I am often critical of the bigfoot Washington press that covers our national elections, but I almost never have occasion to critique Dan Balz. He’s not perfect; no one is. But he’s the gold standard.
And he’s clearly had it with Trump. I’ve never seem him just lay waste to a presidential candidate the way he did this morning, and it’s richly deserved and totally justifiable.
He seems to have realized that there’s no profit in covering this election as a dispassionate observer. There have been too many transgressions against the unwritten rules and norms of politics, and Trump just don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt or some kind of unbiased reporting.
Yes, the media is completely hostile to his campaign and can be accused of bias, but there’s a reason that you can’t find a decent circulation metro paper in the entire country that’s willing to endorse Trump for president.
And it’s definitely about character more than policy. It’s true that Trump has treated the press badly and that he doesn’t respect or even understand the First Amendment. But that’s only a tiny fraction of the reason that reporters and editors refuse to support Trump or give him the kind of “objective” coverage they usually aspire to in their political analysis.
When Dan Balz is willing to abandon that with such force, it gives permission to every one in the same field to follow his lead.
What Trump has done is break the mold of political reporting. And he did it because he forced reporters to choose between values. The value of providing a nonpartisan and unbiased source of news reporting had to go toe to toe with the fact that Trump is so clearly unsuitable to be president that there’s an obligation to render that judgment to the public regardless of the cost.
As satisfying as these belated articles are, they’re still maddening because they persist in presenting Trump as essentially a legitimate Presidential candidate with some crippling presentational issues — rather than as a grotesque mockery of our democracy.
You can hear it in all the comments in Balz’ article (by Balz and others) and in the articles linked from that page…they all say, Damn it, he could win this thing if he wasn’t so troublesome. (And then we’d have a Republican President! Yippee!) Rather than admitting that this monster shouldn’t be anywhere near any position of public responsibility, ever.
I agree. I don’t really see Balz calling out Trump for who he is and what he represents. Rather, it’s like he’s trying to give Trump helpful pointers for how to do better in the next debates. If ONLY Trump does blah blah blah… why then, all will be well.
Unless or until pundits like Balz actually state the obvious – as frickin USA Today did – that Trump is a completely inappropriate candidate for POTUS, he’s not prepared, and he’s out of control and out to lunch.
That’s not what Balz does. He’s still supporting this monster and hoping that he’ll win in November. Screw him.
Agreed. He’s frustrated with Trump, but for technical reasons that are well within the parameters of the usual journalistic conventions. And if Trump would only fix those technical faults to conform to those parameters, Balz would be fine.
I appreciate the critique of Trump’s debate performance, but I don’t see anything in the linked piece that’s really ground breaking. What I see is an article written to leave enough room to praise Trump in the next debate if Trump stops sniffling too much. Think you are giving Balz way too much credit.
Forget Balz — nobody cares what he says.
CTR has the red alert flashing — all hands on deck to douse any flames from Hillary’s “47% recording.”
Billmon (who loathes and fears Trump) can’t quite make himself cross the hypocrisy bridge:
I’m not seeing what you’re seeing in that article either. Balz seems to make 2 points:
That’s true as far as it goes and it’s refreshing that Balz does not reach to find some equally damning flaw in Clinton.
But these are just behaviors. They don’t go to character.
A critique of Trump based on values would have to include at least the following:
… and it would have to close with some kind of statement to the effect that if the US is willing to vote to endorse the values the Trump represents then the experiment with democracy is dead, and the shining city on the hill is a smoking ruin. Et cetera, et cetera.
Something like that would be drawing a bright line, making a choice between competing sets of values. Balz is not there yer.
FFS — Yahoo
Whining because he couldn’t get HIS regime change war on like HRC and GWB did. He’s like Rubio, hates the job he has.
Kerry is just playing politics. At this late date he has nothing to loose. Congress, in 8 years, has only managed to pass legislation that allows 9/11 families to sue the Saudis. Imagine, would any of the cable taking heads ever ask a GOP rep that’s blaming HRC for Bill’s affairs what their plans for Assad or ISIS. There would be a strange awkward silence….they don’t even have talking points for an answer.
Is it totally unreasonable for others here to deal with anything that doesn’t paint a Democrat in a favorable light and not to respond with “But what about Republicans and list a number of failings (or perceived failings) over some period of time?
If liberals were honest, they’d have to admit that recent GOP obstructionism spared us “the Grand Bargain,” TTP (only so far), and heavier bombardment of Libya and Syria. Wrong, or more correctly, no reasons for their recalcitrance on this issues. But I’ll take major right moves for wrong reasons any time they can be gotten.
Krisnan Guru-Murthy
Billmon:
How about Obama and Kerry being asked about all those weapons the US has approved for sale to KSA to continue its death and destruction in Yemen. (And yes, they know what’s going on and what those weapons were purchased for.)
Trump was given 10’s of millions (100’s of millions?) of dollars of free press. None of the media could bring themselves to call him a liar. The circumlocutions of the NYT would be laughable if not so serious. Bernie Sanders was totally ignored, and when covered not taken seriously. Nor were the number and diversity (socioeconomic, racial, age) of his supporters. Until it became obvious their votes might be needed to prevent disaster. Coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been nothing to crow about. But it’s been Donald day in and day out. And much of it “even handed” and “balanced,” as though lying can be balanced by the truth, boorishness by class, total lack of substance by detailed plans, thinly veiled calls to violence by positive calls to action, ad nauseum. I know most of the media is a business and not a non- or not-for-profit enterprise. So if Trump brings in bucks, I’d appreciate their being up front that they are not protecting or promoting democracy but out to make as much money as they can.
I don’t think it was solely about “bringing in the bucks.”
Is there a strategy by which a non-ravening candidate can command media attention?
Perhaps we need to take some responsibility ourselves, beginning with questioning the meaning of “media attention.” We all understand that in important ways, the media business model ensures that non-ravening candidates won’t get media attention, because the media’s attention depends on the candidates either being batshit insane or completely in agreement with what the media has already decided is worthy of its attention. So if we keep on asking the question you pose we’ll keep on getting the same answer: “no”.
Yet somehow Bernie Sanders came out of nowhere last June, getting no media attention, then superficial/condescending/dismissive media attention, then nearly winning the nomination. Say what you will about Sanders as a candidate or as a President, the fact remains that he got to the point he did not because of, but in spite of, that attention.
What’s the lesson of that, going forward? What did Sanders have that broke through the box the media tried to put him in?
I’m not sure it’s true that a non-insane candidate couldn’t command the attention. I suspect that one could be newsworthy, given enough conflict (which Sanders didn’t bring, against Clinton) or enough violation of norms. (Also suspect it’s possible that a candidate could violate media norms without being batshit: though of course there’s danger of getting negative media attention, which is largely what Trump has gotten.)
Disagree that Sanders broke through the box; I think he very much was contained by the box, in the end. If he’d done what was necessary to break out, the liberal and neo-liberal bloggers would’ve really lost their shit.
Heh. Point taken.
I was trying to make an argument that Sanders got a long way by taking a political position that tried to address what people are seeing in daily life around them, and what they fear and hope for their own lives. His message was that the emperor (empress?) is naked and that resonated in ways that neutralized/negated the lack of media attention.
Instead of accepting a speculative conclusion:
Why aren’t we asking what it would have taken for Sanders to “break out of the box?” He only came up a bit short and that was against a candidate that started with 100% name ID, a political party hellbent on getting her nominated, a media that favored her, and a nearly inexhaustible supply of big money.
Would the outcome have been the same if he’d started with 20% name ID in April 2015 instead of less than 10%. If he’d began formulating and organizing his campaign a year earlier? Have set up an exploratory committee in January 2015? Had written a best-seller anytime before 2015? Had been 68 years old instead of 73?
Where does someone like Tulsi Gabbard go in the short run? The senior senator from Hawaii is only 69 years old (and in her first term) and HI Senators don’t even think about retiring until they’re in the their mid-eighties. Does she keep her head down and work at being a House Rep for another six to eight years or challenge Senator Hirono or Governor Ige in 2018? Governor in 2022 after Ige has had two terms might be easier than challenging Hirono in 2024, but Senators have more opportunities for national attention than governors of small states.
If consideration is to be given to Senator Jeff Merkley, how does he raise his profile during the next two years? He’ll be 64 years old in 2020; the near age limit that liberals should consider in advance for a challenger to the status quo DP.
Who else is there that isn’t ancient or a DINO?
To break out of the box, he’d have to have burned bridges. The media covers fires.
I wasn’t speaking of the media but of winning. What bridges did Sanders have to burn? It’s not as if the media covered him enough that any bridge existed there. Not like Trump who could burn that media bridge and come out on top because the media today has an approval rating down in the toilet like Congress.
It’s not in Sanders’ character to pick fights or toss flamethrowers, but he does respond appropriately to those that do. Hence:
Disgusting that a majority of Democratic primary voters approve of this that count Kissinger as a friend.
I don’t think you really believe that a majority of Democratic primary voters approve of Kissinger or whatever you’re trying to say here. That’s just not true.
More likely is that a majority of primary voters thought HRC’s foreign policy would be similar to Obama’s foreign policy. Kissinger ended up being just a brief campaign talking point. I think this is because Democrats largely approve of Obama’s foreign policy and Sanders wasn’t able to make an effective critique.
Disgusting that a majority of Democratic primary voters approve of those that count Kissinger as a close friend and advisor.
Is that better? A close enough friend that she and Bill went on holidays with the Kissingers.
What has Obama claimed as his worst foreign policy mistake? And who pushed him into that? Based on that fact alone, why would anyone assume that HRC will be like Obama?
Checking out the friends and close advisors of presidential candidates is far more telling for voters than whatever talking point candidates speak.
Maybe that’s why I don’t have to waste time listening to anything Trump says because having Bolton and Stone with him tells me everything I need to know.
“Disgusting that a majority of Democratic primary voters approve of this that count Kissinger as a friend.”
Question.
What percentage of the US public do you think could correctly identify Kissinger and his policies, if given a multiple choice list of answers and a full minute on google?
Do you really believe that anywhere near a majority of Democratic primary voters know who Kissinger is?
People who pay attention to politics are few and far between. Don’t put yourself in a bubble of your own making. Most US citizens and US voters probably couldn’t tell you a very generalized process of how bills become laws, or how long a Senator’s term is.
I highly doubt most Democratic primary voters were like, “sweet, war criminal Kissinger is somewhat endorsing Clinton…that’s it, I’m with her!”. At most, a substantial minority of voters recognized the name as a VIP from the past.
Primary voters pride themselves on being more and better informed than the general public and they do skew older. Granted anyone younger than fifty-eight doesn’t have a lived memory of that war criminal, but I’d guess that most of those eighteen year olds outside the south that voted for Carter in ’76 knew exactly who Kissinger was.
Did younger people ignore Colin Powell’s 2003 comment on US covert action in Chile?
Oh well, with HRC and Michelle Obama getting/giving warm hugs with GWB, guess he’ll soon become that nice and fun former POTUS. And you can defend their ignorance.,
Describing the objective reality that most US voters don’t follow politics isn’t defending ignorance.
If you can’t see, hear, or touch something, you can’t influence it.
It isn’t enough to point out how bad Kissinger is, because the people who you’re pointing out Kissinger to are staring down at their phones and don’t even know you’re talking to them.
This is a, if not the million-dollar question: how do we sum up the Sanders effort, and what are the lessons to be learned going forward? As you point out, against formidable odds he only came up a bit short. In doing so he redefined the possible, at a point where a lot of people on the left were thinking that there was not a lot of daylight between “possible” and “hopeless.” Also, and not at all to our credit, nobody on the left saw the Sanders phenomenon coming; now we’re playing catch-up to understand what the new definition of possible really is.
I see and organizational/institutional answer, and a political/analytical answer, to your question.
1. Organizationally, trying to mount a successful insurgency against an opponent like Clinton from a point 15 months (?) out from the convention never made sense. With no power base or institutional structure in at least a few state Party organizations, the outsiders were at the mercy of the insiders everywhere they went. Sure you can compensate but it’s always from a position of weakness, you’re always making it up as you go, and once the primaries start the schedule is brutal.
It’s not a great way to organize either. For example, in Milwaukee there was no organized presence of a Sanders campaign until about 2-1/2 weeks before the primary. There were some volunteers making phone calls but it looked pretty sketchy and to be honest a lot of the local activists were up to our eyeballs in local campaigns. Then, boom … shit hit the fan. Of course, Sanders won the primary here and 2 days after the votes were counted there was not a sign of the campaign to be seen. It would have been better to have had some advance planning in place before the outsiders rolled into town because frankly what they did when they got here was suck all the oxygen out of the room; they made the work that we had started 4 months prior a lot harder. And it would have been better if there were some kind of presence in place after the election because everybody was left standing around saying “WTF now?” Right now we’re trying to rebuild something that had been in place.
Every few years, just like clockwork, a Sanders, a Dean, a Jackson comes along and we all scamper around like squirrels high on meth, trying to build these short-term national campaigns out of thin air. Otherwise we (that is, the left) sit around and do damn near nothing to prepare for the next time. No building of our own infrastructure at the state level, no attempt to take power for ourselves rather than just conceding it to the Party hacks. The right wing does not operate this way, why do we?
2. Politically/analytically, Sanders had some shortcomings. His message on economic justice was good; his message on social justice was weak and what was worse was he tried to subsume the latter under the former. That’s a cardinal error of social democrats and the folks from BLM were right to box his ears for it. The point here is that it’s important to build up strength and support not only in places (my point above) but with people as well and that means understanding the coalitions that hold the Party together, building up respect and credibility based on understanding before you start your campaign.
You mean, “Who else is there that isn’t ancient or a DINO that can run for President in 2020?” Hell if I know. The one thing I would argue for is, whether on the federal, state, or even local level, let’s think structurally and analytically because thinking in terms of who’s the next best warm body on the bench has not been a winning plan so far. We should also take note of the fact that that’s not the way the right wing works and they’ve demonstrated that they’re better at this stuff than we are.
Here’s what Sanders proved: there’s ample room, and a desperate need, for a left in this country because liberalism is dying as a politics and it’s dying as a vision. But time is short and we’re starting from way behind the curve.
So is anybody doing this kind of structural or analytical thinking? If you want the liberal take you’re on your own. If you want a more leftist take, “Organizing Upgrade” is as good a place as any to start. That article is focused more on the Novevember 2016 elections but the longer vision is there too.
Obama and the Clintons made certain no one emerged who’d be a fresh, young contender to compete with Hillary. Sanders got as far as he did because he was not a traditional Democrat and was willing to go up against those who are. What he showed me is that with sufficient advance planning the traditional out-of-touch with the public Democrats can be successfully challenged. Furthermore, a viable national campaign was possible with plenty of enthusiasm and no big donors.
Thanks for your thoughtful response — disagree with some of it, but perhaps you, I and others could talk discuss further and come to more hopeful and achievable conclusions. Okay:
1) Campaign timeline — fifteen months out to begin an active campaign isn’t insufficient. That will vary depending on how early other candidates are out there. 2008 was very early – probably too late in 2008 Between November 2006 and February 2007, eight major candidates opened their campaigns-Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Tom Vilsack-joining Mike Gravel, who had announced his candidacy in April 2006. Fine in 2016 because it was less than thirty days after Ms. Inevitable was in.
Also recall that Perot only conditionally suggested that he would run on the 2/20/92 Larry King show — a mere eight months out from election day — and at one point was leading GHWB and WJC at 40%. The media landscape is far more divvied up than it was back in ’92 and no host today has as large regular audience and none would give a potential candidate similar quality and quantity of airtime. But it did happen and Perot had to build a freaking political party to get into the race. (The possible may be hopeless, but it’s far more pleasant to live with hopeful possibilities than chronic hopelessness.)
2) Building a campaign on the fly isn’t a great idea. OTOH, one built years in advance is stale, boring, and low energy. There’s a “Goldilocks point” between those two poles. IMHO Sanders wasn’t far away from getting there. His media team were not only the best in this election cycle but significantly better than the others. Major pitfalls with “on the fly” organizing are:
a) Not enough time to vet employees. Most so-called campaign operatives aren’t all that good. Those with the better reputations get scooped up early and command the highest pay, but even those don’t have a long record of successful campaigns. Sanders and Weaver have one of the longest track records of successful campaigns.
b) The budget. If Sanders had known going in that he could raise $160 million, he would have done many things differently from the beginning, but it’s not just how much is raised but when it is raised. As it was he was only up to $40 million as of 9/30 and there was no way to tell if that would increase by $10, $20, or $30 million in the fourth quarter and if it was sustainable after that. Also, unlike many other candidates, Sanders didn’t have access to credit. Therefore, he had to be cautious in his spending which meant staff hires and advert buys. Easier to get a hard working staffer if the assignment is minimum six months with a potential for twelve months or more. Also easier that such staffers will be evaluated and if not up to snuff, axed.
c) IT. This is where a three month long exploratory committee can be invaluable. The IT team needs to get all systems ready to go on day one. The candidate has to offer minimum twelve month contracts with renewable clauses as long as the campaign is a going concern. And the team has to predefine the IT resources that will be needed and when and where to get them as the campaign grows.
More later.
First off — I’d be very interested in further discussions on summing up Sanders and figuring out a way forward. My confidence in reaching achievable conclusions is more modest, perhaps, than yours but that in no way makes it a useless exercise. I’d like to pull in people other than the two of us as well.
To your points. Agree with (almost) everything you’ve got under #2, esp. on “budget”. Money doesn’t quite drive everything but it sure defines the limits and the context of almost every day-to-day decision, and the cumulative effects are huge as you point out. You also make another important point, that Sanders couldn’t know at the early stages how much money he’d have at the later stages. He started on a shoestring and that’s usually the way it’s done, by everyone not named “Clinton”.
However, it’s not necessarily the case that “[a campaign] built years in advance is stale, boring, and low energy”. In fact I’d argue that seven of the eight examples of campaigns you cite in #1 were stale, boring, and low-energy in crucial ways precisely because they were standard-grade neoliberal nonsense (we didn’t use that label back then but that’s what they were) and the eighth example — Obama of course — was (is) a neoliberal too but not standard-grade; he was able to transcend the nonsense at the level of slogans (hope! change!) through the primaries.
It seems to me that a campaign that is not “stale, boring, and low energy” is by definition an insurgency mounted against the stale, boring, and low-energy elite interests that run the Democratic Party. Your insurgency then has to control some organization, it has to have some kind of institutional power or face the result of the McGovern campaign where an underprepared and woefully unorganized insurgency was sandbagged by the people who had the power in the Party (not denying that McGovern made plenty of mistakes on his own. But I do think it’s fair to say that Meany and the unions sandbagged him. And ended up paying a steep price).
My fear is that to start to build an insurgent organization (not necessarily a “campaign”) four years in advance of the next election is not too soon — in fact, it’s much too late.
The lesson is that the media model is changed. Newspapers and broadcast news are no longer “gatekeepers” of political ascendancy. This has upsides and downsides, as we are all aware.
Bernie did get media attention, just not as much as he should have. But to the extent he did, it was because his whole campaign was something really different, unexpected, and unusually effective. Even the negative coverage was due to that.
This is one PA public official that should have been gone in February.
A woman that I wish I could vote for:
CBS news – Missouri woman accuses fellow Democratic candidate of rape. (And CBS gets demerits for the title of the article. It should have read: Incoming legislator accuses incoming colleague of rape.
Cora Faith Walker, a Ferguson lawyer who won her primary for a seat in the Missouri House and is running unopposed in the general election, has accused Steven Roberts Jr., a former assistant prosecutor and who also won his primary for the Missouri House and is unopposed in the general election, of rape. Both candidates are Democrats.
More complete information is available from a right wing rag
A brave woman in reporting this. Hopefully it will lead to one fewer sexual predators on the loose.
Did you read that piece? She waited several weeks to report this. Sorry, no rape kit, no rape. She didn’t report until much later. Where was her husband? She was gone the entire night, and he wasn’t surprised? A lot of loose ends in this story. Sounds very dodgy to me.
Maybe it’s dodgy, but for Marie3 it’s just another in her long list of grievances with Democrats.
Now you’re sounding like the idiots that have one response to any freaking news story — Putin/Russia did it, it’s Obama’s fault, etc.
You’re free to cover-up and deny a rape by a Democratic politician just like low-life Republicans do when the perp is a Republican. (Not that but a few Republican politicians of any standing do that today — so, I guess some of them are more evolved than you are.) However, if the victim and perp were both Republicans, I wouldn’t report that because I have a long list of grievances with Republicans (and I do have such a long list), but because it is a highly credible accusation of a serious crime.
For you to assert that my praise for a woman, a Democrat, and a politician was an opportunity to criticize Democrats is far beyond dodgy and more evidence that your loathing for anyone that’s not on “your team” and me in particular has taken you around the bend.
Spare yourself some negative emotions and ignore my comments. Better yet, don’t read my comments. That’s how I deal with you except when you attack me so directly and viciously that a response is appropriate.
Not covering up the accusation and retract my statement. I misread your above post–my apologies.
Apology accepted.
Not at all unusual for a woman not to immediately report being rape. The trauma of rape is often difficult to come to grips with. It’s why reports are only a fraction of the actual number of rapes.
As a young and first time candidate for political office, the consequences for her in reporting it were more numerous than what the average rape victim confronts. A fellow Democrat with political and community connections his father a respected attorney, St. Louis Alderman and successful businessman.
Walker had nothing to gain in reporting it when she did and there was risk to her in reporting it at all. Doing the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do, is often very difficult and requires courage. A delay of a few weeks, and before she would have had to interact with him again, and then putting forth a strong case is perfectly acceptable.
Seriously? You wake up in the morning in the house of a guy where you went to last night. You go home to your husband. What does he say? “Gosh, honey, how are you this morning? Hope all went well in your overnight discussion with that fellow.”
So, in the morning after a mysterious night in which all was not remembered, she just showers up?
Dodgy. Sounds like retrospective re-evaluation.
Can you point to any plausible gain that she would have in coming forward at this point? And any such plausible gain has to be weighed against plausible losses that could have resulted from her report. When saying nothing publicly poses no professional and reputational risk.
If you can’t offer a plausible scenario as to why she would publicly report a non-factual account (and as she’s an attorney, she’s well aware of the hell victims of rape are put through when they report the rape), then the only dodgy aspect is your comment.
Well, there’s a simple sordid one: She decided to sleep with the guy, and in the morning was surprised to find her husband home. She came up with this implausible story about being doped. However, going to the hospital would mean a blood test, which might be inconvenient.
I ran for public office. I had a woman in the same district and we worked together. I would NEVER under any circumstances meet with her at 9:30 PM on Friday night. Never. I met with her at 8:30 AM at a coffee shop. We talked professionally in a professional setting. I did not meet with her to have a couple glasses of wine at my house in my bathrobe. That just does not pass the sniff test. Nope. Not even for a teensy minute.
Often, survivors of rape find it difficult to come forward. The tendency for those who read or hear about the allegations to engage in victim blame is ridiculously awful. Those questions of “why was she wearing that?” or “what was she thinking being alone in a room/apartment/office?” come up all too often, and are used to deflect criticism from the accused. Many rapes go unreported. Doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. So, this story is plausible, and deserves a proper investigation. I hope this woman is not dragged through the mud in the process, as so often happens to rape survivors – especially if the alleged perp is from a prominent family or a prominent community member.
A sidebar: New York Daily News isn’t exactly right-wing. It seems to have a centrist streak and tends to be fairly bipartisan in its Presidential endorsements. The New York Post, on the other hand is a whole other can of worms.
Some stories have such a powerful ring of truth that only the crazy of people will push back on them. That’s my read of this one. While I’m sure that Ms. Walker doesn’t want attention for reporting the rape, expect that she’ll comport herself well and gain respect for who she is in the process.
wrt NYDailyNews — I only included that because some contributors here only accept the NYTimes, WaPo, network news, and few other MSM sources as credible and jump on any diary or comment if I day to cite what they view as trash. Critical reading (and knowing the biases of each media source) tends to be a better guide in assessing the credibility of any individual article than the general reputation of a media source. For example, according to The Guardian, Jeremy Corbyn is practically the second coming of Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot.
Awful.