Here we go again!

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Daily News (the other L.A. daily, which circulates primarily in the San Fernando Valley) published a troubling story titled Bush's 90-day-plan: Trash Kerry fast. The piece gets quotes on the record verifying what we've suspected for the past couple weeks: The Republicans plan to use this early period to write a "story" around John Kerry -- a story which will define him for the rest of the campaign.

The most unsettling quote, alas, comes from the Kerry side: ""The notion that you have a one-sided definition that takes hold five months before an election is ridiculous," said Bob Shrum, a senior adviser to Kerry. "I don't think the Bush campaign's caricatures are going to stand up to the reality. Voters are smarter than that.""

Uh oh. God save us from campaign advisors who bet the rent money on the proposition that voters are intelligent.

Shrum, old chum, I beg you to consider one name: Al Gore. Polls indicated that voters turned away from Gore because the GOP's "serial liar" caricature took hold. Their phony redefinition of that decent man carried the day.

Don't think it can't happen again.

A few words about the Daily News. Anyone who thinks all newspapers lean left has never spent much time in any area where that rag circulates. Consider, for example, its coverage of Der Gropinator. Lots of right-wingers castigated the Los Angeles Times for publicizing an (accurate) story about the charges against Schwarzenegger shortly before the election, but few complained about the gallons of favorable ink showered on this candidate by newspapers up and down California. The worst offender was the Daily News, which published a seemingly endless series of shameless front-page puff-pieces. An acquaintance of mine privately nicknamed the paper the Daily Arnie.

And don't get me started on the way that rag handled the issue of valley secession...!