The Science Of Delegitimization

Over at hullabaloo, Digby talks about the coming press backlash against Obama.

This is correct. It's true that the Republicans are on the run and their movement is crippled by the epic failure of the Bush administration. But they have a permanent character assassination apparatus, funded by extremely wealthy aristocrats, devoted solely to the destruction of liberalism. They aren't closing up shop and taking up needlepoint. Indeed, they are much more active when the Republicans are out of power than when they are in.

It's not inevitable that Obama will not have a honeymoon or that the press will become the willing love toys of the rightwing as they did in the 1990s. But it pays to remember that the media were quite in love with Bill Clinton during the last half of that campaign and they turned on a dime once the wingnuts started working the refs in earnest. (You see, as with John McCain, the conservatives didn't care for Bush Sr and were actually quite happy that Clinton won so they could purge the party of its moderates and focus on its "revolution." For them, the way to real power is in being a ruthless opposition.)

So, as Rosenberg writes, this voter fraud nonsense is about legitimacy. Regardless of whether Obama wins a clear victory, the story doesn't stop the day of the election. Indeed, they will be recycling the left's complaints from 2000 almost verbatim making us sputter in rage about the absurdity of such a comparison. And they'll build a powerful myth of victimhood around the phony belief that Democrats steal elections. Lack of faith the in the electoral system serves conservatives far better than it serves liberals.

I honestly think Digby's seriously underestimating what the GOP is capable of. They've lost control of the Haterade Factory, and it's not just the media clucking its tongues at the man for being a dirty, filthy liberal, it's going to be all the news reports on the crazies out there that want Obama gone by any means necessary, and then the media's efforts to cover for them.

"Well gosh, there's a groundswell of anger out there towards President Obama" stories are going to come at a machine-gun clip, as will all the Village Idiots doing their best to dress up the rotting corpses of racism and bigotry in an effort to make them presentable to the rest of us.

They'll just be reporting the news from "real America" or course. The aiding and abetting of the hate against Obama will make the Clinton years look like a picnic.

Somebody's going to try to "save America from Obama" the way Squeaky Fromme and Tim McVeigh did.