I have been saying since 2004, that I do not think the Swift Boat smears on John Kerry were pivotal in his electoral loss. After reading this post, I think his 3 outstanding debates led him to
outperform what was expected given the
fundamentals of that election year.
Via Andrew Sullivan, read this:
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2008/08/the-narratives.htmlWhile I obviously have normative concerns about misleading campaign attacks, it's much less clear that the LBJ ad had "crushing smear power," that the Swift Boat ads "severely undercut" John Kerry, or that Michael Dukakis lost his 17-point lead in the polls as a result of the Willie Horton ad. The leading models of presidential elections predicted that Goldwater, Kerry, and Dukakis would lose. Journalists tend to construct post hoc narratives after the fact about election outcomes that tend to rely on dramatic visuals from debates and campaign ads rather than the fundamentals (the state of the economy, presidential approval, war casualties, etc.).
People tend to forget that nearly every factor was in George W. Bush's favor in 2004:
1. He had close to 50% approval ratings the entire year.
2. People were still scared following 9/11. Although they were becoming concerned about Iraq (outside the Dem base), they still felt Bush "was keeping them safe". The Beslan School Massacre continued to stoke those fears, much more so than the terror alerts or Dick Cheney's remarks. Remember that that happened in Sept. '04.
3. The economy, although increasingly unfair, was still chugging along.
4. The Religious Right was in a pre-scandal era. Before Ted Haggard. Before all the weird GOP sex scandals. They did not like Kerry because he wasn't one of them, and never could be. The evangelical vote will never be at that height for the GOP again, IMO.
I realize the polls went down in August, but I still think 2004 was an uphill battle from the get go. And I just don't think the SBVT played much of a factor -- the people who believed the lies were already influenced by the above fundamentals, so it was just a quick way to justify voting for the draft dodger President. If it wasn't the SBVT, they would have used another excuse.