The Scream,"
 by David Podvin

On December 1, 2003, Howard Dean was ahead by twenty points in the polls
when he appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews and said, "We're going to
break up the giant media enterprises." This pronouncement went far beyond
the governor's previous public musings about possibly re-regulating the
communications industry, and amounted to a declaration of war on the
corporations that administer the flow of information in the United States.
It was an extraordinarily noble and dangerous thing to do: when he advocated
a truly free press, Dr. Dean was provoking the corrupt media conglomerates
that control what most Americans see and hear and read, and thereby control
what most Americans think. The media giants quickly responded by crushing
his high-flying campaign with the greatest of ease. This time, they didn't
even have to invent a scandal in order to achieve the desired result; merely
by chanting the word "unelectable" at maximum volume, the mainstream media
maneuvered Democratic voters into switching their support to someone who
poses no threat to the status quo.
John Kerry is a member in good standing of the feeble
Daschle/Biden/Feinstein wing of the Democratic Party, a group of politicians
whose disagreements with the mercantile elite tend to be merely rhetorical.
Any doubts about Kerry's level of commitment to his stated progressive
beliefs were conclusively answered in 1994 when he proclaimed himself
"delighted" with the Republican takeover of Congress. The media oligarchy
knows that a general election race between Kerry and George W. Bush will
insure a continuation of its monopoly, regardless of who wins.
The news cartel had always been hostile to Dean; independent surveys
revealed that he had received the most negative coverage of any candidate
except Dennis Kucinich (the only other contender who strongly favors
mandatory media divestment). But after his statement on Hardball, reporting
about Dean abruptly came to an end and was replaced by supposition. The
existing conjecture in political circles about his ability to win was
transformed into a thunderous media mantra that drowned out all other
issues.
By mid-December, the news divisions of the four major television networks
were reporting as fact that Dean was unelectable. The print media echoed the
theme; on December 17, the Washington Post printed a front-page story that
posited Dean could not win the presidency. The Post quickly followed up with
an onslaught of articles and editorials reasserting that claim. Before the
month was over, Dean's lack of electability had been highlighted in The New
York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune,
the Los Angeles Times, and every other major paper in the United States.
As 2004 began, Time and Newsweek simultaneously ran cover stories
emphasizing that Dean was unelectable. In the weeks before the Iowa caucus,
the ongoing topic of discussion on the political panel shows was that Dean
was unelectable. National talk radio shows repeatedly stressed that Dean was
unelectable. The corporate Internet declared that Dean was unelectable. And
the mainstream media continued with the storyline that Dean was unelectable
right up until Iowans attended their caucuses. Iowa Democrats could not
watch a television or listen to a radio or read a newspaper or go online
without learning that Howard Dean was unelectable.
It was the classic Big Lie. Through the power of repetition, the corporate
media - which has been wrong about who would win the popular vote in two of
the last three presidential elections - inculcated the public with the
message that Dean could not win. Pollster John Zogby wrote, "Howard Dean was
the man of the year, but that was 2003. In 2004, electability has become the
issue and John Kerry has benefited."
The unexamined factor is how electability became "the issue". It had never
before been the dominant consideration in Democratic primaries, because
voters had focused on policy rather than crystal ball gazing. Electability
was this campaign's version of "Al Gore claimed to have invented the
Internet": it was a media contrivance that was used to manipulate voters.
On January 19, Democratic caucus goers in Iowa - who were the initial
intended audience for this propaganda disguised as reportage -
overwhelmingly repudiated Dean, telling pollsters they believed he was
unelectable. Later that evening, Dean yelled encouragement to his supporters
at a pep rally, an incident that provided the pretext for the co