DebateTheDebate

Debate the Debate: Does Your Representative Represent You?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:13:47 -0500

This week the House will hold the first real debate on the Iraq War since the Republican Congress approved Bush's Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Democrats will let all 435 Members of Congress speak for 5 minutes.

What will your Representative say? Will your Representative actually represent you? We invite you to "Debate the Debate" at DebateTheDebate.com, a new feature of Democrats.com that gives you one-click access to news from your Congressional District. Just login to Democrats.com with your voting address and click the "local" link (http://democrats.com/local) to find it!

We need your help to make this work.

Login to Democrats.com and click "local" to see if someone has already posted your Representative's speech.
If not, look for your Representative's speech at TrueMajority. If you can't find it there, visit your Representative's web site here. Most Members will publish their speeches in the section on "speeches" or "press," and these can be copy/pasted without restriction. If you can't find the speech, call your Representative's Washington office and ask for the Press Secretary.
When you find the speech, create a New Forum Topic devoted to your Representative's speech. Use a title like "Iraq Speech by Rep. Smith." Choose our "Debate The Debate" topic so all 435 debates can be easily found.

When your Representative's speech has been posted, use the comment section to debate whether your Representative actually represents you.

If you don't like your Representative's speech, you can use Democrats.com to do something about it!

Use the debate to clarify your views, then write letters to your local newspapers and call local talk shows
Organize a protest in front of your Representative's local office
Join the Occupation Project to hold a sit-in inside your Representative's office
Organize a town hall meeting to get your Representative to address your concerns
Find a better candidate to challenge your Representative in 2008

You can also join your local Congressional District Impeachment Committee to persuade your Representative to support the Impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Background: The 2002 debate on Iraq was based entirely on lies:

that Iraq had WMD's and ties to Al Qaeda, and was therefore an imminent threat to the U.S.
that U.S. troops would be greeted with flowers
that Iraqi oil would pay for rebuilding Iraq

So now Congress is finally debating the reality: Iraq had no WMD's and no ties to Al Qaeda, U.S. troops were greeted with endless bombs, and U.S. taxpayers will spend $1 trillion or more to watch murderous militias destroy Iraq.

The debate will be framed around Bush's latest escalation - will another 48,000 U.S. troops end Iraq's civil war, or is it time to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis and bring our troops safely home?

Here is the exact wording:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That—

(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Politics: Democrats are united in support of the resolution, while Republicans are deeply divided.

"Every time I go to another funeral, every time I go to Walter Reed, people are really gracious, but what do you say? What are we doing over there now?" asked Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-Md.), whose Eastern Shore district has lost 23 service members in the war.

GOP leaders and conservatives may apply some pressure to stay off the Democratic resolution, but, Gilchrest added: "My internal soul goes a lot beyond my minuscule political career."...

Gilchrest voted with the Republican leadership in June, but last month he was one of eight House Republicans who signed a letter stating that the deployment of additional U.S. troops to the sectarian fighting in Iraq would only make matters worse...

Gilchrest collected 29 Republican signatures on his own letter pleading with Bush to open diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran to find a way out of Iraq, then personally handed the letter to Bush at a bill-signing ceremony in the Oval Office. He is now working with Democratic Reps. Gregory W. Meeks (N.Y.), James P. McGovern (Mass.) and Solomon P. Ortiz (Tex.) to further that diplomatic push.

CNN Follows NBC in Uninviting Kucinich

davidswanson — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:00:18 -0500

By David Swanson

I just spoke to Dennis Kucinich who told me he had been included in the upcoming CNN debate but has been uninvited. After a poll placed Kucinich at 4%, CNN quickly announced the criterion of 5% for participation in its next debate in South Carolina. The Kucinich campaign released this statement:

CNN sets debate criteria 1% above Kucinich’s latest poll results, campaign files complaint with Federal Communications Commission

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Kucinich for President campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday against CNN and its parent company, Time Warner, Inc., for arbitrarily establishing criteria for its scheduled Monday Presidential debate that will exclude the Democratic candidate from participation.

On Wednesday, the campaign was notified by CNN that its criteria included a showing of 5% or better in a national poll. In two polls completed earlier last week by CBS News/New York Times and by the Pew Research Center, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich scored 4%.

“The CNN criteria specifically exclude the diverse and anti-war voice of Mr. Kucinich and his grass-roots supporters,” according to the complaint. “The exclusion of Mr. Kucinich undermines the purpose of the (Federal Communications) Act and is a blatant violation of the Act, including its equal time provisions.” Also, “Mr. Kucinich is a successful candidate because of his anti-war message and strong criticism of the American healthcare system, issues that are not championed by his presidential primary opponents. In these and other policy issues, his opponents share very similar policy platforms that differ from Mr. Kucinich.”

The filing also points out that Kucinich was invited to participate in the upcoming South Carolina debate by the Congressional Black Caucus, which is co-sponsoring the event. The invitation, which he accepted on May 20, stated, in part that Kucinich “will be guaranteed a rare opportunity to present your message to millions of voters unfiltered by any political organization or by any news organization.”

The complaint also argues that the Monday event “is not a true presidential primary debate without including all credible candidates. Instead, it is effectively an endorsement of the candidates selected by CNN” and is a breach of the federal requirement “to operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance.”

The campaign is asking the FCC to order CNN to allow Kucinich to participate.

Kucinich told me the FCC refused this, so a court challenge may be needed. Or we could all let CNN know how we feel about it:
PHONE: 404-827-1500
EMAIL: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/cnntv

Hillary Rolls on: Are Netroots a Paper Tiger?

davidswanson — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:17:28 -0400

By Jeff Cohen

As a longtime progressive tired of ineffective protesting, I’ve watched in glee as MoveOn has amassed political power by Webbing a few million of us and our dollars together. I’m a proud MoveOn member, even though I disagree sometimes with its leaders (mostly over too-cozy relations with top Democrats).

And as a longtime proponent of independent media, I’m gleeful that liberal/progressive bloggers have seized a new medium to mobilize millions of activists and confront a Democratic elite that seemed unwilling to confront and beat Team Bush.

Given my glee, it’s difficult for me to have to pose this question: Are the Netroots a paper tiger – more roar than bite?

Despite being overwhelmingly opposed to the nomination of Hillary Clinton, the Netroots have so far done little to slow down her coronation. Boosted by celebrity-worshipping corporate media (and a maximum donation from Rupert Murdoch himself), Hillary Clinton keeps rolling on – allied with the corporate lobbyists and Democratic insiders loathed even by moderately liberal bloggers.

Meanwhile, Clinton has never been popular among the Netroots. She’s never moved out of single digits in the (unscientific) monthly straw poll of DailyKos readers, while John Edwards has averaged 38 percent in the last six months among Kossacks, with Barack Obama averaging 26 percent.

In an April straw poll of MoveOn members following a virtual town hall on Iraq, the results were Obama (28%), Edwards (25%), Dennis Kunicich (17%) and Bill Richardson (12%) – followed by Clinton in fifth place with 11 percent. Clinton did better following a July town hall on climate change, but finished in third place, 17 points behind Edwards.

The reality is stark: While it’s hard to find a MoveOn leader or respected progressive blogger who supports Clinton, they can’t (or won’t) stop her.

Several factors may explain why most Netroots leaders are not taking stronger action:

1) They “misunderestimate” the potential hazards of another Clinton White House.

While progressives desperately want a Democratic president, the last Clinton in the White House subverted the progressive agenda. Eight years of Clintonite triangulation caused the Democratic Party to decline at every level of government. Hillary today is surrounded by the same staff and would likely appoint the same corporate types to top jobs as Clinton I, where big decisions were often corrupt and calculated toward moneyed interests.

The toughest brawl Bill Clinton was willing to wage (besides saving his own hide from impeachment) was against the Democratic base: for the corporate-backed NAFTA. Through the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Bill brought us far more media conglomeration than George W. He pardoned well-connected fugitive financier Marc Rich, while leaving Native American activist Leonard Peltier to rot in prison despite pleas from Amnesty International and others.

Hillary’s contribution to Clinton I was her botched healthcare proposal, a corporate-originated “reform” that would have enshrined a half-dozen of the largest insurance companies at the center of the system, and was so convoluted it never came up for a vote.

What we’ve seen of Hillary Clinton in the Senate and on the campaign trail suggests that Clinton II would indeed be a sorry sequel. Today she’s winning the endorsement of Republican CEOs, after having had Murdoch host a benefit for her at the Fox News building in 2006. Just as Bill Clinton’s spine achieved a rare firmness while battling for NAFTA, we recently observed in Hillary a rare passion and firmness on a single issue: her YearlyKos defense of lobbyists, including those who “represent corporations that employ a lot of people.”

Like Bill campaigning as a populist and governing as a corporatist, Hillary’s stump speech proclaims she’ll end the Iraq war in January 2009, while she assures the New York Times of a long-term U.S. military presence inside Iraq. She’s tried to explain away her vote to authorize the war, but avoids mention of her even more dubious vote hours earlier against requiring United Nations approval (or, if U.N. approval failed, a second Congressional authorization) before war could begin. Her overall bellicosity on Iran and the Middle East wins praise from conservative pundits; her “Israel-right-or-wrong” stance could make Christian Zionists blush.

In too much of the liberal blogosphere, history begins with the Florida election
theft of 2000, and events before that time seem ancient and irrelevant. There is insufficient grasp of how the Clintons’ rise to power was intertwined with the corporate-sponsored Democratic Leadership Conference – set up 22 years ago to weaken the power of the grassroots (labor, feminist, civil rights) inside the party. Still on the attack in 2004, the DLC targeted new villains, like MoveOn and the Dean upsurge.

2) They want to be Democratic “team players.”

Matt Bai’s new book on the Democratic Party, “The Argument,” has a passing reference to Hillary Clinton’s courtship of MoveOn leaders in private meetings: “Her charm appeared to have paid off: while MoveOn’s members remained furious at Clinton for voting with Bush on the war resolution, its leaders refused to criticize her publicly.”

In truth, MoveOn leaders have gone beyond refusing to publicly criticize Hillary Clinton – actually finding bizarre excuses to praise her on some of her worst issues, like Iran and Iraq. During the 2006 Democratic Senate primary in New York, it was not a shock that MoveOn’s leadership would not help Clinton’s antiwar challenger, Jonathan Tasini, an under-funded long shot. But what purpose was served by not criticizing her when she brazenly refused to even debate Tasini on the war – or by lauding her for a McCain-like critique of Don Rumsfeld’s war “mismanagement”?

With MoveOn avoiding criticism of Clinton in ’05, ’06 and half of ‘07, then when?

Netroots leaders seem almost mute today as Hillary Clinton makes full use of old media/old money advantages. Bloggers who loudly championed the Dean insurgency are oddly quiescent as the candidate of the party establishment gains ground. Have these young insurgents become Democratic Party elder statespersons – team players first and foremost? Has the courtship by Party insiders quieted them?

What animated the meteoric growth of MoveOn and progressive blogs was a crucial insight: that the Democratic establishment was too spineless or clueless to stand up to the Bush agenda. This insight has never been more relevant than now – with Bush an unpopular lame duck and Democratic leaders in Congress offering “little other than one failure after the next since taking power in January,” in Glenn Greenwald’s words.

Ancient history, from 1993-1994, teaches us that loyalty to party should never come before loyalty to principles – and that which Democrats hold power can be as important as whether Democrats hold power. I was a young(er) columnist when Bill Clinton entered the White House and Democrats controlled Congress. We didn’t get promised campaign finance reform; we didn’t get promised investment in the cities; we didn’t even get a vote on healthcare – since the Clintons had undermined and triangulated the 100 Democrats in Congress co-sponsoring a bill for nonprofit National Health Insurance. But we did get NAFTA.

And soon – inevitably and predictably –we got the Gingrich counterrevolution.

3) There’s no Dean campaign to unite them – just “Edwama.”

In the last three months of DailyKos reader polls, Edwards and Obama have combined for more than 60 percent of the vote – as against only 8 percent for Clinton.

Despite being hammered by corporate media, Edwards retains deep Netroots support as he pushes a progressive, populist message that evokes Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 campaign. Fueled by Internet fundraising, Obama has inspired a huge grassroots following, especially among youth and people of color. Both are tagging Clinton as the candidate of moneyed lobbyists. Either – especially Edwards – would likely appoint a cabinet quite different than the corporate Clintonites one would get from Hillary. At this stage, it looks like only Edwards or Obama can beat Clinton; polls of Iowa Democrats show a three-way race among them.

Were Edwards or Obama to drop out of the race today, Netroots support would likely galvanize behind the other. The current 63-8 percent “Edwama” edge over Clinton among Kossacks would become at least a 50-15 percent landslide for Edwards or for Obama. (And it’s hard to argue Clinton is more electable in a general election, since she provokes even more loathing among conservatives than wariness among progressive activists.)

The reality is that neither Edwards nor Obama is dropping out. There is no Dean candidate at the moment.

But that should not prevent Netroots leaders and progressive bloggers from speaking out loudly and clearly about their objections to Clinton’s policies and associations, and the negative consequences of her leading the Democrats in 2008 – in long-term electability, governance and movement building.

* *

Reporting the results of his July straw poll in which Edwama outpolled Clinton 7 to 1, DailyKos founder Markos gloated that he was among the 5 percent who voted “No Freakin’ Clue”: “I’m enjoying the campaigns without any emotional investment in any of them. It’s quite liberating. I wish more of you would give it a shot.”

Here was a key Netroots backer of Dean sitting on the sidelines four years later, encouraging a laissez-faire attitude over who is the 2008 Democratic nominee.

If 2004 taught anything, it’s that it matters mightily who the nominee is. Despite all the organizing, fundraising, phone-banking, canvassing and concertizing, it’s hard to beat even a discredited Republican with a Democratic candidate who comes across as a vacillating and calculating Washington insider.

I was never prouder to be a MoveOn member as when, after Kerry’s defeat, Eli Pariser of MoveOn PAC blasted corporate Democrats in a mass email: “For years, the Party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base. But we can’t afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers.” Eli’s email called for a “bold Democratic vision” – not a phrase typically associated with Hillary Clinton.

In a bit of hyperbole, Eli proclaimed on behalf of grassroots donors who’d given $300 million to Kerry and the Democrats: “Now it’s our Party. We bought it, we own it, we’re going to take it back.” But unlike owners, Netroots leaders today act more like field hands – deferring to other powers the selection of the candidate.

If Clinton coasts to the Democratic nomination without need of Netroots support, the “elite Washington insiders” denounced by Eli will be laughing – ad commissions in hand – all the way to the bank.

And they’ll be ridiculing the Netroots as a paper tiger.

- -
Jeff Cohen is a media critic, author of “Cable News Confidential” and an advisory board member of Progressive Democrats of America.

The Boston Globe Is Right on Health Care

davidswanson — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:45:21 -0400

Kucinich Is Right on Health Care
By Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe

Dennis Kucinich rarely gets much airtime in Democratic presidential debates. That was underscored recently when ABC's George Stephanopoulos called on him in an Iowa forum to talk about God. Kucinich said, "George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me."

With poll numbers at 1 or 2 percent, the Ohio congressman is the nudge kicking at the knees of the Democratic Party to offer more than incremental change. He deserves more attention than he gets. On healthcare, he says what Americans believe, even as his rivals rake in contributions from the industry.

In a CNN poll this spring, 64 percent of respondents said the government should "provide a national insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes," and 73 percent approve of higher taxes to insure children under 18. Those results track New York Times and Gallup polls last year, in which about two-thirds of respondents said it is the federal government's responsibility to guarantee health coverage to all Americans.

Such polls allow Kucinich to joke that, far from being in the loony left, "I'm in the center. Everyone else is to the right of me." More seriously, in a recent visit to the Globe, he accused the other Democratic candidates of faking it on healthcare reform.

"One of the greatest hoaxes of this campaign - everyone's for universal healthcare," Kucinich said. "It's like a mantra. But when you get into the details, you find out that all the other candidates are talking about maintaining the existing for-profit system."

Kucinich quoted the 2003 study published by the New England Journal of Medicine that found that 31 percent of healthcare expenditures pay not for actual care but for administrative costs. That compares with only 16.7 percent in Canada. Administrative and clerical employees make up 27 percent of the healthcare workforce in the United States, compared with 19 percent in Canada.

"With 46 million Americans without any health insurance at all and another 50 million underinsured," Kucinich said, "isn't it really time to look at the other models that exist that are workable for all the other industrialized nations in the world? When you think about it, the only thing that's stopping us is the hold that the private insurers have on our political system ... corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, the cost of paperwork ..."

The hold of the healthcare industry on the top candidates is already apparent. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top recipient of campaign contributions so far from the pharmaceutical and health products industry is Republican Mitt Romney ($228,260). But the next two are Democrats Barack Obama ($161,124) and Hillary Clinton ($146,000). The top recipient of contributions from health professionals is Clinton ($990,611). Romney is second at $806,837, and Obama third at $748,637.

The top recipient of cash from the insurance industry, which includes health insurers, is another Democrat, Connecticut's Christopher Dodd, at $605,950. Romney and Republican Rudolph Giuliani are second and third, with Clinton and Obama fourth and fifth. Even though Obama is in fifth place, he still has collected $269,750 from insurance companies.

In a category that is relatively small in money thus far, but huge in terms of healthcare morality, Democratic presidential candidates occupy four of the top six spots in receiving money from death-dealing tobacco companies. After Giuliani's $69,500 from tobacco companies, Dodd has received $45,400, Clinton $32,300, Romney $31,400, Obama $7,885, and Democrat Joe Biden, $4,000.

When the top Democratic candidates take tobacco contributions, it is hard to see them truly believing, as Kucinich says, that healthcare "is the single-most important domestic issue ... a defining issue in the presidential race."

The top recipient from lobbyists by far is Clinton at $406,300. She is still so badly smoldering from the torching of her healthcare efforts as first lady that she recently asserted to the National Association of Black Journalists, "I have never advocated socialized medicine. That has been a right-wing attack on me for 15 years."

The irony, as Kucinich critically points out, is that Americans are so burned from for-profit healthcare, that they want the government to guarantee coverage. "If people clearly understood that by going to vote on Election Day they would create conditions where they would have health coverage," Kucinich said, "if you could communicate that message, you wouldn't have to talk about anything else."

WashPo and Time Help ABC Bury Treatment of Kucinich

davidswanson — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:19:33 -0400

Here's a very smart and thorough analysis of what happened.

Chris Cillizza's Insult to Union Members

davidswanson — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:02:47 -0400

Cillizza lists Dennis Kucinich as one of the winners of the AFL-CIO debate and writes:

Give Kucinich his due: he was great last night. Of course, unlike the rest of the candidates on stage, Kucinich is not bound by concerns over saying something that might make him unelectable in a primary or general election. His miniscule chance of winning frees him to speak his mind on the war in Iraq, NAFTA, health care and anything else he is asked about. Kucinich continues to play the happy warrior in this race, delivering his plans and criticisms of his rivals with a smile on his face. Also, you've gotta love a candidate who eggs the crowd on repeatedly at the end of his answers.

Now, Cillizza doesn't specify what was great about Kucinich. Did Kucinich's positions (none of which differed from the positions he's held and expressed for years) please Cillizza or the crowd or both? The one thing we do know is that they pleased the crowd. Kucinich didn't get asked as many questions as the media's preferred candidates, but he did receive as much applause, probably the most applause of any of them. This was aided by Keith Olbermann actually asking a direct question of all the candidates (would they scrap NAFTA or keep it). Kucinich was the only candidate who said he'd pull the United States out of NAFTA. He's been saying this for years, although a number of TV commentators appeared to hear it for the first time. The crowd went nuts, a crowd of the sort of people who vote in Democratic primaries and general elections. Moreover, getting out of NAFTA is a majority position or close to it, depending on which poll you believe. If you break it down by party, getting out of NAFTA is a strong majority position for Democrats. And Democrats are, believe it or not, the people who vote for Democratic candidates in general elections as well as primaries.

So, what has Cillizza done? He's taken a candidate who intends to be elected president and who is as high in the polls as some of the other more corporate friendly candidates on the stage, and pretended that he doesn't really want to win. Then when Kucinich says something that the crowd cheers for, but that the acceptable candidates, by definition, won't say, Cillizza claims that Kucinich could only say this because he is (at least in Cillizza's fantasy) not a serious candidate. And Cillizza argues, by implication, that what a crowd cheers for is what voters will not vote for, even though the crowd is made up of Democratic voters. In fact a quarter of US voters, and closer to half of Democratic voters, are union members and their families. The insult to them in Cillizza's twisted thinking is more severe than that to Kucinich.

Kucinich Wins Debate

davidswanson — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:15:09 -0400

CNN and 4 Dems Opt to Skew Debate

davidswanson — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:02:17 -0400

By David Swanson

CNN allowed the eight Democratic presidential campaigns to vote: Should CNN continue to place its preferred candidates together in the center of the stage in order to keep the candidates it ignores off camera at the edges, or should it follow the model PBS used last week and choose candidate positions on the stage by random drawing? Dodd, Gravel, and Kucinich were joined by Hillary Clinton in opting for the random drawing. Edwards and Obama were joined by Richardson and Biden in opting to stick Edwards, Clinton, and Obama in the middle. The vote was four to four. What to do? Appeal to the public? You're kidding, right? CNN cast the deciding vote itself and will stick with the podium positioning that suits its stance of choosing our elected officials for us.

The PBS debate at Howard University last week chose candidate positions on the stage by random drawing and sent a video of the random drawing to each campaign. It also gave the candidates equal time and respect, and asked them all about the same topics. Not exactly rocket science, but a pretty stunning breakthrough for a presidential campaign debate. You can watch it at http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/special/forums/video.html

How stunning was the Howard debate? Let's put it this way. It is not uncommon at debates and forums, nor was it four years ago, for Congressman Dennis Kucinich to win more applause than the other candidates but then go entirely unmentioned in the subsequent media coverage. Well, PBS and Howard not only held a fair debate, but they also polled a focus group during the debate and recorded, for example, who had the best received line. PBS brought on a Republican pundit who chattered about Clinton's second-highest response line, but PBS released the data, so it is possible to find out that Kucinich had the highest single moment with a line about how if Darfur had oil, we'd already have occupied them. http://tinyurl.com/yp2x3b

In addition, Tavis Smiley & PBS were running an electronic poll, before and after the debate, in which Kucinich moved from 2.5% before the debate to 13.3% after--the biggest percentage jump by far (>5 times!), and the second biggest in raw numbers (11% gain). Edwards went up about 12%, which doubled his score. Both Obama and Clinton went down. http://www.covenantwithblackamerica.com

Kucinich moved from 2% to 13% in one debate??!! Is it any wonder CNN prefers to run its debates in a manner that shuts out the candidates who do not support its corporate agenda? Imagine where Kucinich would be in national polls if all the debates were run in a strictly fair manner!

There are forums, like Monday's in Philadelphia run by ACORN http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=11875 at which the participating candidates are treated fairly. But there are others, such as a recent forum run by Sojourner's, at which organizations go CNN one better and exclude certain candidates entirely. For now, CNN can only dream of such things. For now, it is stuck with having to place its preferred candidates in the center of the stage, ask them 80 percent of the questions, and ridicule their opponents. Considering CNN's record of political reporting, the center of its stage ought to be a place of the highest dishonor. Maybe that's why Richardson and Biden sided with a scheme that does not favor them. More like, they're just Democrats, and that's what Democrats do.

Democratic Excess: Media find too many candidates—at only one debate

davidswanson — Tue, 08 May 2007 10:38:04 -0400

By FAIR

In the wake of the first candidates' debate among the Democratic contenders for the White House (4/26/07), many media outlets and commentators seemed annoyed that the so-called "second-tier" candidates are even bothering to run. Oddly, similar complaints about a surplus of GOP contenders in the first Republican debate (5/3/07) were hard to find in the corporate media.

As FAIR noted recently (4/26/07), early election polls are a terrible way to predict the likely nominee. So using them to determine which candidates are viable and which campaigns are merely a nuisance is unwise. What's more, because the electoral process is about more than who takes office, but is also a chance to debate national priorities and policies, it's healthy to allow as many legitimate candidates as possible a chance to make their case directly to the voters.

That's not the way it's seen by many Washington pundits, though—at least when it comes to Democrats. The Washington Post's David Broder declared (4/27/07) that "six of the eight declared candidates" at the Democrats' debate in South Carolina "showed themselves to be both substantive and direct in their responses." That left two—former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio—who did not measure up to Broder's standards, as they "provided a counterpoint of left-wing ideas that drew rebukes for a lack of seriousness from [Delaware Sen. Joe] Biden and [Illinois Sen. Barack] Obama."

"Left wing" ideas such as Kucinich and Gravel's opposition to the Iraq War are shared by a majority of the U.S. population; it's telling that this is insufficient to make them "serious" for Broder. By contrast, after the Republican debate, the Post reported (5/4/07) that "the three candidates who top most national polls—Giuliani, McCain and Romney—made forceful presentations, but those struggling for attention also generally acquitted themselves well." In response to three of the candidates expressing support for creationism, the Post noted their public support (5/6/07): "But a look at public polling on the issue reveals that the three men aren't far from the mainstream in that belief."

Describing the Democratic debate, the Los Angeles Times argued (4/27/07) that the wide debate format "allowed each candidate a total of 11 minutes to talk—giving Kucinich and Gravel, both of whom have a negligible showing in polls, equal time with the front-runners, which they used to take aggressive hits at [New York Sen. Hillary] Clinton and Obama." At this point, more than half a year before the first actual voters have a chance to weigh in, poll numbers should not be the prime determiner of who gets to participate in a debate; even so, Kucinich and Gravel are in what amounts to a statistical dead heat in many polls with candidates treated more seriously by the corporate media, like Biden and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

While Kucinich and Gravel were asked only eight questions in the April 26 debate, Biden received 11 and Richardson 10—nearly as many as the 12 each answered by "front-runners" Clinton, Obama and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards. This despite the fact Kucinich was tied with Richardson and Biden in the latest Pew poll (4/18-22/07) and actually beat Biden in the latest Fox poll (4/17-18/07).

After the GOP debate, the Los Angeles Times editorialized in favor of the wide debate (5/4/07): "The breadth of small-fries in the field makes it hard to define a coherent Republican message, but that's a sign of intellectual ferment in the troubled GOP. The silver lining for a party on the verge of the wilderness is the need to go 'off message' and entertain a variety of ideas."

CNN's Larry King blurted out (4/26/07) to his panel of political journalists discussing the Democrats: "We were talking around in agreement. I mean, a lot of people were saying, 'Boy, if Dennis Kucinich were 6'2.'" It's unlikely that the media would give Kucinich different treatment if he would only manage to grow a few inches; the disdainful treatment of Kucinich and Gravel seems motivated by their politics.

As CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer complained (4/29/07): "Is it fair to have all these people out there? I mean, it is a free country. Everybody wants to run for president should have that opportunity and does. But clearly, somebody like senator—former Sen. Mike Gravel is not going to be a serious candidate, and yet he gets equal time, and... I would just say it honestly: In my view, it just wastes time."

ABC host George Stephanopoulos sounded a similar note (4/29/07): "Setting aside Mike Gravel, who provided the comic relief, everyone else seemed credible, seemed intelligent, seemed like they knew what they were talking about. That has to bring the front-runners down a bit." CNN's Howard Kurtz seemed annoyed (4/29/07) that Gravel was being paid any attention at all by the media: "He was sort of a bomb thrower on that stage. Why should a network allow somebody with, say, zero chance of becoming president into these debates?"

Expressing precisely the sort of cynicism that turns millions of Americans off the electoral process, Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza responded to Kurtz that money, not popular support, ought to be all that mattered: "The reality is...two candidates raise about $25 million, one candidate raises $100,000 or less. At some point you need to say, this is not us making a subjective decision. This is an objective analysis of what it takes to win a campaign." (NY1, Time Warner's local cable news channel, actually instituted such a debate policy, refusing to hold a debate for the New York Democratic Senate primary because Hillary Clinton's opponent Jonathan Tasini, who had reached 13 percent in the polls, hadn't raised enough money—FAIR Action Alert, 8/4/06.)

Time magazine's Karen Tumulty, though, dissented: "Could I argue that...that same criterion would be used to eliminate Dennis Kucinich, who on the other hand does in fact have a coherent worldview that represents a significant segment of the Democratic party base and, therefore, he should be on the [stage]."

Some pundits made the political argument more explicit. After the debate, MSNBC host Chris Matthews asked Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod (4/26/07): "Do you think that [Obama] was hampered by the fact that you had a radical critique going on of all mainstream Democrats and elected officials by Mike Gravel, and to some extent, by the congressman from Cleveland, that it made your guy seem more like he was part of the establishment than he would like to have seemed?"

Matthews' comment is, in a sense, remarkably honest. Often reporters and pundits act, when they're trying to winnow the field, as if they're only aiming to improve the democratic process (Extra!, 9-10/03). But Matthews' observation makes clear that he is aware that there is a sizeable segment of the population whose opinions are hardly included at all in the national political debate. Whether the subject is withdrawal from Iraq, impeaching Republican officials, or single-payer healthcare, journalists seem to bristle at the thought of having to listen to such talk from the more progressive candidates. It stands as a reminder of how little time such ideas are given in the national media.

By contrast, MSNBC viewers tuning in before the GOP debate could hear network analyst Pat Buchanan declare his fondness for the lesser-known GOP candidates—precisely because they are closer to representing "classic conservatism" than the front-runners. Buchanan singled out representatives Ron Paul (R-Texas), Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.).

And in an online column, Newsweek's Howard Fineman declared (5/3/07), "Let's hear it for the 'second-' and 'third-' tier presidential candidates.... But if you know, as I do, some of the other, putatively lesser, GOP contenders, you have to be impressed with the depth of their political passion, their knowledge, and even their track records. They represent, in undiluted form, the vivid primary colors of the conservative movement."

The disparity is striking: The lesser-known (and generally more conservative) Republican candidates are cheered for participating in the process, and a cable commentator like Buchanan can use his perch in the media to support those candidates. Progressive voices have no similar presence in the media debate—and the Democratic candidates that most represent progressive ideals are derided for taking up the time of other, more worthy candidates.

Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org.

A gathering of vultures.....GOP presidential debates

foxtrottango1 — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:10:23 -0400

Tonight's GOP presidential debate will look more like a meeting of vultures instead of like eagles. But than again, the eagle has become nothing but a glorified vulture, isn't it?

There is no honor among hypocrites and last November elections proved it!