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Bill Clinton is fond of saying that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats require evidence. I am sorry to say that, based on the reponses to this article, it would seem that quite a few of us Dems aren't too choosy about the standard of evidence required.
What do Intelligent Design, Colin Powell's 2003 WMD presentation to the UN, and RFK jr's article have in common? They all start from an "obvious" conclusion, create theories to explain that conclusion, and then selectively choose "facts" to support the theories. All alternative analyses are ignored entirely or dismissed without serious consideration.
It has been clear since before the election that Blackwell was determined to use his position to effectively disenfranchise Democratic voters in Ohio. That he succeeded to a certain degree is almost indisputable, and outrageous. But RFK jr's article goes well beyond that, repeatedly misusing data in a way that supports the most negative possible interpretation. Manjoo could certainly have done a better job of acknowledging the seriousness of the abuses that did occur, but he is correct in his assessment that RFK jr used data and arguments that have been seriously questioned for more than a year - often by Democrats. See, for instance, the extensive of posts and responses on the mystery pollster site mentioned by Manjoo. Either RFK jr was unaware of these criticisms, in which case he is guilty of very sloppy journalism, or he chose not to acknowledge those counter arguments, in which case he is guilty of dishonesty. In either case, I am not happy to have his "journalism" so prominently associated with the only party I see that might become capable of effectively leading my country. And if you're going to cancel your subscription to Salon for pointing out serious flaws in a article by anyone - liberal or conservative - then I think you lose your right to complain about compliant, special-interest driven media.
This might not be so important if not for the fact that so many Dems are convinced that the election was stolen, and by implication that if we have fairer elections, we Dems will win. If you think this way, I have one piece of exit poll data that really should be taken seriously - from the CNN.com 2004 election poll. Among voters who said their vote was mostly "for your candidate" rather than "against the other candidate", voters went 59-40 for Bush in the first category, 70-30 for Kerry in the latter category. Considering that the "for your candidate" category was 69% of voters, barely more than one quarter of voters were enthusiastic about Kerry as their president. You can argue how much of that was due to candidate, campaign, party platform, or SwiftBoaters, but if you really care about who wins next time, those are the arguments to have.
