I hope that Democrats are prepared for the fact that they are going to have to wage the 06 election as if they are 30 points down and Bush is still astride his destrier cutting a swathe through every competitive district in the country. No matter how low he goes in the polls, or how much the public is disgruntled with republican rule, the media are going to portray the Democrats as even worse. We'll have to win a few "surprises" before they can adjust their plot line.

Now, one doesn't have to be as fixated on the subject of the deficiences of the media as Bob Somerby (of Daily Howler) is to recognize that, primarily by herd instinct (sometimes prompted by those adhering to carefully organized and distributed talking points promulgated through the right-wing media), the media does tend to stick to one particular interpretation of political reality well beyond the point where that framework has lost its usefullness for understanding what's going on, and because of that it goes through a difficult (and slow) transitional period when exchanging one paradigm for another. As Digby points out, the Democrats need to provoke that crisis in the media by doing things that blatantly do not fit into the conventional view, and can't be understood using its preconceptions, and in this way force a new worldview on the press.

These paradoxical events ("paradoxical" in terms of the agreed upon media frame of reference) don't have to be consistent, or come out of the same philosophy or way of working, they simply have to be inexplicable using the conventional viewpoint. A liberal Democratic candidate polling well in a normal conservative district, a Republican candidate losing ground after Bush campaigning, a conservative Democrat going up against a conservative Republican and doing well -- all of these are examples of things that aren't explainable using the current paradigm that Bush is loved, the Republicans can do no wrong, and Democrats are disorganized, disoriented and unable to win.

As Digby wrote:

This is something that the elite media and the Bush administration have in common. They can't adjust to changing circumstances. Once their narrative/gameplan/talking points are set, you have to pry them out of their brains with a crowbar.