation and wind-shifting against Kerry. The Massachusetts senator voted for the Iraq war in October 2002, but a year later voted against Bush's request for $87 billion for military and reconstruction spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter vote came when former Vermont governor Howard Dean's antiwar candidacy was ascendant. The vote may have been wise politics at the time, but came with a high price -- lending an aura of plausibility to the subsequent charges by Bush that Kerry is motivated by opportunism."
The Kerry-did-it-for-Dean spin is a new one, but note how Harris makes no effort to clarify what Kerry did and did not vote for, explained in the Globe article below:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush/articles/2004/03/17/kerry_blasts_bush_on_protecting_troops/Folks, the press is doing the same business they did in 2000 -- repeating whatever the GOP says as gospel truth, and putting a negative spin on any Democratic advantages whatever. We've got to call them on this again and again and again.