No, no. I think he means Jimmy Dean.
Yes. :smack: Somehow I mixed John Edwards and Howard Dean together and came up with John Dean.
Nope. But it wouldn’t matter even if that were true, because it was after he self-destructed in Iowa.
Bob: “The media” consists of more than the nightly network news. Howard Dean was the Barack Obama of 2004. I’m just afraid that Barack Obama is going to be the Howard Dean of 2008.
Why? Plenty of candidates have done poorly in Iowa, and bounced back in NH. Or even (like Bush in 2000) gotten beat badly in NH, but recovered in SC.
I’m not BobLibDem, but do you have reason to believe the nightly news was significantly more biased against Dean than the mainstream media coverage in general? And what would you base that on?
In what sense? ISTM that their backgrounds, candidacies, and public personas are very different in many ways.
From Salon
As they say, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Dean never had a chance.
It seems to me that my recollection of the Dean coverage varies significantly from John Mace’s. I recall Dean being a darling on the Internet but routinely marginalised by the traditional media, whose basic theme was along the lines of “look at those strange Internet folks.” And then came the “scream,” which the media used in a manner that finished Dean off – endless repetition accompanied by commentary along the lines of “Is he a freak? Is this the end for Dean?”
But Dean was leading in the polls in Iowa up to the last minute, and then he came in 3rd place. I’ve said before that he didn’t get a fair shake about the “scream”, but the idea that media moguls got together and torpedoed his campaign is in conspiracy theory territory, and that is what Bob is asserting. I don’t think it really mattered who had delivered that “scream” speech-- the press would have latched onto it in the same way. Luck of the draw, not media conspiracy.
The whole idea of “negative news” is a red herring. Without knowing precisely what he did to warrant that news, it’s a meaningless statement. Currently, Bush is getting a lot of negative news. Is that because the media is biased against him or because the news he is generating is negative?
They are/were the anti-establishment candidates that everyone wants/wanted to talk about. They sound great when all you have to do is listen to them, but then people tend to pull back when they think of them as an actual candidate. Maybe Obama will be different. Who knows at this point?
They don’t have to get together to cut someone down to size. They all know who butters their bread, and the corporate overlords didn’t want Dean as president. Did NBC and CBS get together to nail Dean? No. But I do believe that for much of the major media outlets, the corporate owners put out the hit order.
This I don’t buy. I don’t think that most mainstream journalists are consciously following the company line. I think the poor quality of mainstream political journalism has more to do with institutional inertia, laziness, social and cultural insularity, and lack of critical thinking, imagination, and a global perspective on what the political press exists for. The fact is that stories like those about Dean and Edwards are very easy to write and is usually given lots of positive feedback in the echo chamber. Something more insightful and critical is harder to write and usually requires more intellectual defense. This isn’t purely a “journalism” issue, but look at what happened with Jimmy Carter’s comment about Bush being the worst president in history. My theory is that he backpedaled because a good defense would require tremendous effort and it would have trapped him in a negative story in the echo chamber.
What Bob said.
In this case, the news was in the context of a campaign, one where Dean was doing quite well through most of 2003. And he’d been governor of Vermont before running for President, and VT was showing no ill effects of his tenure there. So there was no Bush-style run of failures for the media to write negative stories about. (We’ll overlook how the media actually covered Bush as his failures piled up.) Yet the coverage was negative despite all that.
What’s anti-establishment about Obama? Aside from the one-percenters, Edwards is the anti-establishment candidate in the 2008 Dem race.
Obama’s working an entirely different approach than either Dean in 2003 or Edwards now. Obama’s game is to try to transcend political differences, rather than to take on the establishment, as Dean did then, and Edwards is doing now. That doesn’t make him an establishment candidate, but it means he’s emphatically NOT an *anti-*establishment candidate.
This could be right. But why is it that the anti-establishment candidate draws the fire? I’ll stick with my theory until I see a better one.
Yup. Apparently the new GOP SOP is to find an actor to run after they get out of a total shitburger of a President.
-Joe
Okay, how about one piece of testimonial evidence to start with? I have worked for more than one journalistic organization, in each case owned by a large or gigantic corporation. I personally know several journalists, each who have worked for journalistic organizations owned by large or gigantic corporations. In no case have I personally ever considered the political or economic interests of my employer in writing a campaign story. And no discussion with my friends and acquaintances has ever revealed any motivation based on the political or economic interests in writing a campaign story.
I’ll note that none of the people I’m referring to were working for partisan opinion publications, the Washington Times, or Fox News Channel.
Now, I’ll also add that many of the “leaders” of political reportage are themselves members of the economic elite – people like David Broder, for example. Their own opinions are likely to be heavily coloured by their personal interests, but even Broder, I believe, does not write with the purpose of propping up the fortunes of the Washington Post Co.
But, I think there is a simple answer to your question “why is it that the anti-establishment candidate draws the fire?” That is that the leading mainstream political journalists are part of the establishment as individuals and therefore are naturally disposed against an anti-establishment candidate. This – and not the political disposition of their employers – plays a key role, I believe.
Sure, many journalists are pros and wouldn’t succumb to pressure. But perhaps those that didn’t cut down Dean just didn’t get their stuff published. I still want a better explanation of why certain candidates get much more rigorous treatment than others.
What **acsenray **said.
There are plenty of negative things you can do in a campaign, like insert foot in mouth. Candidates are often having to retract statements.
I’m using “anti-establishment” in the sense that he’s not the pick of the party big shots. Edwards was the Dem VP candidate in '04, which makes him the obvious choice. Hillary is, well, Hillary-- an institution unto herself. Edwards might be trying to be the anti-establishment candidate, but that’s a different matter.
Well, if you prefer “outsider” to “anti-establishment”, that’s OK with me. I see what you’re saying, and I think the parallel I’m trying to draw is that they both tried something new, and weren’t the natural pick of the party establishment. Both guys are exciting, from a media perspective, in ways that the more established folks, like Edwards, can’t or couldn’t be.
While not specific to the issue of campaigning, the Bill Moyers show, Buying the War includes testimonial about direct influence of powerful people shaping and defining the coverage given to the matter, the content to be included and excluded and the stories that would be given prominence.
If it happened in that case, why should it not be possible in any case?
I’m not saying it’s not possible. I’m saying that from what I’ve seen, that’s not what’s happening. There’s definitely a major institutional problem with how mainstream political journalism treats certain candidates and political ideas, but my direct experience tells me it’s not a broad (unspoken) conspiracy to advance the economic interests or political views of large commercial conglomerates. (I don’t include Fox News, etc., as “mainstream” because I believe it and its ilk were specifically created to propagandize on behalf of a particular political force.)
The war coverage did, as Moyer showed, reflect corporate fear of violating the zeitgeist, but is also part of a larger, ongoing result of a 40-year-long campaign by the right to subject the mass media to what I call the battered-spouse strategy of political propaganda. And the major motivator in that game is not to propagate the views of the employer but to “prove” their “objectivity” to conservative critics (which, by the terms of the conservative strategy, will never happen).
I think we’re getting off track here. The thrust of what you said, that I quoted, was that Bob was claiming the moguls were getting together and conspiring with each other. Bob explained that’s not what he was saying, which presumably settled the issue. That’s what I was saying “What Bob said” about. acsenray rebutted Bob on other points, but not that one.
Whether it’s foot-in-mouth disease or something else, wouldn’t it be hard for a candidate to go from a relative unknown at the beginning of 2003, to leading in the polls in the latter half of the year, while leading the field in such campaign-related afflictions? That would take a large amount of finite improbability. Or, more likely, a biased press corps, i.e. “That’s a gaffe on Dean’s part, because everyone knows you have to run to the center to win in American politics,” which is not only a bias in and of itself, but that the press only seems to consider noteworthy when Dems are the ones violating the precept.
OK, but in that sense, there’s at most one ‘establishment’ candidate, since either most of the party big shots are behind one candidate, or they’re too divided to say that there’s such a candidate. So most of the primary field in a given year is “anti-establishment” by that criterion which means it’s not much of a basis for a parallel between two such candidates in different years.
I find your lumping Edwards in with the “more established folks” to be odd. I don’t see that he’s a party insider, despite his veep nomination in 2004. And he, too, tried new things both in 2003 and now.
I’ve given up on figuring out who’s “exciting, from a media perspective” and why, anymore. This year, the WaPo, at least, seems to have decided on a “Clinton v. Obama” storyline back before the 2006 midterms (see its Outlook section, with that title, that ran the Sunday after the November midterm elections), and is sticking with it come hell or high water: excepting his wife’s cancer recurrence, Edwards has gotten little coverage in the WaPo except for oppo-research stories (house, haircut, Amanda Marcotte) denigrating him. Richardson, Dodd, and the others have gotten even less ink. It seems that a candidate is exciting, from a media perspective, if the media decides s/he is, in a self-referential loop.
No, **acsenray **rebutted what **Bob **posted after **Bob **responded to my post. It was the same chain of thought.
Anyway, we are getting way off topic here. I agree that “the media” in some way shape or collective form has an influence on who gets in the spotlight. In a crowded field, they’d prefer to cover 2 or 3 and let it go at that. I think it’s always been that way for as long as I can remember.
Hoo boy. 
Which perception is another tool in the right-wing echo chamber.
As others have said, there’s no hypocrisy here at all. Edwards is what he is and he is addressing what he considers to be an important issue. Only poor people can express an intent to correct socio-economic disparities? He’s not saying that we should eliminate rich people, only that the system needs some fixing.
Another manufactured reaction to a false characterisation. “Regular” people have long voted for rich men who addressed issues that were important to regular people.
When you labour under this standard you get this:
(1) I only like voting for people who are like me superficially (regardless of their policy perspectives)
(2) I only like people who are genuinely like me superficially (based on an evaluation of their policy perspectives).
This is how the right gets “regular” people to vote against their own interests – by defining “acceptable” candidates by a superficial standard and then secretly defining that standard based on right-wing criteria. It’s like saying – okay, you look through all the vegetables in this produce section and tell me which you like best, but the only tool you can use to judge their quality is with this garlic press.
Another piece of right-wing trickery. Somehow recognising and wanting to repair artificial institutional unfairness is “splitting people by class.”
See, this is how the electorate has been dumbed down over the last 40 years. Keep asking “would you like to have a beer with this guy?” From a rational perspective, it fundamentally does not matter how much you like a guy or how much socio-cultural affinity you feel for him. It sad.
I agree with other comments that there seems to be nothing unusually ostentatious about Edwards.
I don’t see any inherent contradiction here. A president is going to have an effect on government policy, not on the personal preferences of the rich. Why is that even relevant?
Who’s asking the rich to “help”? I just want them to pay more taxes, have less of a disproportionate influence on public policy, and limit their ability to negatively affect the lives of the rest of us. Beyond that, I hardly care whether they “help.”
Where does charity enter into it? The answer to fundamental social unfairness resulting from skewed governmental policy is charity? Pfaugh. Charity is and should be voluntary. It should be entirely disregarded as a meaningful factor when we are considering government policy. Critical governmental operations should be funded by taxes,. Charity doesn’t enter into it.
This act of Kennedy’s I found very disappointing, but is this Kennedy’s defining factor? Are all his policy decisions based on crass local political calculations like this one?
Besides that, could you point to specific instances in which Edwards has pushed his personal interest in this manner, in contradiction with his stated policy values? Owning a big house doesn’t count, in my view.
I can’t say I know a whole lot about Ron Paul’s personal behaviour, but Ralph Nader is a miniature autocrat. If I’m judging a candidate by his personal characteristics, I would not find Nader attractive at all.
Please. McCain is the biggest phony of the bunch. McCain of the 2000 primaries is long dead.
Well, the Democrats are treating Fred Thompson seriously, calling his wife a whore - by innuendo, of course. So I guess that makes FDT an authentic threat.