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In the October 6 Nation, near the end of an article about Howard Dean, Matt Taibbi starts discussing the "horse-racing" aspect of the coverage of a presidential election and in just a few short paragraphs gives a vibrant example of the worst of political coverage. It also reveals a lot about the true biases of the media. Discussing with his colleagues covering the Dean campaign the value of this kind of coverage, talking about who could win, who has the momentum, who is garnering the crowds, who has the buzz, he states that no fewer than four replied that unless they focused on electability "'someone like Kucinich' might get the nomination." Clearly they think, and we are to think, that this would be a bad thing. It's never explained why, though, this would be so bad.
Don't think that this kind of attitude by the press, by the people writing the stories about a Presidential race and by the people who assign those people doesn't go a long way toward deciding who gets to be President. We only have to go back four years to see this effect; to see that because many in the press covering the Presidential election, many of our so called elite, slanted their coverage in such a way that the obvious lies of George Bush as he explained the effects of his proposed programs were overlooked and actual true things that came out of the mouth of Gore were characterized as lies, that the press decided, for reasons completely unrelated to the actual positions of the candidates, what we would know about them. (Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Gore or Bush. For reasons I may discuss at another time, I voted for Nader.) Now in the Democratic primary campaign we see the press covering just four or five candidates as if they have a viable chance of winning, as if they are newsworthy, while giving at best token mention of the rest. And for some reason, Kucinich always seems to come out on the shortest end of this stick. In a recent two page Newsweek story about the Dem candidates, all the remaining candidates but one were mentioned. That one was Kucinich. It seems that it can't be an accident.
One of the reasons I suspect that candidates like Kucinich get overlooked is because his proposals are different than those of the other candidates. To cover him properly would mean that the press would have to study and, perhaps more ominously for them, understand his positions and how they are different from the others. This is way too much like work. So much easier to analyze polls or interview people in the street. To talk about electability.
Somebody help me out here; there's something I'm missing. Arnold is going to hire a private investigator to look into the allegations of his serial groping. Why does he need this? He doesn't know if he groped women or not? It's not something I've done, but I suspect that if I had, I'd remember it. Is it that he doesn't remember groping these particular women?
It's discouraging to see weblogs fall into the time honored and corruptly lazy press habit of covering an election as if it's a horse race. The weblog of The American Prospect Online again ventures into this territory with its account today of which presidential campaigns are growing, as measured by the number of people signed up for their meet-ups. The problem with even caring about such things, as well as poll numbers and how much money the candidates have raised, is it detracts from discussing things like issues and the character of the candidates. It is largely because of this kind of focus, and the apparent inability of the press (and now the weblogs) to focus on or even understand issues, much less present them to the public in a coherent or accurate manner, that presented us with a choice between Bush and Gore, as opposed to say a choice between Bradley and McCain. The reason we get this kind of coverage, however, is obvious. It's easy. You can look at this month's poll and last month's poll and report that Clark has slipped and Dean is holding steady. The significance of this is debatable, but it's easy to look at the numbers and say it is so. And by doing that, as opposed to looking at a candidates position on something and reporting that the number don't say what he says they say, you don't run the risk of being accused of being partisan or biased. And we know that's the last thing anybody wants to have to face up to.
I notice that missing from Diane Feinstein's website is any explanation of why she thought it was necessary and appropriate to vote last week to boost our national debt by an additional $87 BILLION dollars to fund President Bush's imperialist ambitions.
In an interview last week, the man in the White House said "There's a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth. I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people."
Now, of course, Bush was referring to the critical press coverage of his adventure in Iraq and, of course, Bush knows that what he is saying just isn't true. Bush knows that he and the senior members of his advisors lied through their teeth through the second half of last year and the first quarter of this year to sell the war in Iraq to the American people. And the American people, from Congress, through the press, down to the people on the street believed it. The evidence that has surfaced over the last six months or so has made it evident that the reasons we went to war had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, had nothing to do with 9/11. The plan to invade Iraq had been on the drawing boards months and years before 9/11, waiting for a trigger. In addition to the bad news concerning our reconstructing and rehabilitating Iraq, the press is starting to report on the real motives behind this war. It is part of the neo-conservative dream to establish an overseas American empire, to create a world in which America's supremacy is not only unchallenged but unchallengeable. These are facts.
Senior members of this administration, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz believe in this whole heartedly and they have exerted their considerable influence over Bush to have them allow them to put their radical plan for American world domination into play.
Does this mean Bush is being played by these people? Not likely. As he demonstrated in 2000, when he repeatedly lied about the impact of his tax cuts on "average" Americans, as he has demonstrated again and again since being installed in the White House, Bush is not above lying, not above subverting the principal of open and honest public debate that is a cornerstone of our democracy in order to advance his own radical agenda. Bush, supported by radical conservatives in and out of government and served by members in Congress of a docile Democratic party that has not understood what has hit and continues to hit them, has already undermined the ability of our Federal government to in the future provide to our citizens the basic services to which we have become accustomed and many have unquestioningly accepted as the proper roll of the government. Since the New Deal our Federal Government has established and strengthened a safety net to keep inividuals from falling out of the economy, from entering an economic despair not seen on a massive level since the early days of the industrial revolution. There have been periodic assaults on this safety net, most significantly before now during the Reagan Adminstration. But Bush and his ilk have gone beyond the tinkering with the system that has proceeded him. Bush has deliberately, in fairly large increments and a relatively short time, redistributed the tax burden in this country from those most able to afford it and who most benefit from it, the richest segment of society, to those far more vulnerable and with far less power to protect themselve, the working masses. In so doing, he has run up a debt that is simply unprecedented in this country.
It is hard to believe that as Bush took office the question was whether and how to distribute the surplus revenues the country was accumulating at the tail end of the Clinton boom years. Now, fewer than three years later we are looking at a budget deficit approaching half a trillion dollars for this fiscal year alone. The next few years will offer more of the same. When Bush is done, our Federal Government may not be able to provide Social Security, or Medicare, or any of the other social programs that affect average citizens most directly. Bush and his kind do not believe in such things and they want to ensure not only that they are severely pared while Bush is in office, but that the country will be unable to restore them after he has left office.
Am I a nut, hallucinating and ranting into the night? No, I don't think so. The blue prints for this plan have been published for the last 10 to 15 years. The people in charge of the government now have spoken out over the years in favor of such a change. This is so foreign to what Americans expect of their government, so far from the hope and vision of a fair and successful America that most of us harbor in our hearts that Bush knows that we won't believe that this is what he is doing. And so we believe his lies, although the numbers show them clearly to be lies, because it allows us to sleep at night, without having to contemplate that our government has been hijacked by radicals.
And when snippets of the truth sneak out here and there in the press, Bush says that the American people aren't getting the truth. He's right of course. We aren't getting it.
Now comes word that Halliburton has suffered because of the deals Dick Cheney made while he was in charge there. Seems he was great at opening doors, but showed questionable judgement when it came to negotiating. Based on the wonderful choices he's made as veep, who'd have ever guessed such a thing?
There's an article in today's Washington Post discussing Joe Lieberman's proposal to cut taxes for the vast (though shrinking) middle class while raising them for the highest earners. So how does the Post characterize this proposal? "Lieberman Proposes Tax Hikes on Wealthy." Must be that liberal bias in the press at work here.
It turns out that I wasn't paying sufficient attention and Arnold has a plan for reducing the state's deficit without raising taxes or cutting services. According to Martin Anderson, an Arnold advisor, those conducting an audit of the state's finances for Arnold expect to find money that the governor and the legislature somehow both overlooked (kind of like going through the pockets of the clothes in your closet, I guess). But there's more. The other part of the plan to close the deficit is "if the economy comes back, they can solve it without tax increases." Wow. Between those two strategies, it seems like a can't miss proposition.
For a more detailed look at what I was saying last night about why I think Gray Davis should not have been recalled, see what George Will has to say on the subject. He also touches on the responsibility California voters have for the mess in Sacramento, after a quarter century of initiatives and referendums that have removed much of the discretion from lawmakers in how to tailor the budget to current needs.
Somebody out there, please, explain to me why you thought a) recalling Gray Davis was necessary, and b)why electing Arnold Schwarzenegger governor was a good idea.
I understand that Gray Davis is probably the most craven politician ever to come down the pike, but we all knew that when he was reelected 11 months ago. I understand that the tripling of vehicle registration fees doesn't make people happy, but he didn't do that; he only didn't stop it. I understand that a projected two-year deficit that was projected at $20 billion dollars before the election had ballooned to $38 billion dollars by the time the recall petition signature gatherers had gotten to work, but through cuts, borrowing, and fee increases it had been reduced to $8 billion dollars by election day. So what were you all so upset about that you felt that you had to overturn last year's election?
And that brings us to the second question. The Arnold question. I could go on and on about why I don't think he is qualified to be governor, but I really want to know why just one of you thinks he is qualified. So please, tell me. Just click on "comments" and type away.
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