I’ve commented before on the corporate media’s tendency to cherry-pick election results to illustrate their favorite political moral: that Democrats need to move to the right.
Still, I was surprised, after a day of voting in which there was one major race pitting a Democrat against a Republican–the special election in Rep. Jack Murtha’s old district in Pennsylvania, which the Democrat won quite handily–the New York Daily News provided this analysis (5/19/10):
Tuesday’s balloting is a fresh reminder of what all the combatants have understood for months: It’s a lousy year to be a Democrat, an incumbent or Barack Obama.
Based on what, exactly? The only election result that’s even mentioned is Sen. Arlen Specter’s Democratic primary loss to Rep. Joe Sestak. That just showed that last year was a lousy year to become a Democrat.
Headline amended to take account of Specter’s years as a Republican elected official before he became a senator–hence the mismatch with the url.
Jim Naureckas like all the FAIR people are so incisive on the big picture distortions. I appreciate the clarity.
Down in the trenches where I’ve lived most of my life, not enough people vote period. From there most of those who do vote really have no clue beyond the “pundit approved” rhetoric they hear on mainstream & cable news, for whom they vote and why. As for the so-called educated middle class, who unfortunately are also mostly under-informed, generally vote selfishly, yet against their own self interest., Instead, we continue to unwittingly sustain the true status quo, which exists only at the top 1 or 2 percent of the population where 80% of the wealth is aggregated.
Fro example, watch the oil and gas lobby as they justify near-shore drilling as a distraction from what the Deepwater Horizon accident should be telling us about the environmental risks we take in support of big corp. Actually , Shell has already hinted this line of reasoning in the Arctic just this week. Where will the outcry be? In the background and mostly suppressed even by our own government. Ken Salizar should be arrested and prosecuted, but he’ll probably just retire with a big fat pension.
We really concentrate too much on party politics (which differ mostly and only with things like gun rights and abortion rights) and not enough on the overall “common good”.
The Tea Party fools are the best example I’ve seen in my entire life of just how gullible human beings can be. P.T. Barnum would welcome these people with open arms and tongue in cheek…
So I guess my point is, aside from “it can’t none of it be too good”, how can anyone know what any of it means?
Let us also hope it will be a bad year for Vichy Democrats.