Under Thursday’s piece on the Times’ Alaska story, a reader named Dennis wrote that he didn’t care how many Dan Sullivans the Peltola campaign recruited “so long as it was legal,” and that he was tired of Democrats being held to a higher standard than Republicans, whom he described with a word I’ll come back to. Bob, who pays for this publication and has been in the comments two Saturdays running, answered in one line: “Personally, I’d prefer that Democrats be held to a higher standard.” A third reader, J Marshall, split the difference: Democrats should hold themselves to one, and the press should hold both parties to the same one, and those are different things.
That’s the question for this chair, and J Marshall has already done the first part of the work. “Held to a higher standard” is three claims wearing one coat. There is the standard the law applies, the standard the press applies, and the standard a party applies to itself. The first is supposed to be identical for everyone and mostly is. The second is supposed to be identical and measurably isn’t, in a direction that will surprise people who think the press is in the tank for Democrats. The third is chosen, and Democrats have chosen it, repeatedly, at a cost in seats, and it is the only one of the three that is actually theirs to keep or drop. Bob’s preference is about the third. Dennis’s complaint is about the second. The week in Alaska answers both, because what hurt Peltola this week sits outside all three: a denial that the texts contradicted, which no standard, high or low, survives.