What’s great is how far people generally go to bend over backwards to claim something is similar to something else. Zorn shows an offensive mailer suggesting liberal Democrats want to withdraw from the battlefield against terrorists. One might find a few of these–usually on Fox News where they go out of their way to find such examples–but it’s not a significant group of people.
Many do make a distinction between Iraq and the War on Terror as do most Americans–so if that mailer is attacking anyone who can distinguish the two, it’s a minority position the IL GOP is arguing from.
But more to the point, Republicans are pulling out Robocalls and harassing people with them. Not just a few push polls about special interests that might be obnoxious, but hardly over the top, but making calls that seem like they are from the Democrat unless one makes it all the way through and making them repeatedly to the same house. One is not like the other. Attempting to make it seem like Democrats are harrassing voters with robocalls isn’t a push poll, it isn’t a GOTV message, it isn’t within the bounds the game should be played.
It is voter suppression. And it’s wrong.
Those who try and dismiss it as something that both parties are doing because both make robocalls obviously didn’t do well on the SAT section asking what is not like the other. Both efforts are easily distinguishable from one another and should be described as different by the press. As should the phone calls going out in different areas giving false voting information for where to vote.
More to the point, it’s something that does directly affect voter perception of the election and the press is largely ignoring it. When something is shaping voter perceptions the typical response of much of the press corps is to get competing quotes. The problem in this case is the action is taking place at the national level and everyone’s trying to avoid talking about it. It shouldn’t matter. They are taking place and they are harrassing. That’s a story.