Moderators as Enforcers
Debate questions seem designed less to inform voters than to steer candidates toward a corporate media-approved center. CNN’s Abby Phillip (1/14/20) asked:
Senator Sanders, you have consistently refused to say exactly how much your Medicare for All plan is going to cost. Don’t voters deserve to see the price tag before you send them a bill that could cost tens of trillions of dollars?
You might argue that she just wants to ask tough questions, were her next one not this softball: “Vice President Biden, does Senator Sanders owe voters a price tag on his healthcare plan?”
ABC (2/7/20) followed the same pattern in the next debate: David Muir’s challenge to Elizabeth Warren’s promise to end the Afghan War—“If you’re commander-in-chief, would you listen to the generals?”—was followed by this question to Joe Biden: “Is Senator Warren wrong on this?”
When Wrong Is Right
One person who liked CNN’s pre-Iowa debate was Politico’s Ryan Lizza (1/15/20), who said that “CNN’s Wolf Blitzer did an admirable job teasing out some of the subtle differences that have crystallized among Democrats in the post-Obama world”:
On the one hand was the camp represented by Biden…the Clinton- and Obama-era establishment that is deeply chastened by the failed military interventions of the past two decades, but that is insistent on preventing the debacle in Iraq and endless war in Afghanistan from turning Democrats into isolationists. The other camp, represented by Sanders, is defined by its opposition to the Iraq War, and sometimes struggles to articulate a foreign policy that extends beyond its righteousness about getting the war right.
From the way the positions are described, you can see Lizza really believes that it’s better to have supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq, leaving you “deeply chastened,” than to “struggle” with the “righteousness” of…having been right.
The Fifth-Place Frontrunner
New York Times political reporter Jeremy Peters (Twitter, 2/11/20) tweeted about Pete Buttigieg as the New Hampshire primary results came in: “Pete, after winning Iowa, is almost beating Bernie in a state Bernie won four years ago by 22 points. Under any normal standard of assessing the Democratic race, Pete would be called a frontrunner.” Of course, under normal standards of assessing a race, a candidate in fifth place in the national polls—averaging 10.4%, less than half of Bernie Sanders’ 23%—would not be called a frontrunner…unless, of course, corporate media really wanted them to win.
Losing Is Winning
Bloomberg (2/10/20)—the news outlet, not the candidate who owns it—opined before the first primary, “In New Hampshire, a Third-place Finish Could Still Be a Win.” Sure enough, after the votes were in, the organization tweeted (2/12/20) that “Bernie Sanders may have come first in the #NHPrimary, but Amy Klobuchar won.” The explanation:
She’s had relatively little national media hype so far, so this result could produce a “discovery” effect in which the media focuses new, and largely positive, attention on her.
It helps if you have the corporate-friendly politics that establishment media are eager to heap positive attention on.
Fracking Fairy Tale
In an article headlined “Why Sanders Can’t Win,” New York Times columnist Timothy Egan (1/31/20) declared: “A ban on fracking is a poison pill in a must-win state like Pennsylvania, which Democrats lost by just over 44,000 votes in 2016.” Funny, that’s not what Pennsylvanians say: The latest poll of registered voters there (Pittsburgh City Paper, 1/30/20) found that 48% supported a fracking ban, compared to 39% opposed. By a 49%–38% margin, voters said the environmental risks outweighed the economic benefits—but don’t hold your breath waiting for the Times to declare that support for fracking is a “poison pill” in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.
USA Today (1/24–26/20) had a four-page wrap-around “Special Report” called “Hidden Common Ground: Climate Change.” The big-type headline: “Voters Actually Agree on Climate Change Fixes. SO, WHY NO ACTION?” Despite the ALL CAPS, the reasons the nation is not taking action to address climate change mostly go unaddressed. There’s one reference to “fossil fuel interests putting money into delaying carbon reduction policies for as long as possible”; Bernie Sanders is quoted saying we have to “stand up to the fossil fuel industry.”
But the stress is not on who’s blocking climate action, but on the fact that “the public is actually in broad accord on a number of areas”—like modernizing the power grid, creating stronger energy efficiency standards and investing in technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. You might notice that none of these proposals restrict the burning of fossil fuels, the central cause of global warming. Perhaps that’s because one of the four foundations supporting the special project is the Charles Koch Foundation—representing one of the two brothers who are the “primary sponsors of climate-change doubt in the United States” (New Yorker, 8/13/19).
WHY NO ACTION? When your “special reports” on the climate crisis are brought to you by one of the Koch brothers, maybe that’s part of your answer right there.
