Elizabeth Warren: Her “wing” is “disruptive and demanding,” the Washington Post reports. (cc photo: New America Foundation)
The default setting of corporate media’s political compass is that Democrats need to “move to the middle” in order to win. FAIR has been documenting this for more than 20 years, and 2014 is no different. Look no further than the coverage of the effort, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), to oppose a provision in the recent omnibus spending bill that would weaken Dodd/Frank financial regulation.
The objection seems pretty straightforward: As lawmakers like California Democrat Maxine Waters (Washington Post, 12/12/14) said, this was “reversing a provision that prohibits banks from using taxpayer-insured funds, bank deposits, to engage in derivatives trading activity.” In the run-up to the financial crisis, banks used federally insured funds to make bets on things like mortgage-backed securities. That left the public to bail out banks for their risky behavior. The language of this specific deal, as many have noted, came directly from Citigroup.
Despite the efforts of Warren and Waters, the spending bill passed after bank lobbyists and the White House weighed in. For political reporters, this became a story about the struggle within the Democratic Party, framed as usual as a fight between lefty purists and responsible, middle-of-the-road pragmatists.
In the Washington Post (12/11/14), the fight over the spending bill was a “revolt” by the “populist anti-Wall Street faction.” The Post‘s Paul Kane portrayed their inflexibility:
For the Warren wing, what they see as siding with banks over average Americans is among the most unforgivable of sins, and the showdown exposed just how disruptive and demanding this populist bloc plans to be.
Their views are contrasted with the “can-do desires of establishment Democrats,” which
have been increasingly drowned out by liberals like Warren, who have energized activists across America and are beginning to pull other Democrats further to the left.
Will Hillary Clinton be forced into “difficult conversations”? (cc photo: Brett Weinstein)
This dangerous pull to the left might have dire implications for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign: The presence of progressive challengers “could force Clinton into difficult conversations or to take liberal positions that could hurt her in a potential general election contest.”
In what world, one has to wonder, would it be considered especially dangerous to fight against an attempt by Wall Street giants to weaken oversight of their industry? While anti-Wall Street sentiment is considered alarmingly populist inside the Beltway, polls show most Americans think big banks need more regulation, not less.
But that’s not the way political reporters see it. The Post returned to this theme in today’s edition (12/15/14), with Karen Tumulty and Sean Sullivan writing about the Democrats’ struggle “over the ideological identity and tactical direction of the party.”
That battles, explained the Post, is happening in both parties: “In the case of both parties, the argument pits the more populist, purist elements of the base against the more pragmatic center.” But the piece is really just about the Democrats, as the paper wonders whether this fight over bank regulations will “nudge the party further to the left and help it coalesce around a message,” or whether it “may have underscored the dysfunction of an era of intense polarization, where meeting in the middle has become all but impossible–even within a single political party.”
The idea that Democrats need to move to the “middle” is based in part on a misreading of Bill Clinton’s success as a triangulator. But it also relies on some faulty notions of what ideas constitute the “center” in the first place. In a more rational world, regulating Wall Street would be considered pretty “centrist,” and efforts to undo said regulations would be considered to be out there. But that’s not the world corporate media inhabit.
Operative sentences, “…polls show most Americans think big banks need more regulation, not less. But that’s not the way political reporters see it…”
There’s a reason careerist reporters join corporate media. It pays well to be a “yes (wo)man.” Always has. Any doubts as to why folks with integrity, intelligence and a healthy sense of skepticism have long ceased to rely on them?
Be well.
Corporate media has a message for America, and they can’t let Senator Warren get in the way of sending that message.
Damn straight. As it is, I have no plans to ever vote for the Center-Right Democrats again. Like the article says, they’ve pulled so far to the right they’re driving in the ditch. The only way I’ll be voting Democrat for president is if Warren is on the ticket. I don’t have time for corporate politicians. I’m voting Green here on out, no more “lesser evil” for this guy.
Government is gleefully in the subsidy and insurance racket. Then when people do dumb things due to the resultant moral hazard, the taxpayer pays. A rational solution would be to eliminate subsidies and guarantees. This, though, is not a politically feasible solution due to the greed of the electorate.
Regulation of Wall Street may seem centrist. Undoing regulations, though, is way out there since where is one safely to start? Bureaucrats have stacked regulations from one of the street to the other.
Demanding a FAIR budget that doesn’t let banks and Wall St. run amock again (as began by legislation already on the books, Dodd-Frank) is not left of center democrat or mainstream democrat or “populist” democrat, it’s just FAIR. Assholes framing the ‘debate” as such are divisive and obviously on the take from somewhere evil. There’s no debate. The language of the budget quite simply screws Dodd-Frank and is co-written by Citibank. One either agrees that the banks should be allowed to make more risky bets, to be bailed out, again, by taxpayers, or not. Even right wing fiscal conservatives should get behind this one along with warren and Bernie. They are just afraid to agree, or getting their $$/support from financial lobbies, or both. The 32 Dems that bailed and voted for the budget showed their colors and their employers. The banks, not the voters. The GOP? Well, we knew what they would do…suck corporate cock. Any Democrat who understands the issue, and not the rhetoric would be against this budget because the budget sucks, not because of where they may or not be on the political spectrum.