We get by with a little help from our friends. We are also blinded by them.
Everyone knows about media silos. This blog has described them, news departments report on them, political pundits decry them. Fox News is one, and it defines itself as the fair and balanced alternative to the mainstream media one.
There is also a mainstream media liberal sophisticated educated silo and it is hiding the truth from Democrats. Democratic candidates at every level need to open their minds to the simple fact that some of what Trump says is very popular.
And, happily for Democrats, a Democrat can endorse those policies in good conscience.
And, happily for Democrats, a Democrat can endorse those policies in good conscience.
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| This was when the RNC silo and the Trump/Fox silo were different. |
In October of 2016, when "everyone knew" that Trump was going to be wiped out in the upcoming election I observed the Deputy Chief of Staff of the RNC, the senior assistant to Reince Priebus (and now the deputy Chief of Staff to President Trump, again the senior assistant to Priebus) tell a small room of students and visitors at Harvard's JFK school that Fox News had been a disaster for the Republican Party. The silo of friends talking to friends created group-think and extremism among the Republican base. It meant the Republican Party was cast in the Fox image with politicians unable to get out of the extreme group think box. It was being creating an angry, nationalist, protectionist party rather than a conservative small-government party, she said, and it was ruining Republicanism. Those were the days when the RNC/Ryan establishment party was fighting the Trump party and Ryan was embarrassed to go on stage with Trump.
The meeting was off the record, but she was careful anyway. She didn't overtly say Republicans were going to face electoral disaster, but it was the assumption behind everything she said that afternoon. It turns out that the Fox vision of America was more popular than she--and other leaders of the Republican Party--understood.
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| Click here for the article |
Still, her point was a good one: the silo of Fox News and its big audience may seem like an advantage, a nonstop infomercial, but in fact it locked the GOP into a way of thinking, with people fighting each other for being the most pure, the most extreme. What she did not understand--not yet, anyway--was that Trump and Fox were more in touch with the voters than her own establishment Republican/RNC/National Review/Weekly Standard media silo.
Thad Guyer observes that the supposed cultural and political tailwind given liberals by the mainstream media, led by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and TV news, is as crippling to Democrats as Fox News was to Republicans. Guyer says mainstream news is hiding a reality from Democratic politicians and thought leaders by asserting relentlessly that citizens don't really want a border wall and that generally Trump is unpopular so they do not have to listen to what Trump says. After all, he lost the popular vote, his approval numbers are low, he says wild things, so Democrats can ignore him.
This blog has asserted repeatedly, especially in recent days, that in fact Democrats need to wake up and realize that Trump won states that Democrats should have won because he is, in fact, saying things that make sense to a great many voters, and that Democrats need not "give up their principles" by recognizing this and re-connecting with their voter base. They can regain their principles by changing. Plus, they regain their connection with the American voter. Win-win.
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| Click Here: Politico article |
It is a good, worthy Democratic principle to "drain the swamp"; Sanders said it but Trump said it more clearly. Democrats can adopt this policy and message and take on the elites groupthink and policies among their own allies. Republicans are re-claiming attachment to Goldman Sachs and Wall Street and Democrats should let them.
It is a good, worthy Democratic principle to have border controls so that immigration works under regulation, not under scofflaw illegality. Democrats are the party of regulation, not the party of free-for-all, so let Democrats praise rather than hide from border security. It is an issue of order and safety, not xenophobia and racism.
Democrats are already re-thinking free trade and its effects on working people in America and it is a good, worthy Democratic principle that our trade should assist American workers, not American business leaders. Democrats have ceded talk of jobs, jobs, jobs to Republicans. Democrats should reclaim the job issue.
It is a good, worthy Democratic principle to have border controls so that immigration works under regulation, not under scofflaw illegality. Democrats are the party of regulation, not the party of free-for-all, so let Democrats praise rather than hide from border security. It is an issue of order and safety, not xenophobia and racism.
Democrats are already re-thinking free trade and its effects on working people in America and it is a good, worthy Democratic principle that our trade should assist American workers, not American business leaders. Democrats have ceded talk of jobs, jobs, jobs to Republicans. Democrats should reclaim the job issue.
But as Guyer has noted, the progressive, Democratic, culturally sophisticated news media repeats the cultural and intellectual ideals of urbanity and sophistication and privileged elites and it downplays the truth that Trump reflects the feelings of a great many people. Democrats are afraid to touch them because they have Trump's name on them and the media has cast anything Trump as xenophobic, uninformed, and unpopular. There are principled, informed, and very popular reasons for Democrats to consider those policies, but their media friends and its groupthink is blinding liberals to that possibility.
Another comment by Thad Guyer.
"Left Media Silences Needed Democratic Moves Toward the Center”
Its not just that Democrats are shouted down when trying to take steps toward the center, as Upclose observes. It’s also that dedicated Democratic media like the NYT and Washington Post act as gate keepers of whether and how to report on those steps. For example, unless you read deep and beyond the article titles which obscured it, you wouldn’t know that Nancy Pelosi said today: “Let us all recognize that we have a responsibility to protect our borders.” Thus far only the NYT on the left has reported this, though not prominently. (See NYT, https://nyti.ms/2peYBdc). This is a big step for the Democratic leader, but apparently too sacrilegious to be highlighted. The NYT slipped in something even more hopeful for Democrats returning to power: “Democrats support increased border spending, just not in the form of a wall”. No other left media has made a point of this since Clinton won the nomination.
Pelosi made her statement that Congress has “a responsibility to protect our borders” in the context of Trump’s metaphorical wall. It’s a metaphor at several levels, but none more important than this: It may well be the border wall or Obamacare funding. Trump says he’ll give one dollar in Obamacare subsidies for one dollar toward the wall. That sums up the whole tragedy of Clinton losing the election and our current state of Democratic disarray: Don’t endorse border control, don’t get elected, don’t get health care or climate protection. Instead of trashing deplorables over the wall, Pelosi tried to shift the debate to the practicalities of border control: “The fact is that the wall is a dereliction of duty in doing that”, she said. That is, her approach in protecting Democrats in the House is to oppose the wall as being an ineffective border control, not as being racist or xenophobic.
The left media has also kept up the chant that Trump’s unpopularity should do-in his border and climate policies, claiming that even his supporters have turned against him. This is a false narrative that further hampers a Democratic comeback. The same Trump voters who misled pollsters in saying they did not support him or were undecided, are still understating their continuing and growing embrace of Trump. Just as WaPo, NYT and CNN ignored the polling data that Hillary was going to lose (data which UpClose repeatedly reported in predicting a Trump win), they are at it again in claiming Trump lacks popular support to get what he wants.
Left media simply refuses to report or highlight that the new Washington Post/ABC poll shows that Trump would not only still beat Clinton, but that he would win even the popular vote against her. CNN gave a low key acknowledgment of this: “Trump would best Clinton 43 to 40% in a hypothetical rematch today.” (See, CNN, https://goo.gl/VfkQc2). The right media has further undermined the left media in this continuing under-reporting of pro-Trump polling data. (See, Washington Examiner, “Wash Post poll hides: Trump still beats Clinton, 43%-40%”, https://goo.gl/jgGtAV) and Fox News, “Trump slams pollsters as survey buries sustained popularity over Clinton”, https://goo.gl/CXzYqh).
The liberal media may not be the “enemy of the American people”, but it clearly has been an irresponsible ally both in Trump getting elected and in continuously fueling his support.
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“Democrats Likely to Rage to the Left in 2020”
Here’s what history shows us is likely to happen in 2020 with Democrats challenging Trump’s second term. We get angry after presidential election losses, then usually rage to the left and get smashed. Upset that Hubert Humphrey was defeated by Nixon in 1968, Democrats went way left and ran George McGovern against Nixon’s second term. McGovern was annihilated “in one of the largest electoral landslides in U.S. history”. (See, Wik, https://goo.gl/NdNCXX). When Reagan unseated Jimmy Carter in 1980, Democrats went ballistic and again moved further left with Walter Mondale, who won only his home state. (See Wiki, https://goo.gl/kyiLjr). Outraged that George Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, Democrats put up a perceived New England elitist John Kerry, ending in a defeat of 31 to 19 states. (See, Wiki https://goo.gl/tZq9ZR).
The one time in the last 50 years when Democrats succeeded in knocking out a Republican president seeking a second term was when we settled on “pragmatist” contender who alienated much of our angry left base. That was Bill Clinton unseating the first President Bush after we rejected ultra-left Jerry Brown, aka “Governor Moonbeam”. (See, Wiki, https://goo.gl/aA9SQw).
I can’t remember a time when Democrats have been so angry and enraged as they are now. Yet, we labor under an empirically unsupported belief that angry Democrats get “energized”, that mean-spirited protests and campus riots demonstrate grass roots resolve, that if we just “get back to the basics” of our most liberal ideologies the American electorate will embrace it. Thus, last week our new DNC Chair Tom Perez announced in stern tones a new “purity” test that henceforth every Democratic candidate from small town mayors up must be pro-choice or they’re out. Pro-choice, of course, is central to our party platform. But because we accept that pro-life people can also be “good Democrat voters”, like many Catholics and Hispanics, we’ve not made it a litmus test. Yet suddenly our DNC chair has called into question the eligibility of “anti-abortion Democrats in the party, including Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin of West Virginia”. (See Huffington Post, “Democratic Party Draws A Line In The Sand On Abortion Rights”, https://goo.gl/y5EjMT). Perez ironically flip-flopped to this purity test after being skewered by pro-choice advocates for supporting a pro-life Democratic mayoral candidate-- the day before.
Perez has found he likes anger, and went on a profanity-laced rampage. Trump’s “a goddam liar” our DNC chair thundered to a big audience. The Republican leadership “doesn’t give a shit about people”, he shouted, followed by their “shitty budget” is hurting health care. (See Youtube, https://youtu.be/MaL3NVc6SMI).
Rick Millward’s recent blog describes the anger process from “shock” to “acceptance”, and why rage is counterproductive: “Accepting responsibility for our own complacency is empowering, as it opens the possibility of making a change that will endure.” (See, Millward, “Good Grief”, https://goo.gl/wJ7GNW). If there ever was “complacency” in an election it was 2016 and Clinton’s sure thing win. Hopefully, Democrats will work through the anger, but many in our base may prefer the DNC’s Chair’s profanity, served up with flailing arms madman style. Many might think its high time for all kinds of purity tests, if not leftist ninjas smashing windows, burning things, and forming human shields to keep conservatives from speaking. But electoral history tells us the likely outcome unless we get pragmatic.
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