Climate: ‘Let’s See If We Can Go Really Fast’
After CNN‘s remarkably substantive and thoughtful town hall on the climate crisis (9/4/19), we wrote that the following debates now had a solid foundation from which to go deeper on climate for a larger audience (FAIR.org, 9/6/19). Unfortunately, ABC (9/12/19) took it as an opportunity to do even less on the crisis than previous debates.
Only three climate questions were asked, by Univision anchor Jorge Ramos. The first, a query to vegan candidate Cory Booker about whether “more Americans [should] follow your diet,” was not even a policy question.
Univision‘s Jorge Ramos asking Cory Booker about veganism.
The second, to Beto O’Rourke, ostensibly came from a viewer: “What meaningful action will you take to reverse the effect of climate change? And can we count on you to follow through if your donors are against it?” While the question appeared to allude to O’Rourke’s history of coziness with the fossil fuel industry, the lack of any further context allowed him to answer it with his boilerplate climate plan language. Shouldn’t we be beyond this by now, after two debates and a town hall?
The candidates were eager to talk more, but ABC apparently felt its work was basically done, as Ramos made clear: “Many of you want to comment. Let’s see if we can go very fast. Senator Klobuchar?” The only remaining question—a brief yes or no, but still perhaps the most substantive of the batch—went to Elizabeth Warren: “Should American foreign policy be based around the principle of climate change?”
Ramos wrapped it up by giving Kamala Harris and then Andrew Yang the floor, and, without being pinned down on any policy in particular, Harris spoke about “courageous leadership” and Yang about giving everyone $100 to give to candidates and causes in order to “wash out the lobbyist cash.”
Foreign Policy: ‘Would You Put Your Promise on Hold?’
ABC‘s David Muir challenging candidates to break their promises to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
In the section reserved for foreign policy and national security issues, the moderators displayed a hawkish agenda, continually pushing the candidates to take a more adversarial and militant line with other countries. This was most obvious in David Muir’s line of questions on Afghanistan, which he prefaced by saying: “Many of you on this stage have said you’d bring the troops home in your first term. Others have said in your first year.” He then asked Warren, “Would you keep that promise to bring the troops home starting right now with no deal with the Taliban?”
When Warren gave the only possible answer to that question—yes—George Stephanopoulos broke in to make it clear that that was the wrong one:
Top US leaders, military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan, told me you can’t do it without a deal with the Taliban. You just said you would, you would bring them home. What if they told you that? Would you listen to their advice?
The same assumption that civilian presidents should normally defer to the judgment of the military was the basis for the next question, to Pete Buttigieg, which cited the authority of Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Joseph Dunford: “If he’s not even using the word withdrawal, would you put your promise to bring troops home in the first year on hold to follow the advice?”
Joe Biden and Sanders were given versions of the question of whether they would “pull out US troops too quickly from Afghanistan”—meaning after 19 years, which is how long the US would have occupied the country by the time either would be sworn in as president. (See FAIR.org, 9/11/19, on media’s obsession with a “premature” withdrawal from Afghanistan.)
On Latin America, which as Jorge Ramos noted had not been asked about in the previous debates, the focus was on why Sanders hadn’t called Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro a “dictator,” with some gratuitous redbaiting thrown in as the Vermont senator was challenged to distinguish his brand of socialism from that “being imposed” in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. (As Alan MacLeod has noted, “dictator” is a word reserved in US media for governments out of favor with Washington—FAIR.org, 4/11/19.)
Trade, which was the other major focus of the foreign policy section, was given a similarly bellicose treatment. If Andrew Yang repealed the tariffs imposed by Trump, asked Stephanopoulos, “would you risk losing leverage in our trade relationship with China?” Is Trump right, he asked Buttigieg, that “the Chinese are just going to wait him out so that they can get a Democrat who they can take advantage of”? Julián Castro was reminded that he had previously “identified China as the most serious national security threat to our country.”
Women’s Rights: Not on the Agenda
The ABC debate was held at Texas Southern University, a historically black university, and the network—explicitly noting this—raised race-related issues second in the debate, after healthcare. What the network seemed to forget was that half of people of color are women, who face issues like access to reproductive healthcare and lack of gender equity to even greater degrees than white women.
For instance, white female full-time workers earn 81.5% of white male earnings; black women earn 65.3% and Hispanic women earn 61.6% of white male earnings. And while white men aged 18–64 average nearly $29,000 in wealth, white women average just over $15,000—but their black and Hispanic female counterparts average $200 and $100, respectively.
But ABC asked exactly zero questions about such issues.
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Well, Sanders did call Maduro “a vicious tyrant”, and while there is such a dubious term as “benevolent dictator”
I’ve never heard of a “beneficent tyrant”.
What makes your comments fair and accurate? This article sounds like sour grapes — criticizing moderators for not making the choices you would have made. At some point, moderators actually conducting the debate, with 10 candidates, have to make decisions and prioritize questions. Just because they did not prioritize your choices does not mean they were unfair or inaccurate. Your comments seem to simply be your “opinion”. Why is your opinion more fair and accurate than anyone else’s? That strikes me as strikingly unfair. What exactly is your stated point of view? Why does it matter? That is not clear from this article. How would you propose these debates deal with 10 people on the debate stage and the many urgent issues facing our country and our planet? This is a complex format and your article appears to be full of nit picking cheap shots.
Imho, these moderators and candidates mostly did a fine job. I do want to hear about all the issues you mention, but at some point, why does your opinion matter? Why is your opinion fair? Accurate? Give them a break.
You clearly didn’t even read the article. For each question they complained about, they provided a basis from which they wanted the question asked with very easy to comprehend reasons.
Why do you even bother with a comment as lame as that? At least RTFA first would you?
The article did a far better job explaining the respective bases upon which they criticize the moderators of this debate than you’ve done in explaining the basis for you criticism of FAIR’s reporting. While crying “That’s just your opinion!” you’ve managed to provide an even less-substantive and more opinionated take on the matters under discussion. Hypocrisy, thy name is Patricia Kelly Carlin.
I don’t understand the point of this article. You seem to be complaining that the corporate media represent the interests of Corporate Amerika Inc. Duh!
Do you have a source on, “White female full-time workers earn 81.5% of white male earnings.” ?
https://iwpr.org/publications/gender-wage-gap-2018/
Pretty much any other source on the subject you care to pick reports similar (~80-82%) figures.
I agree that the moderators were eager to push the lie that Maduro is a dictator that is killing many Venezuelans when, in fact, it is US imposed sanctions and theft that is killing innocent sick people. A shameful display of a media that is wed to the military and to oil at a time when we are facing climate chaos. I am disappointed that Bernie didn’t say Maduro was elected, and that if he were a dictator, Guaido and his criminal friends would be imprisoned, at the very least, like the true despots in Colombia, Honduras do, with protestors there, with the approval of Washington, of course.
And not a single question/word about the most important question facing the world today: too many humans using too many natural resources and producing too much pollution, TOO MANY HUMANS! All the rest is irrelevant until we face the truth and it is urgent because population density stress is killing us NOW. Mother Nature has set about to solve this problem of massive ecological imbalance. If it were not for our massive Healthcare Industry, we’d nearly all be dead now. 80% of Americans over 50 have at least one chronic health problem, but so do 55% of ALL American adults! Stress R Us
Jorge Ramos getting Bernie to trash talk Maduro and Venezuela was really the lowest point in the half of the debate I saw. Ramos is a true scumbag- I’m glad he’s persona non grata in Venezuela after insulting Nicolas Maduro to his face.
My God! You actually want our muddled candidates to answer questions that would upset the real Global rulers: The Capitalist/Military Junta? You know what happens when you ask the wrong questions or give the wrong answers. Disappearance, lost forever on miles of dusty shelves, where alien beetles feed, a meal for worms, their sole epitaph…..One need only remember the Coup in Chili in 1974, engineered by Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA. So long Salvador Allende! GREED and the LUST for POWER and PROFIT will not be denied. I would recommend reading Caitlin Johnstone’s latest comment on American Privilege. https://Caitlinjohnstone.com, there’s a gal who speaks truth to power and does it well…….
The agenda of the corporate media is perpetual war against the world. It is sad that none of the candidates had the backbone to respond to stupid questions by pointing out their stupidity instead of presuming the authoritative correctness of the corporate whores like Ramos who asked them.
I was more disappointed in the press as a whole and the inane questions asked during the debates.
America is a peculiar place—look at old video of Congress during Watergate, and read that reporting or see those news clips. America used to have journalists—but where did they go?
Free Speech and a Free Press are looking more sad and murky than ever in 21st century America. Who could ever imagine that George Washington , way back then, would be the first to truly understand “entangling alliances. “
A vegan diet is a policy question on many levels. Animal agriculture is vicious cruelty on an industrial scale. If you don’t know that you should do a YouTube search for factory farm animal cruelty. Animal agriculture is a substantial contributor to global warming and climate change. The Amazon rain forest is being burned to clear the land for cattle grazing.
Potshot: I thank you for your comment. As a vegan myself, I immediately thought that “a query to vegan candidate Cory Booker about whether ‘more Americans [should] follow your diet,’ was not even a policy question,” was a statement that needed correction. Yours was accurate and succinct. I would just add that animal agriculture is as much of a contributing factor to climate change as fossil fuels. But scientific facts seldom seem to affect these “debates.”
I have to agree with several of the above commenters who basically say ‘it’s a foregone conclusion that the a forum happening on MSM with MSM controllers (ie; EVERYONE involved except the debaters) is virtually always going to reflect the MSM controllers’ biases’. It’s basically a fool’s errand to look for progressive/left pronouncements (much less support for those) in such a situation. I for one have given up expecting that from the 2 major parties and am going to vote for the Green Party candidate again because THAT’S where I find the policies being presented that I favor. The more we compromise our vote, the more compromised is the result.
I know FAIR has to cover MSM theatrical non-events like the debates (which are vestigial remnants of a low-information age where literacy was low and local newspapers where the only source of political info), but I would like to see FAIR reference and contrast the alternative policies of 3rd party groups (ie; like the Greens, Socialists, even Libertarians) in their reports. By ONLY criticizing the MSM and the duopoly parties, FAIR too often implies that those are the only legitimate political avenues, thus helping to perpetuate them.
“Top US leaders, military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan, told me you can’t do it without a deal with the Taliban. You just said you would, you would bring them home. What if they told you that? Would you listen to their advice?”
There is much that is abhorrent about the Taliban. Having said that, it is worth bearing in mind that some Taliban officials warned the US that Al-Qaeda was planning to attack back in 2001. They were ignored.
The Taliban government then sought to hand over Al-Qaeda suspects for trial but this was rejected out of hand. In a way, this is no great surprise as a trial would have been very awkward. Who knows what awkward questions may have arisen? That helps to explain also why Osama bin laden was killed rather than captured.
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/10/07/ret.us.taliban/index.html
For as long as the DNC and the RNC are allowed to count, regulate and own the votes in the primary, and the election doesn’t allow equality of one-person/one-vote in the election, the establishment and their biased media will continue to own the government.
I’m fairly certain that the moment Democrats steal the election things will change… but that will never happen as the Democratic leadership would never, ever take the lead. Even with a filibuster proof congress, Senate AND House AND presidency, all the Democratic party did was pass Republican/Heritage Foundation corporate subsidies for insurance companies – not even covering 14.000.000 millions and ensuring that hundreds of thousands of insured Americans would go bankrupt WITH insurance!
We have a corporate duopoly and they own 95% of all media activity, TV, Radio and print. Worse yet, they have now begun to regulate internet content to eliminate opposing facts and opinions.