Tag Archives: News Media

Ignoring the Next Six Months – Day Three

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Before I blocked the Huffington Post, I saw that they were adding a few words at the end of certain stories:

Editor’s note:  Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

The Huffington organization probably feels bad about giving him so much free publicity. (Note: I had to outsmart my browser in order to copy the text above, but I did it in a good cause.)

Then this morning I followed a link to a Washington Post article with the headline “Few Stand in Trump’s Way as He Piles Up the Four-Pinocchio Whoppers”. The gist of the article is that most TV interviewers allow Trump to tell the same blatant lies over and over again, even though it’s clear to everyone – maybe even to Trump and his stream of consciousness – that he’s a huckster whose sales pitch involves telling people what they want to hear (“I tell you, this 1989 Fiat is one of the most reliable cars ever made!”).

The fact-checkers at the Post are so disgusted that they put together a list of his greatest hits. Unfortunately, they haven’t updated the list since March and it’s too long to fit on one page. But even though they demand that TV hosts have a list of Trump’s worst lies available for quick reference, it isn’t clear at all that many journalists will do their job and repeatedly challenge Trump before moving on to the next question.

I think the only solution is to cut off Trump’s microphone. Don’t let him appear on Meet the Press or Face the Nation. Don’t transmit his remarks on the nightly news. Don’t publicize his outbursts in newspapers or on the radio or on websites that purport to cover the news. Lunatics don’t have a right to be heard. Neither do proven liars. That’s not what the First Amendment guarantees.

Of course, it’s standard practice to present the views of Republicans or Democrats running for President, even candidates who tell more than their share of lies. But it’s also standard practice for major-party candidates to demonstrate at least some respect for the truth. (Is it surprising or predictable that someone who is a master of telling certain voters what they want to hear has a reputation among those voters for “telling it like it is”?)

What about the argument that the best way to counter lies and other falsehoods is to subject them to free and open discussion? There’s truth in that and voters do need to know what an important candidates believe and what they promise to do. That’s why journalists should make clear who Trump is, what he’s done in his life and what he promises to do as President. 

But journalists shouldn’t repeat his lies unless it’s to immediately challenge them. And they shouldn’t give him free, unfiltered access to their microphones.

Lastly, it might be said that making it more difficult for Trump to communicate with the electorate would be a bad precedent. Doesn’t that mean future candidates will be similarly affected? Certainly, it would be a precedent, but it would be a good one. It might make it less likely that our democracy will be threatened one day by an even worse demagogue than the one we’ve got now.

Ignoring the Next Six Months – Day Two

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I set up my browser to stop me (ok, discourage me) from visiting a few sites that tend to upset my digestion (yes, Salon, I’m looking at you). But I haven’t entirely cut myself off from the current events pipeline.

So I saw the story about Trump’s plans to address the national debt. Here’s the headline from a news story in the New York Times:

“Donald Trump’s Idea to Cut National Debt: Get Creditors to Accept Less”

And a representative passage:

But Mr. Trump’s statement might show the limits of translating his business acumen into the world of government finance. The United States simply cannot pursue a similar strategy….The government runs an annual deficit, so it must borrow to retire existing debt. Any measures that would reduce the value of the existing debt … would increase the cost of issuing new debt. Such a threat also could undermine the stability of global financial markets.

Simply because he will be the official nominee of the Republican Party, the Times treats him with respect. The “might” and “could” imply that Trump’s approach isn’t out of the question. Maybe he has a creative solution that never occurred to previous Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury. After all, he doesn’t have mere business “experience”. He has business “acumen”! In the ordinary sense of the word, that means “keen insight” or “shrewdness”. Maybe we were wrong about this Trump guy.

But less encumbered by traditional journalistic standards, Vox, the online site that attempts to “explain the news”, came up with this headline for the same story:

“Donald Trump just threatened to cause an unprecedented global financial crisis”

And a representative passage:

With this statement, Trump not only revealed a dangerous ignorance about the operation of the national monetary system and the global economic order, but also offered a brilliant case study in the profound risks of attempting to apply the logic of a private business enterprise to the task of running the United States of America.

I offer this post as an example of how the “mainstream” journalists will lift Trump up during the next six months. It will be easy to find cases in which the same people tear Clinton down in an attempt to be “objective” and “non-partisan”.

PS – They’re selling “Never Trump” lawn signs online for less than $20 (plus shipping and handling; stand not included). Hurry while supplies last!

On Ignoring the Next Six Months

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Almost exactly one year ago, I pointed out that we should ignore the upcoming 18 months:

Thousands of articles will be written. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent. There will be interviews and debates. There will be speeches and rallies. There will be polls and predictions. Strategies and personalities will be analyzed. Policies will even be discussed.

We can safely ignore it all.

The only question regarding the presidential election in November 2016 is whether we should elect a Republican or Democrat. If you’ve been paying attention at all, you already know the answer.

Three months later, I backtracked a bit, did some subtraction and said we shouldn’t completely ignore the next 15 months. Senator Sanders had announced his candidacy and deserved a hearing:

Since Sanders is worth paying attention to, even if he doesn’t get the nomination, I stand corrected.

Now that the contest between Sanders and Clinton is over (even though he won’t admit it), I advise everyone to ignore the next six months. I mean, for god’s sake, the Republican id has spoken and spewed forth a nominee who – although wonderfully representative of the Grand Old Party – is beyond the pale, almost beyond belief.

Since it’s absolutely necessary that we all vote for Hillary in November (and Democrats running for the Senate and House so she’ll have someone to work with), we can safely ignore the millions of words, sounds and images that will come our way between now and November 8th. Not only because there is no reason to think about who to vote for, but because paying attention to all that “news” and “analysis” will give us a lot of unnecessary stress.

Imagine, for example, that Hillary Clinton says something like this:

Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country….Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these under-served poor communities. 

So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim?  

And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. 

Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on. 

So whether it’s coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America…. I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work. 

 Then this will happen:

Trump offered himself as a friend of coal. He compared stalled federal rules curbing emissions from coal-fired power plants to regulations that he said have weakened his hair spray.

“It used to be real good,” he said. “Today, you put the hair spray on, it’s good for 12 minutes.” 

He promised to help revitalize the battered coal industry.

“We’re going to put the miners back to work,” Trump said. “You’re going to be working your asses off.”

A few serious journalists might then analyze the economics of the coal industry and conclude that mines are shutting down because coal mining is expensive and other forms of energy are cheaper. They’ll cite facts like this: the entire domestic coal industry was worth $60 billion five years ago; now it’s worth $22 billion. Coal mining is becoming obsolete.

Other journalists, however, will consider the politics of the situation. How will Clinton’s “gaffe” (we’re going to put coal out of business) and Trump’s thrilling promise play in coal country? Others will ask why Clinton can’t connect with voters in the terrifically visceral way her opponent can: “I mean, why does she insist on talking down to average Americans (like [that loser] Al Gore did 16 years ago)?”

Unfortunately, we are safe in assuming that, as a Vox article says: “the media will lift Trump up and tear Clinton down”. That’s so likely and so unpleasant to read about that it’s hard for me to bring it up:

The US political ecosystem — media, consultants, power brokers, think tanks, foundations, officeholders, the whole thick network of institutions and individuals involved in national politics — cannot deal with a presidential election in which one candidate is obviously and uncontroversially the superior … choice. The machine is simply not built to handle a race that’s over before it’s begun.

The author makes three important points:

The political ecosystem needs two balanced parties to survive… there are entire classes of professionals whose jobs are premised on the model of two roughly equal sides, clashing endlessly. The Dance of Two Parties sustains the consultants and activists… It sustains the party hacks and grifters.

It certainly sustains the Republican politicians now announcing their support for someone they’ve been mocking and criticizing all year long. These characters need suckers to vote Republican if they’re going to stay relevant.

Secondly:

The media cannot countenance a lopsided race…The campaign press requires, for its ongoing health and advertising revenue, a real race. It needs controversies. “Donald Trump is not fit to be president” may be the accurate answer to pretty much every relevant question about the race, but it’s not an interesting answer…. What’s more, the campaign media’s self-image is built on not being partisan… How does that even work if one side is offering up a flawed centrist and the other is offering up a vulgar xenophobic demagogue? It would be profoundly out of character for reporters to spend the six months between now and the election writing, again and again, that one side’s candidate is a liar and a racist and an egomaniac.

Even though they know he is.

And finally:

Just as the media will need to elevate Trump, it will need to bring Clinton down. Going after Clinton will be journalists’ default strategy for proving that they’re not biased. They will need opportunities to be “tough” toward Clinton … to demonstrate their continued independence…Will the Washington press corps chase after ridiculous personal attacks and conspiracy theories regarding Hillary Clinton, whispered into their ears by right-wing hacks [and trumpeted by Trump himself, of course]? Ha ha. Have you met the Washington press corps? They have been doing that since the early 1990s. Clinton rules mean guilty until proven innocent, then and now. The Washington media is a machine that transforms crap about Clintons into headlines, and Trump is a bottomless supply of crap.

Short of moving into the Unabomber’s old cabin, I’m not sure how to avoid this coming onslaught of crap. I don’t have cable TV or much of the other kind. Nobody tosses a newspaper on the driveway. I could try to force myself to avoid the online New York Times, New York Magazine, Vox, Salon and The Guardian. There is certainly plenty of other stuff to read.

Hey, maybe I’ll use Google Chrome’s “Block Site” extension! I’ll block dangerous sites so I can’t visit them and create a master password I’ll never remember. Then, on November 9th, the day after the election, I’ll buy a new computer in order to see what everyone’s talking about. And if the election turns out very, very badly (but seriously, that’s not going to happen), I’ll go searching for that crazy guy’s cabin in Montana.

I’m Super, You’re Okay. Clinton, Sanders and Arithmetic.

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[Note: After I wrote this long post, I saw two articles at Salon that nicely capture what’s going on with the selection of delegates to the Democratic convention. You could go to the bottom of this post and read them, skipping everything I have to say. I mean, they were both written by professional journalists – the people we trust to report and explain the news.]

You may have heard that the Democratic Party has superdelegates. These are people who get to vote at the upcoming national convention because of who they are (they’re former Presidents, members of Congress, Democratic Party officials, and so on). There will be 712 superdelegates at this year’s convention. That’s roughly 15% of the total number of delegates (which is 4,765). It’s been reported that most of the superdelegates (469 of them so far) have said they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton at the convention, but all of them are free to vote for Bernie Sanders if they want. 

The other 85% of the Democratic delegates are selected as the result of primary elections and party caucuses. These contests began in Iowa on February 1st and will end in the District of Columbia on June 14th. How many of the Clinton or Sanders delegates are selected in these contests depends on how many votes Clinton or Sanders receives (as well as the rules of the local Democratic Party). Unlike the similar process taking place in the Republican Party, none of the Democratic contests are “winner take all”. Delegates are assigned roughly proportionately.

According to Wikipedia, Hillary Clinton has 1,310 or 54% of these pledged, non-super delegates so far. Bernie Sanders has 1,094 or 46%. Those percentages roughly correspond to the number of votes Clinton and Sanders have received. Some states don’t report vote totals, but for the states that do, the New York Times says Clinton has received 9.4 million votes (57%) and Sanders has received 7 million (43%).

Clearly, this process is totally rigged!  

That’s what people are saying anyway. From a news article in the Times:

Backers of Senator Bernie Sanders, bewildered at why he keeps winning states but cannot seem to cut into Hillary Clinton’s delegate count because of her overwhelming lead with “superdelegates,” have used Reddit and Twitter to start an aggressive pressure campaign to flip [superdelegate] votes [to Sanders].

From a comment (recommended by 612 readers) in response to that article:

Not only is the DNC primary process in conflict with Democracy, but it is borderline authoritarian. Party leaders picking a candidate before voters have yet to speak is the epitome of corruption. If Hillary Clinton should get the nomination in no small part due to super delegate power, the DNC is in for a very harsh reality.

From noted political scientist D. J. Trump:

“Think of this. So I watch Bernie, he wins. He wins. He keeps winning, winning. And then I see, he’s got no chance. They always say he’s got no chance. Why doesn’t he have a chance? Because the system is corrupt,” Trump argued. “This is a crooked system, folks.”

From the hosts of a morning talk show:

Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were exasperated by just how rigged the Democratic primary system must be for Sanders to have won eight of the last nine primaries and still fallen further back in the overall delegate count [note: Sanders actually earned 110 more delegates than Clinton in those nine contests, eight of which were caucuses, not primary elections].

“Bernie Sanders won Wyoming by 12 percent, but he might not even pick up a single delegate. Hillary Clinton was awarded 11 delegates, Bernie Sanders only seven,” Scarborough said. “Why does the Democratic Party even have voting booths? This system is so rigged” [note: Sanders and Clinton both received seven delegates to the state’s May 28th convention as a result of the Wyoming caucuses — see the update down below for more on this subject].

A wise person would ignore all the hot air and misinformation being spread about the shocking unfairness of the Democrats’ presidential nomination process. New York and Pennsylvania will be voting soon, after which it should become even more obvious which candidate has the most support among Democratic voters.

Nevertheless, a few points deserve mention (I’ve never claimed to be wise).

First, the number of states a candidate wins has nothing at all to do with how many delegates that candidate receives. That’s because delegates are apportioned to the states based on their populations and some states have much larger populations than others. Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming, all of which Sanders won last month, had 111 delegates up for grabs between them. New York, voting next week, has 291. Pennsylvania, the following week, has 210. It’s only in the anti-democratic U.S. Senate where every state, the huge and the tiny, gets the same number of votes.

Second, in terms of democracy, primary elections are more democratic than caucuses. Primary elections encourage relatively large numbers of voters to participate and everyone casts a secret ballot. Caucuses rely on a smaller number of voters who are willing and able to attend a meeting and then vote in public. That’s why primary elections have replaced caucuses in most states, especially the big states with the most delegates.

Of the 37 Democratic contests so far, Clinton has won 20 and Sanders has won 17. But 16 of Clinton’s 20 wins have been the result of primary elections. Only six of Sanders’s 17 wins have been. This is why Clinton has received so many more votes than Sanders. (By the way, states that have caucuses don’t apportion delegates based on the total statewide vote. Only states with primary elections do that. States that haven’t adopted the more modern primary election system generally have complicated rules that apportion delegates based on which caucuses a candidate wins. Caucuses are not elections. They’re glorified discussion groups.) 

Third, if there weren’t any superdelegates at all, Clinton would be well on her way to winning the nomination on the first ballot by virtue of her success in the primaries and caucuses. All she would need to do is to continue winning a majority of the delegates before the convention starts. The existence of the superdelegates, therefore, is what’s stopping Clinton from arriving at the convention with the nomination sewn up. The existence of the superdelegates means that a candidate needs to win roughly 60% of the non-superdelegates in order to get the nomination, instead of a simple majority. If a candidate were to win 60% of the non-superdelegates, he or she wouldn’t need any superdelegate votes at all. But Clinton has “only” won 54% of the delegates so far.

Since the superdelegates do exist (as they’ve existed in the Democratic Party for decades), there are only 2,404 delegates left to be selected before the convention. And that means Clinton would need to win 1,073 or 69% of those remaining 2,404 non-superdelegates (much more than her current 54%) in order to have the nomination in her grasp before the convention begins. Since Sanders would need to win even more of the remaining delegates (1,289 or 83% of those 2,404) to accomplish the same thing, it’s clear that neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot (unless one of them drops out before the convention, which isn’t going to happen, despite Clinton’s email issue). The arithmetic dictates that the superdelegates will get the last word on who becomes the Democratic nominee.

Now, since the rules say they get to vote, who should they vote for? Should the superdelegates vote for the candidate with the loudest supporters on the internet? Or the one perceived to have the most “momentum” this week? Or should they vote for the candidate who arrives at the convention with the most delegates? In purely democratic terms, given the numbers, the answer is clear: Hillary Clinton should receive a majority of the superdelegate votes and win the nomination.

If I were a superdelegate, however, I’d vote for whichever candidate I preferred, whether or not the voters in the primaries and caucuses agreed with me. Personally, I don’t see the Democratic Party’s decision to give senior members of the party a voice in selecting the party’s nominee as a terrible, un-democratic mistake. (If the Republicans had superdelegates, Trump would be less likely to be the Republican nominee.)

But considering what I’ve said above, all this overheated complaining from Sanders supporters and political commentators about unfairness and a rigged process is just silly (“He’s not getting the most votes or the most delegates and he won’t get the nomination. How unfair!”). Sanders doesn’t have a right to the Democratic nomination, no matter how much his supporters whine about unfairness and a lack of democracy. The fact is that the people are speaking and they’re saying that Hillary Clinton should be the Democratic nominee, the infamous superdelegates notwithstanding.

Let’s hope that everyone who is complaining so much and feeling so persecuted comes out in November and helps elect Democratic candidates, instead of staying home and moaning about how Bernie and they have been mistreated. We really do need to cast as many votes as possible for Democrats in November, because the Republican Party has completely gone off the rails. That’s the reality of our situation.

UPDATE:

These two articles were published this morning at Salon. Both refer to the results of the Wyoming caucuses. One article is called:

“This system is so rigged”: Outrage as undemocratic superdelegate system gives Clinton unfair edge over Sanders

The other is called:

Bernie is wrong about super-delegates: Why his tortured Dem Primary arguments try to have it both ways

One article dispenses a lot of heat. The other dispenses some light. Guess which one relies on facts instead of bluster.

Hillary Clinton: Surprise Upon Surprise

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Which presidential candidates are Americans most enthusiastic about? According to a Gallup poll, 65% of Trump’s supporters are either extremely or very enthusiastic about his candidacy. That’s not a surprise. His supporters are nothing if not enthusiastic. What’s unexpected is which Democrat has the most enthusiastic supporters. Gallup found that Hillary Clinton’s supporters are more enthusiastic about her than Bernie Sanders’s are about him. Fifty-four percent of Clinton supporters say they’re extremely or very enthusiastic about their favorite candidate vs. 44% of Sanders supporters. Given how much publicity Feeling the Bern has received, that’s quite a surprise. 

But considering how well Clinton has done in primary elections this year (as opposed to the small-scale caucuses that have favored Sanders), we should expect that she has lots of enthusiastic supporters. Counting both primaries and caucuses, she has received 8.9 million votes vs. 6.4 million for Sanders. Winning by that margin in a general election would qualify as a landslide victory.

One might ask, however, why so many Americans are enthusiastically supporting such a devious and dishonest person? It’s probably because they don’t think she’s as devious and dishonest as the Republicans, many in the press and some Sanders supporters claim. Jill Abramson, a former editor of the New York Times, published an article yesterday with the title: “This May Shock You. Hillary Clinton Is Fundamentally Honest”. The article is worth reading in full, but here’s a little bit of it:

As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy….

… Politifact, a Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking organization, gives Clinton the best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 presidential candidates. She beats Sanders and Kasich and crushes Cruz and Trump…

Abramson says Clinton distrusts the press more than any other politician she’s ever covered and that she needs to resist her strong desire to protect her privacy.  If Clinton were less secretive, Abramson argues, fewer people would think she’s hiding something. But Abramson also worries that too many people expect “purity” from female politicians. No successful politicians are pure, not even female ones, but Hillary Clinton may be purer than most. What a surprise!