IT’S NOT EASY for Senator John Kerry these days. Having failed to capture the White House and facing the likely prospect of getting steamrolled by Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nod, Kerry has been doing all he can to stay on the national radar screen. His latest tactic, on display at a town hall meeting in Massachusetts on June 2 and eventually reported on by the national media, has been to suggest that he lost the presidential election because too many voters were, basically, ignoramuses and that the major media should now seek his guidance on which issues are worthy of extensive coverage.

According to the New Bedford (MA) Standard Times, Kerry launched the usual partisan attack on Bush administration domestic policies. But he didn’t stop there. He also drew on one of the themes put forth in the paperback edition of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s book, Crimes Against Nature, recently excerpted in Vanity Fair. In it and in speeches and interviews, RFK, Jr. has claimed that lots of Bush voters actually agreed with Democrats on many issues but “due to an information deficit caused by a breakdown in our national media” they entered the polling booth deeply misinformed, including on the topic of Iraq. Of course, many would argue the opposite: that the national media stacked the deck heavily against Bush; but that’s a debate for another day.