Procrastinet

Accentuate the Positive

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea

I'm not sure the issue of "who's more negative" is actually going to get any traction. It's a prime target for the GOP's "sayin' it makes it so" approach to spin: they'll accuse Dems in general and America in particular of all sort of heinous, charicatured misdeeds (does anyone with 2/3 of a brain actually BELIEVE that John Kerry would not commit the US Military without the approval of the French?), then go on the talk shows and say "we ran a positive campaign with an optimistic vision," the news reports will say "Dems accuse GOP of going Negative, GOP denies it" and everyone will tune out.

But for what it's worth, let's go to some graphic evidence. Old news, but here are the candidates' pages from a few weeks ago (thanks to Daily Kos, where these were posted then and now):

For those keeping score at home (or those for whom the above bitmaps won't display), the Bush/Cheney website has five major graphical elements. Four of them are attacks on John Kerry, and the only one that has anything to do with President Bush is a campaign logo. The Kerry site doesn't mention Bush once.

And just for fun, let's examine the creepiness factor of last night's RNC speakers (also from Daily Kos, plus Eschaton and, oh, everyone else):

Click to experience the antipathy full-size.

Posted by rjt at September 2, 2004 10:49 AM