re: #287 Killgore Trout

I had thought that Dems running against the Koch bros might alienate moderate voters but it looks like fear is a powerful motivator to separate liberals from their money
Bashing the Kochs Can Triple a Democrat’s Fundraising Haul

This is a good example of a media phenomenon that’s become more and more common.

Back when Obama and Romney had their first debate, during which Obama was stiff and a little wooden, Romney was rather peppy, the debate was evaluated almost entirely in terms of style. Romney lied his ass off, lied constantly, and yet the reporters reporting on it simply talked about who had ‘won’ the debate on stylistic points, as though the mass public were stimulus-response machines, unable to actually recognize lies at all, simply responsive to the style and rhetorical performance. This is a failure of the media to factcheck, of course, but it’s also a failure of the media to even consider facts as important.

Similarly, here, this article here represents Democrats donating at a higher rate when the Koch’s are mentioned as some sort of mindless knee-jerk response, a programmed fear-reaction. What about the idea that Democrats recognize that the amount of power and influence wielded by the Koch’s and their many, many, many surrogates and spin-offs is actually huge, that it’s actually a rational decision on being reminded of that influence? Not even considered by the article.