Setting aside the relative merits of the Wikileaks revelations (for Clinton) and the sexual assault allegations (for Trump), I’m willing to stipulate that the media is opposed to Trump becoming president. He hasn’t won the endorsement of a single major newspaper in the country. He’s shown no respect for reporters and has encouraged his supporters to jeer and intimidate them. He wants to use libel laws in an unconstitutional way. When he has sat down with editorial boards, he’s been nonsensical at best and frightening at worst.
The media as a class of people and as a self-interested industry, is completely opposed to Trump.
But, the key is, they have good reasons for this, and they aren’t wrong.
You don’t need a newspaper when you have Fox.
“a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.
may become part of the cultural vocabulary in ways similar (if not to the same degree — but then again, maybe!) to Shakespeare. Validating in some fashion the Nobel Committee’s choice.
The line I quoted above being a case in point that that’s already happening.
Seem like the media don’t LIKE Trump. Seem like they don’t LIKE Clinton either. I’ll stipulate that they like Trump even less: indeed, enough less to make it a difference of kind rather than a difference of degree.
But how in the fkkk did we get to a place where it matters what the media LIKES?
Any port in a storm and all that, but the media are the official opposition by default. Their incentives are enormously complicated and conflicted. Their resources are misallocated and would not be adequate even if they were optimally allocated. They don’t, like, you know, actually KNOW anything, the way their professional forbears knew they had to.
So I don’t LIKE Trump (to choose only the least pointful of the many things I might say of him). The fact that the media don’t LIKE him either is supposed (by them) to resonate with me. That, right there, is a problem all on its own.
…and if Clinton wins, then the fact that they don’t LIKE her will float up to the top of the holding tank. That is not a problem in its own right; it is only a symptom of the larger problem, that everyone is totally confused about what the media’s job is, including the media theselves.
It is evolving into all clickbait, all the time.
“devolving”
Yet, the biggest story is also how much the media promoted Trump. He received nearly $3 billion in free advertising via coverage of his rallies and speeches that almost no other candidate received during the primaries and just after. Per Trump himself, when bragging about his coverage (via Marketwatch):
“I’ve gotten so much free advertising, it’s like nothing I’d have expected,” he told the New York Times in September. “When you look at cable television, a lot of the programs are 100% Trump, so why would you need more Trump during the commercial breaks?”
It’s only lately that CNN’s head acknowledges that they may have erred in their coverage. Oh well.
Good point. And to add to Frank’s — the corporatization of news outlets makes them first and foremost beholden to the bottom line. Trump attracts eyeballs the same way as mangled cars by the side of the road: everyone slows down to take a good look, then they move on.
America has had its good look, and we are finally moving on.
My concern is how the MSM will react to the next Trump.
them to react any differently.
At all.
When they’ve been called on their malpractice in the past, the MOST you get is some limited mea culpa (“mea minima culpa”!) that doesn’t translate into doing things any differently going forward over any perceptible time.
If you even get that much. Usually not.
There’s no “almost”. No other candidate got as much coverage as Trump. I suspect Trump got several times as much coverage as all other candidates combined, including Clinton. In addition, it was overwhelmingly favorable until the last month or so.
You can’t neglect that the media had it in for Clinton, as well, working extremely hard to turn molehills (and sometimes flat land) into mountains. Here at the end they have, like good Republicans, admitted Trump is totally unacceptable and grudgingly turned in her favor with extreme reservations. But the *endless* yammering about how the most responsible email handling of any SecState to that time “raised questions” and “raised suspicions” and “needed investigation” had a lot to do with why the public was even willing to consider a buffoon like Trump.
Agree completely and I think Boo is really missing something in his comment, which is why I brought the point up about how much free advertising Trump received. As quoted above, he bragged openly a about it. Hell, Morning Joe was one big Trump advertisement for months.
To add to your point, Hillary never got a fair shake, even during the primaries. Her coverage has always been out of whack, and data confirms this. Vox did a great article in May on it (http://www.vox.com/2016/4/15/11410160/hillary-clinton-media-bernie-sanders). The Shornstein Center also examined coverage and found Hillary’s to be the most negative by far (http://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016-trump-clinton-sanders/). I suspect some of it was because she was regarded as the front runner, but I think tribalism also played a big role too.
Sanders coverage was positive? Haha!! What about this:
http://harpers.org/archive/2016/11/swat-team-2/
Let me know if you, or anyone, can’t read it. I don’t think it’s paywalled as I was able to read it.
I like Thomas Frank, but he’s been busy with gaining a new market for his schtick. Actual data is pretty clear that Bernie didn’t get a lot of press initially, no doubt about that. That is typical of underdogs until they win. But it’s also clear that Hillary got the overwhelming majority of negative coverage, rightly or wrongly.
There’s no use litigating the primary; Paul Ryan is concerned about Bernie being budget comittee chair. I want to make that concern real.
IOW — history, what is it good for?
Standard shill response:
biases = “shilling falsehood”.
Opinion pieces (i.e., Franks’ essay) conforming with Marie’s biases = “history”.
*[noting, KC’s comment launching this subthread included
I have no doubt that Marie3 would be thrilled to add some more nasty comments about Hillary Clinton if it turns out that the count is too low. Probably add a few about us just as frosting on the cake.
IOW — only austerity freaks (aka Grand Bargainists and Simpson-Bowles fetishists) are the very serious people that WaPo can get behind.
Brother, is THAT the truth.
I keed (in fond remembrance of the late, great Molly Ivins).
But dropping formatting (i.e., the all-caps that identified and set off the headline) rendered that quote incomprehensible to me
(‘ . . . a January 20 editorial headlined level with us . . . ‘??? [wtf does it mean for an editorial to be “headlined level with” us, whoever “us” is? the headline is somehow put/kept at “us”‘s eye level?]
‘ . . . mr. sanders decried his “lack of political realism” and noted with a certain amount of fury that Sanders had no plans for “deficit reduction” . . . ‘) [?????? seemed very odd things for Sanders to be “decr[ying]”!!!]
until I searched out the passage in the original . . . well, not German, but Harpers (with the original formatting):
As I was responding to a comment recommending and linking to Thomas Frank’s article, I made the gross error in assuming it would be clear what I was quoting from. Except it a well established blogging convention; so, I’m not apologizing. If it had been from other than Frank’s article, I would, of course, have stated that and provided a link to it in my comment.
It wasn’t that the source was unclear. (Obviously: I found the quote in it, as originally formatted.)
The point was . . . well . . . the point that I stated: dropping the original formatting in the process of quoting it rendered it incomprehensible.
I’m seeing a glimmer of recognition here that you realize you’re a fallible human being like the rest of us.
KC asserted that “Sanders coverage was positive”.
Could you point that out for me, please?
That would be helpful. (Especially given that the above “response” looks to have become the jumping-off point for yet another [sub]threadjacking.)
Thanks.
Thank you. I never in anyway suggested anything about Bernie in my original comments. Don’t know how that even developed. I just linked to two surveys (Vox and Shornstein) that clearly demonstrate Clinton got the bulk of negative coverage. And my overall point initially was the press clearly skewed towards giving Trump way more attention than any other candidate. Trump himself bragged about it. It’s just a one week survey, but Annenberg found this to be the case in spades (https:/medium.com@evboyle/yes-the-media-bears-responsibility-for-the-rise-of-donald-trump-here-s-
proof-61d0c8282e5a#.ymydguuwu ).
Apparently not to all, though.
Off-topic threadjacks don’t seem to require much basis these days.
Merely needs the sliver of an excuse for some Clinton hate and neoliberal bashing and they’re good to go.
You mean neocon neoliberals.
Or maybe it’s neoliberal neocons.
Better spend another day reading Thomas Franks to sort this out.
(a sliver, that is), as in the present case.
That said, I’m happy to bash neoliberalism with the best of ’em . . . in an appropriate (i.e., relevant, not off-topic) context, that is.
There is this if you want a laugh at their ineptness…
New York Times busted for anti-Bernie bias: The iconic, Clinton-endorsing newspaper slyly edits article to smear Sanders
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/16/new_york_times_busted_for_anti_bernie_bias_the_iconic_clinton_endors
ing_newspaper_slyly_edits_article_to_smear_sanders/
I guess is how his failure as a legislator became common wisdom, even here.
And the famous Sixteen.
” The Washington Post is receiving criticism for running a total of 16 negative stories about Bernie Sanders in only 16 hours. From Sunday, March 6, to Monday, March 7–which included the time period of the Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan–The Washington Post ran more than a dozen articles criticizing Sanders.”
Not to mention the flurry of piling on by centrist economists over Gerald Friedman’s paper on Sander’s economic plan. Now, even Krugman is saying HC’s stimulus is too small to be effective.
Edit: Excuse. I got over my skis. Economists who criticised Friedman are admitting that. Whether Krugman has come to the same conclusion…Will have to dble check.
Nope. He is still firmly aboard.
I’m not laughing at anybody’s ineptness, just at how someone could attribute comments about Bernie to me that I did not make and an entire thread could develop around it. Oh well.
you’re replying to here?
Because much as ‘I missed the part where KC asserted that “Sanders coverage was positive”‘ and proceeded to request that part be pointed out to me . . .
. . . similarly, I’m missing the part where anything you’ve written in the reply above is responsive to any of that.
I’d be surprised to learn that you’d be surprised to learn that my response to any suggestion that Sanders got A LOT of unfairly, negatively biased “coverage” from the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media is roughly, “well, DUH!”
Well, I did a google search for “Sanders MSM coverage” and got very little. Do you remember any coverage that was not dismissive or simply horse race? With as little as there was, I mostly remember the attacks.
I posted the two pieces because they fit the topic of the thread–media manipulation. And because they were funny–in a painful way.
If you prefer I not respond to your posts, I am fine with that.
to you responding to my comments.
Responses that are actually responsive to what I wrote just seem to make a lot more sense to me than ones that aren’t.
Reviewing: this sub-subthread began with me responding to Phil’s implication that somehow ‘KC asserted [or even ever remotely suggested or implied!] that “Sanders coverage was positive”‘.
Examples of Sanders coverage being often largely negative (again, duh; like there was any question of that at issue) are unresponsive (to my comment, as well as to KC’s comment that Phil had replied to).
Well, Sanders was certainly included in the post she linked about the slanted coverage of Clinton, no?
So how was it illegitimate for Phil to mention the equally slanted coverage of Sanders, even if it was marginal in gross numbers compared to her? Esp in the so-called liberal papers.
. . . for Phil to mention” negative coverage of Sanders.
It was illegitimate (plus a diversion from the current topic) to imply KC had asserted (or implied, or suggested, or hinted, or . . . ) otherwise.
And it resulted in a (quite pointless, imo) off-topic threadjacking, based apparently on that wrong assumption that KC had asserted (or implied, or suggested, or hinted, or . . . ) otherwise.
The thread hijacking is a feature, not a bug.
It’s lonely over there in the right column.
.
Thanks for the Thomas Frank link and I had no problem reading his excellent article about the Washington Post’s biased reporting of Bernie Sanders. Let me just say that I am eligible for a free subscription to the Washington Post, but have never bothered to sign up. After reading Frank’s article I’m glad I didn’t.
I had heard that Trump called around to the cable shows and, in that way, he got outsized coverage. It could be that none of the other candidates did that sort of thing.
He did do that, but cable networks also chose to cover his speeches in full, multiple times, on multiple occasions, something they did for no other candidate. Hence what he told the NY Times (which I quoted in my original comment):
“I’ve gotten so much free advertising, it’s like nothing I’d have expected,” he told the New York Times in September. “When you look at cable television, a lot of the programs are 100% Trump, so why would you need more Trump during the commercial breaks?”
https://www.google.com/amp/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/52A4AAF8-139C-11E6-8A63-05821B538728?c
lient=safari
They also chose to do telephone interviews, which previously they were reluctant to do.
.
What your argument does not take into account is the total volume of coverage and type of negative coverage.
From Vox:
“Sanders’s supporters have alleged that the press has unfairly treated the Vermont senator’s candidacy, even picketing CNN to protest a “media blackout” of their candidate.”
“But the greater scrutiny probably also reflects the fact that the media regards her as a more serious frontrunner than Sanders. And that may really have hurt Sanders’s chances as much as — or more than — negative stories.”
From Shorenstein:
“Five Republican contenders–Trump, Bush, Cruz, Rubio, and Carson–each had more news coverage than Sanders during the invisible primary. Clinton got three times more coverage than he did.”
“Sanders’ initial poll position meant that, when he was reported in the news, the coverage was sure to have a negative component. He was in the unenviable position of a “likely loser.””
This report also only covers the pre-primary period. Which as noted in figures 5 & 6 as it ended in Dec 2015 left Clinton (-16%) and Sanders (-17%) almost even in terms of negative coverage %.
I agree that Clinton has been held to a much different standard than any other candidate since perhaps 2000. But I don’t think you should write off Thomas Frank’s observations so easily. Compared to Trump, until recently, you are no doubt correct.
My comments had nothing to do with Bernie. I was making absolutely no case regarding him and, when he was brought up as if I said something about him, I acknowledged he did not get a lot of coverage initially. Admittedly, I was a bit dismissive of the Frank article, but I found it a tedious read the first time and never disputed Bernie got some negative press to begin with. There’s no doubt that the phony budget hawk brigade in DC doesn’t like Bernie, and that the Washington Post, editorially, liked to make a point of it.
KC, why do you keep insisting Sanders got positive coverage?
👹
.
The coverage he got (which wasn’t a lot comparatively) was mostly positive. After that he got more coverage and a higher percentage of it was negative. That is one him, though, for being unprepared for that interview. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t articulate any details about his signature issues.
Now I am sure some people are going to say but the NYDN was biased for Clinton because of the ownership. That may be true but I read the actual transcript of the interview, a transcript Sanders doesn’t dispute, and I am comfortable saying that that any reputable newspaper would have asked similar questions about his signature issues and it is on Sanders that he whiffed those questions
I would also say that there were some things he got a pass on. Every once in a while someone in the press would bring up his delaying and delaying on releasing his tax returns (which he never released) and his required campaign disclosures (which he also never released) but there certainly wasn’t a constant drumbeat on it. If that had been Clinton I feel pretty comfortable saying that there would have been accusations of corruption and secrecy.
As a side note on the tax and campaign financial disclosure, I never understood many Sanders supporters didn’t seem bothered by his lack of transparency. For many the argument boiled down to well who cares because Bernie is so honest that there isn’t anything in them. That could very well be the case but no politician should get the benefit of that doubt.
Re-read your post. Fair comment. Seeing “sanders” in the links sent me off in that direction. I enjoyed the articles – thank you.
Related:
I wonder where they got that idea about voter fraud?
Cardenas, having been immersed in the Florida recount for 37 days, said an average of 1.5 percent of votes cast in the nation are not recorded, due mostly to technical issues and procedural errors.
“Mainstream Republicans” have no standing to qualm about anything Trump says or does.
History runs on a closed circular track ~~30 years in circumference. Trump is Reagan. Nothing has changed. Nothing can change.
Except we keep skipping FDR.
The lack of major newspaper endorsements for Trump speaks for itself. Clearly the print media thinks Trump is a dangerous crackpot who is a danger to them in particular. Clearly the Washington Post leads the way on this, but you can tell from the debate moderators, post-Lauer, that they see their responsibilities to include exposing Trump as a ‘bullshit artist.’
At the same time, the media can’t let the Clinton hate go, led by the NY Times. Emails, Benghazi, but especially the Clinton Foundation have been fabricated simply to sustain the Clinton ‘scandal’ portfolio.
If Trump was not so blatantly attacking the press and now being exposed as a bragging serial molester without a shred of human decency the press would be net favorable for him. But he is what he is – a disgraceful incompetent ignorant abomination. Which is a lucky break for Clinton and America as a whole.
There is no “media” that is opposed to Trump. This is not like saying that “the media” have a tendency to adopt a “view from nowhere” or that “the media” rely on advertising or “the media” do a poor job of dealing with scientific concepts, etc.
What is going on here is that individual newspapers have made their own decisions to oppose Trump. There’s no coordination the decisions are not based on shared ideological beliefs. It’s never happened before that every big city newspaper but one has come to the conclusion that a major party’s candidate for president is unqualified, and that fact that it’s happening now is not the result of some sort of coordinated effort by “the media.”
It doesn’t have to be coordinated because Trump violates too many of the core values of educated people, regardless of their “ideology.”
But the media does have a sort of collective culture and a collective business/legal interest. And Trump crosses them there, too.
Maybe now many in the media see those “violations,” but a lot of journalists were also willfully obtuse on many levels during the last few months. As Trump has dug himself further into a hole and inspired greater hostility in his followers, it seems like he’s pushed folks like Mara Liasson on NPR to somewhat acknowledge the reality of the situation.
Billmon @billmon1 17m17 minutes ago
Gee, economists, political scientists, sociologists, investigative journalists spend months or years trying to untangle complex issues like the reason for Trump’s success, but billmon tweets out a sentence or two and we’re supposed to be blown away by his brilliant insight.
Well said! I happen to know that he thinks the conversation is now over, because he Solved Everything. Thank you for constructive and thought-provoking comment.
Well, there is a reason he has a fandom. Though lately, it has been too much all Trump, all the time.
Can we talk about personnel in the new admin?
Good points. I agree it’s been much too much Trump, though at the moment the choice is between ‘too much Trump’ and ‘Obama fandom’ and ‘hippie purist attacking Clinton from the left.’
Actually, though … does it make sense to spend much time on personnel before we know the margin of victory. If Clinton wins both houses of Congress, that’s a whole different thing.
Well… Some of us. Let’s not make thinks more complicated than they are.
Billmon’s sarcastic second sentence is, in fact, correct. Trump’s campaign is founded on white ethnic nationalism, and his support comes from the bigots and racists that find white ethnic nationalism appealing. There’s zero evidence that economic policy has anything whatsoever to do with his success.
So you think that the Democratic Party is effectively flawless? That our party didn’t make a single mis-step that even minutely allowed white ethnic nationalism to flourish in new ways? We are both blameless and powerless?
The democratic party is largely blameless for the nationalistic drift of republican partisans. Well, they could be blamed, if you believe that promoting tolerance and equality is a blame-worthy action. Because that’s what the revanchists are reacting to.
I suspect you can actually read my comment perfectly well, despite your post.
Of course the democratic party isn’t flawless. But they are blameless in the rise of the Trumpenproletariat, as is shown in opinion survey after opinion survey.
The people who have higher levels of economic insecurity or economic anxiety, the people on the lower end of the income distribution, and the people in communities most effected by competition from immigration and manufacturing job loss are not the people likely to support Trump. There are two features that are significantly correlated with support for Trump. Republican party registration, and racism.
What you’re doing is projecting your own personal reasons for disapproval of the Democratic party onto Trump supporters. They don’t share it. The people that do share it are still more likely to vote Democratic. The story that Trump is appealing to the white working class dispossessed by globalization is a false narrative. He’s appealing to white racism.
No. What I’m doing is trying to figure out if commenters here agree with this statement:
I am perfectly certain that anyone who supports Trump at this point is a ravening racist, misogynist, and antisemite. My certainty is based on the fact that, by definition, if you support a ravening racist, misogynist, and antisemite that makes you one.
I don’t agree the dems have been in a “steady drift to the right”. Certainly Obama governed to the left of Bill Clinton and the policy center of gravity of congressional Dems today is to the left of the party as it was when Obama was elected.
And I absolutely challenge the fact that the rise of white ethnic nationalism has anything to do with economic policy whatsoever. The socialist Nordics have seen the same political mobilization of racial resentment despite having an admirable progressive record on economics.
Economic policy doesn’t appear to have the palliative effect on racial resentment that one might wish. Progressive economic policies are good because they are welfare-enhancing, but are no protection against racist demagoguery which must be fought in parallel.
So if I’m reading you correctly, you think there’s nothing that the Democratic Party could’ve done to inhibit or soften the emergence of Trumpism, even slightly? You’re certain that a different economic policy could not have reduced the numbers or impact of Trumpists in the slightest, but could we have done anything at all, in terms of policy or messaging, that might’ve?
The Dems could have followed the lead of the new deal and restricted their progressive economic policy advances to whites. Otherwise yes, there is no economic policy whatsoever the democrats could have enacted that would have lead the Trumpers to support a non-Trump candidate in the primary. The Republican party’s largest faction is white bigots and Trump is their candidate.
Ooh, excellent sidestep!
Me: Could our party have done anything different in the past, via policy or messaging, which would have undermined Trumpism?
Boobros: Trump appeals to racists, and the R’s largest faction is bigots and misogynists, xenophobes, antisemites and mutants.
Me: YES, I AGREE … but could the Democratic Party have done anything in the past to to lessen the influence of homegrown xenophobes and racists and mutants on the other party?
Boobros: Economic policy could not have changed this in the slightest.
Me: Okay, let’s say that that’s true. Could the Democratic Party have done anything differently in the past to undermine the political rise of these xenophobes and racists?
Boobros: TRUMP IS RACIST AND SUPPORTED BY RACISTS.
Me: That is very true. But could our party have–
You: Yeah, we could’ve gotten swastika tattoos and worn All Lives Matter tshirts.
This is a child’s defensiveness. I’m not insulting your daddy. I’m asking what strikes me as a simple, important question, given the shitstorm that’s sweeping across our country: What could we have done differently that might’ve led to a better outcome?
So far the answer is “Nothing, we’re powerless against this. There is absolutely no flaw in the overall political system that allowed this orange excrescence to rise to prominence. The system itself is perfect. It’s just the Bad People messing things up again.”
Maybe you’re right. Maybe the system is fine and it’s all their fault. If the Bad Guys weren’t bad everything would be fine. Maybe we missed no opportunities. Maybe at every juncture we made the right choice. I guess there’s just no telling. But our inability to even wrestle with the question is positively … Republican.
Really, this entire thread proves Billmon’s point. We explicitly think that Republicans are the problem (which they are!) and other than that, the system is fine.
conclusion: it’s false.
That does not follow from the rest, or from the thread. Maybe someone somewhere is claiming that, but I don’t know who. Certainly not me. Indeed, that’s what I had mentally flagged earlier as the core flaw of of the comment where that was first asserted.
Could you possibly be more disingenuous? To say no liberal policy could make Trumpism disappear is not to say Democratic policies are ideal. That’s a ridiculous, deceitful misrepresentation of my words.
The root of Trumpism is, in fact, racism. That is what all the polling shows. The reason the US has had such historic difficulty in advancing progressive economic policy is also, in fact, racism. Again, this is extensively well researched. Racism is at the core of conservative opposition to redistribution and civil rights in democratic nations.
If you think there is some magic wand liberals anywhere can wave to make racism disappear rather than the long hard slog of rhetoric and policy, law and protest and the occasional riot and war that we’ve been grinding out for centuries, one advance at a time, THEN PROPOSE IT. In the meantime you’re just carping from the sidelines. Just because you don’t have any idea about how to combat racism, or perhaps it’s not one of the political causes that interests you, doesn’t mean it isn’t vital.
There’s no secret ninjitsu that will convert Trumpers into decent people. The way Trumpism is defeated is through a reduction in the percentage of the population that is motivated by racial hostility. This has nothing to do with “the system” (jesus christ!) being fine, or not fine. Identifying the actual, expressed motivation of the Trumpers doesn’t translate into support for everything the Democratic party does.
Maybe the Democrats should have reached this point before now and they could have done it if they had somehow been able to simultaneously stand for civil rights and for white working class values. The problem is, they tried to do this and they failed, and they failed in large part because the GOP decided to tap a giant wedge in between the two things and tap, tap, tap, tap, tap on it for decades.
It’s not so easy to get beaten like McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis, all of whom were taken down by a form of mainstream Tea Party attitude among white working class folks. At some point, you realize that these folks don’t want to come along for the ride on the other half of your agenda.
So, yeah, it wouldn’t have nice to just keep doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result, but that’s not natural and that’s not how the Democrats made their initial (partial) comeback.
By the end of the last decade, Democrats no longer even represented these white working class districts. The people who had tried to bend to their social conservatism had been drubbed out of office. They’d already been forced to go to corporate America for funds because the poor people in their district weren’t going to pay for their campaigns.
We can pretend that they could have gotten by on union money, but maybe we could just listen to the radio in these communities for five seconds to be disabused of that fiction.
I mean, I get your point that the Democrats colluded in the hollowing out of the economy. But I don’t see how there was some great mistake that was made that we can point at and say “If only the Dems had done this differently, we wouldn’t have a zombie horde of Trumpistas on our hands.”
First, the GOP is the party they’re really mad at, because the GOP represents them. And the GOP made promises they never intended to keep.
Second, the Dems lost a lot of power and a lot of elections because they refused to pander enough to these people’s demons, and let’s never forget that.
Third, it was the conservatives’ victories on money in politics, on gutting labor, on the argument over trade, on redistricting, on the Fairness Doctrine, etc., that put Dems over a barrel in the first place.
So, yeah, dealing from a weakened hand, the Dems built a coalition that cut these folks out. It’s not like they slapped away a friendly hand.
I just can’t get involved in bashing Dems for this problem when they didn’t promise to ban abortion or that the war in Iraq would be great or that conservative governance would balance budgets and create economic growth.
The GOP owns by far the greater half of this, and the Dems had few realistic options that could have built them this majority without the help of the people in the coalition they built.
Thanks, Boo, for actually responding to the question. I absolutely agree that the GOP owns the greater half, of course. A great deal more. That’s obvious, but I’m not sure how productive it is, after a while.
I did wonder if an unrelenting focus on unions over the past decades might’ve helped. I wonder if the distance between the party and the unions didn’t merely exacerbate the problems that led to Trumpism, but weakened the system as a whole, in some ways. A weakened labor movement, to my mind at least, leads to a less-functional system. Should we have embraced and promoted unions better?
And of course my big question (aside from, yes, hollowing out of the economy) is if there was some way to handle this that didn’t rely on ‘pander to demons’ appeals to the ‘white Christian straight male working class.’ Or the ‘professional class’ or whomever we’re blaming. You kinda brushed up against that with the Fairness Doctrine, too. Is that something we should’ve tried to put back in place?
I mean, how much of this is a media problem? I feel like in the past, the media would’ve killed the Trumpism in its cradle. Instead, they pumped steroids into it. Is the internet/social media a problem, creating communities of likeminded monsters? If so, is there a way to address this problem?
The eruption of Trumpism is a symptom that the system is not robust. How much of this is due to the ‘failure of the elites’ that you talk about? Even without appealing to the lowest-common-denominator stuff, shouldn’t our system as a whole be able to reject the rise of a freakshow strongman in taking over one of our two parties?
Could we have pumped millions, at a loss, into talk radio ourselves, for decades? Might that’ve helped? Would show trials of Wall Street Execs have helped? Would a different approach to the opioid epidemic have helped? Should we have cut these folks out sooner? And perhaps focused earlier and more powerfully on equal voting rights across districts, on reversing the disenfranchisement of felons, vote-by-mail, and similar?
Maybe none of that would’ve helped avert Trumpism, in any case: maybe an overtly racist campaign would’ve oozed to the surface in the final year of the first black president’s administration no matter what we did.
I don’t know if this would have made the kind of difference you’re asking about, i.e., rendered the rise of Trumpism impossible.
But it is one of my deepest, most long-standing grievances against the Democratic Party: the failure to consistently mount a robust defense of core Democratic values and policies in the face of an intense, decades-long rightwing propaganda campaign to both demonize those core values
(case in point: very successfully turning “liberal” into a pejorative, met by no significant defense of liberal values and successes from most Dems; instead, many scurried off to rebrand themselves “progressives”; or perhaps the demonization had already succeeded sufficiently by the time some of the younger among us came of political age that it simply would never have occurred to them to self-label “liberal” or cultivate the awareness that [actual, whether embracing the label or not] liberals deserve credit for essentially every bit of progress in this nation’s history)
and to institutionalize false rightwing dogma
(e.g., tax cuts increase government revenues, sustainable debt/deficits are a crisis, private enterprise is always more efficient and effective than government, your family’s checkbook/finances are a useful analogy* to government finances, etc., etc.).
To the point that a great many current Dems (and certainly much of the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media) have internalized a lot of that false rightwing dogma (see, e.g., Simpson-Bowles support). Thank FSM Occupy, Elizabeth and Bernie showed up when they did to at least attempt/begin a course correction.
*There actually is such a useful, valid analogy; it’s just never the one intended when that stupid, tired, deceptive trope is trotted out in support of some utter idiocy like a balanced-budget Constitutional amendment. The valid analogy recognizes that average households (i.e., the vast, vast majority of us) routinely take on debt for major expenses (house, car, college, etc.). If not abused, i.e., as long as kept sustainable (i.e., income stream sufficient to service debt while also covering other expenses), this is in fact a useful tool — explaining why virtually all of us use it. In THIS sense and to this extent, household finances are indeed analogous to government finances.
Thanks. I’m not sure anything would’ve rendered the rise of Trump impossible. All I’m hoping for is things that might’ve rendered it less likely–or less influential.
Racists (and associated bigots) are still racists/bigots (“deplorables”!) when not — or less — economically stressed.
Economic distress just sets them in search of scapegoats, and permission from a racist demagogue like Trump just coaxes them out of that closet to let their bigot flags fly.
This all exists largely independent of economic conditions/policies. Even with the most liberal/socialist economic policies fully enacted, that bigotry would just recede back “underground” to being less apparent, but still there.
Those liberal/socialist policies should be enacted anyway, on the merits. But I see no reason to imagine the bigotry on display now would end, as opposed to just becoming less superficially apparent.
Look how little it took to “free” it, despite many being naive enough to believe (or at least hope) it had been reduced to an archaic remnant of diehards. (Perhaps the most disturbing to me of many intensely disturbing things during this campaign has been the number of quite young, very intense racists/bigots flying that flag proudly.)
acquire that stutter?
I don’t think that’s correct. heard some interesting panel discussions on radio. seems there are T supporters who see what they want to see – someone who will break the gridlock in DC and get something done to help the middle class and small business [“you’re fired”]. these supporters don’t understand what’s necessary for governing. where to even start?
To me, if someone supports a racist candidate, they’re racist. Maybe not intentionally, maybe not maliciously (though I suspect both), but still racist.
Though I also suspect that ‘break the gridlock’ and ‘help the middle class’ are both dogwhistles, meaning ‘stop helping/acknowledging the blahs’ and ‘focus exclusively on real Americans, ie whites.’ At least for many Trumpists, even if only on a subconscious level.
no, I was surprised, but didn’t hear any of that in that coversation. perhaps you underestimate how desperate small business owners are for even tokens that gov is looking out for them – obviously it isn’t though the Rs have specialized in that rhetoric. there were things – about corporate tax rate, for example, that are very complicated, as we have discussed, with no easy answers and the illusion that the prez can cut through the gridlock on behalf of small business. what struck me was that these small business owners are so desperate for some kind of help they’re tuning out everything about T’s personal flaws
Obamacare was a huge boon to small business owners, who were getting absolutely ruined by small group brokers. I know my company saved thousands while providing better insurance to the employees. And that’s not even getting into the wreckage the Bush admin left behind and the consistent improvement since.
We’ve had several discussions in threads here about the dire straits of small business in the last decade. Plummeting numbers and badly declining start ups. Big banks finding financial instruments more profitable and safer (backed by us taxpayers, still) than small business loans. Local banks nervous.
There is a lack of disposable income on Main Street with rents of all types soaring. Fees and charges have taken the place of progressive tax increases.
Even outside money coming into the community, like SS and other federal programs, is siphoned out by the various chains that have home offices on the coasts.
yes. plan to read your new diary more closely but glancing through it, like that it points out the reductivism of saying all T voters are racists. with Sanders not in the race now it’s wall st or the highway, no place for main st. large % has nothing to do with racism.
EconomicInsecurityTM of 2016 looks a hell of a lot like bigotry of the past.
I have to vehemently disagree.
The media has shit reasons for opposing Strongman Trump.
As long as Strongman Trump is out there being an open, loud-and-proud Republican, the media is unable to use the BothSidesDoItTM biglie to insinuate that while sure, specific Republicans are scumbags, there are some libruul blog commenters who say similar things.
There is very little difference between Strongman Trump’s policies and what a generic Republican would propose. The media is just pissed that Strongman Trump is screaming instead of playing the dogwhistle.
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