Indeed, it’s the same scenario.
But what has been perfectly consistent is the way the press has, again, fallen for a right-wing smear campaign and dressed it up as news. Just as with the Swifties, the press has turned over its summer coverage to a band of agitators spreading misinformation. Five summers ago, the Swift Boat Vets helped hijack the election. They lied about documents, they lied about eyewitness, and they lied about their partisan affiliations and connections. For several crucial weeks during the campaign, journalists turned away from the pile-up of Swift Boat falsehoods and contradictions, rarely daring to call the Swift Boat attack out for what it really was — a hoax. Too spooked by the GOP Noise Machine and its charge of liberal media bias, the press propped up the Vets as serious men and showered them with attention.
The key point here is that the right has had a decades long, disciplined campaign to discredit the mainstream media. The MSM, with their thin skins, reacted by bending over backwards to be “fair,” which means they give prominence to the most outrageous charges from the right, afraid of the abuse they might get if they resist.
Why doesn’t the left do the same?