No one could have predicted that our Village overlords would push right-wing talking points on the economy:
Major U.S. newspapers have increasingly shifted their attention away from coverage of unemployment in recent months while greatly intensifying their focus on the deficit, a National Journal analysis shows.
The analysis — based on a measure of how often the words “unemployment” and “deficit” appear in major publications — portrays a dramatically shifting landscape of coverage over the past two years, as the debate over how to fix the federal deficit has risen to prominence and the question of how to handle still-high unemployment has faded from the media’s consciousness.
My guess is that even with Fred Hiatt and the Sunday shows shoving it down their throats, no one in flyover country gives a flying fuck about the deficit. They do care about losing their jobs and their health care though.
Baud
Didn’t GOS have a recent poll that indicated that the concern about deficit was polling higher? Not that it matters much. What people care about and what they are willing to vote for are often two very different things.
Ripley
You are correct, sir.
Arrik
Great post title, Doug.
Zifnab
I guarantee you that it hasn’t dropped from the consciousness of the mass of unemployed voters and their families.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Could you be a little more specific? If you just mean the WaPo and the rest of the press, they need dancing partners in the government to set the agenda. Trump showed that a determined, famous individual can take a relatively obscure backburner issue and bring it to the front. If Dem leadership wanted employment to get more buzz they could arrange for it to happen.
FlipYrWhig
I don’t think people _actually_ are concerned about the imbalance between what the government takes in and what the government spends; that’s pretty arcane. But the ones who care may actually be worried about what they think the _effects_ will be, which goes something like this: “if The Deficit continues, the government will need to get more money somehow, which probably means raising my taxes, so they’d better do something about The Deficit, like cutting off the moochers who made The Deficit happen in the first place.”
In other words, “The Deficit” — like “Detroit” — is yet another codeword for “excessive generosity towards Those People.”
LD50
“We just have to convince the rubes that losing their services and their health care is a GOOD thing!”
MagicPanda
The media could be doing a better job of keeping the focus on jobs, but I think they don’t see it as their job. I think they see their job as playing referee to whatever it is that the folks on the left and right are saying, and trying to be “fair” to both sides, and by “fair” I mean a Broderesque “fair”.
In other words, if the media isn’t focusing on jobs, it’s because the Democrats haven’t focused on jobs.
The Republicans (with help from Dick Armey / Freedomworks) managed to create a media circus around the deficit, and are using it to try to gut medicare.
We should be just as active in trying to get the focus back on job creation.
In terms of broader narratives over the past few months, we are lucky that a few incidents have dropped into our laps. The fight in Wisconsin over union rights was one great story. It was initially started by Republican overreach, but the left really galvanized around it, which was encouraging.
The other big recent story that has gone in our favor is the Ryan budget. Again, it was started by Republican overreach.
The pattern here is that the Democrats aren’t doing anything to get these stories in the media. They’re just responses to Republican blunders. We need to get better at driving the narratives we want, rather than responding to them.
PeakVT
I suspect a lot care as long as they are being told to care. They just have no idea what it is they are caring about, because the normal analogy – government budgets are like household budgets – is wrong, but such a simple idea that it sticks in people’s brains a lot better than AD=C+G+I+(X-M) and other such stuff ever could.
ETA: @Arrik: It’s not original, though.
Zifnab
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
Yeah, all they need to do is convince the Republicans to talk about it. :-p
Martin
Uh, what? Unemployment rates in the midwest are 6%-7%. All of the high rates are on the coasts and great lakes region. The great teatard middle is somehow employed.
FlipYrWhig
@PeakVT:
And beyond that, it’s not like we all have balanced household budgets anyway. Mortgages, student loans, credit card debt… Even accepting the flawed analogy between the government and an individual household, borrowing money for worthy endeavors shouldn’t be stigmatized on either side. I find it vexing.
James E. Powell
I am guessing that the White House and the Democrats don’t want to mention high unemployment too often because then they will be wearing the jacket for its persistence.
It would be nice if that progressive budget proposal floated a while ago had received a little more attention. But the corporate press/media have other priorities.
As for the people in flyover country, didn’t they recently elect a boatload of Republicans?
Baud
I agree. And even if they talked about it more, what are they going to do about it now that the Republicans control the House. Compromise with them on a way to move America forward? These are the same people who want to end Medicare and are threatening to put the U.S. into default.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
I have to disagree. Trump showed that Birtherism was never an obscure back-burner issue.
djork
S someone who suffers from ADD, let me say that this thread title is full of….what were we talking about?
JPL
I’m confused.. wouldn’t lowering the unemployment rate increase revenues and decrease the deficit?
MagicPanda
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus): I agree that birtherism was festering under the surface. It didn’t come up out of thin air. But I would argue that resentment against Wall Street and bitterness about unemployment are also bubbling below the surface.
There just hasn’t been a catalyst to create an interesting TV-ready controversy around jobs.
Television fundamentally thrives on controversy and conflict, and things like birtherism and the tea party make for good ratings. Without the tea party, deficit talk is boring. It’s all policy and numbers.
That’s why the showdown in Wisconsin was so TV-worthy. It’s not that unions are inherently interesting TV. It’s that conflict is interesting TV.
And that’s why Trump was so TV-worthy. Cringe-worthy, and ratings gold.
FlipYrWhig
@JPL: Yes, but you’re making the mistake of thinking the deficit, a simple matter of mathematics, is the same as The Deficit, an insatiable monster intent on taking even more of your hard-earned money.
piratedan
SSDD, if these guys were truly “concerned” about the deficit, then they would have issued some taxes or war bonds to pay for it. They didn’t, it’s another case of Republican duplicity using the crap that they created and attempting to assign blame to the other party. They’re the dogs that left the turd on the carpet and attempting to blame the cat for it. Per usual, the Dems are having to be the adults and pick it up before the realtor arrives to show the house.
Elizabelle
I think the Democrats should make a big issue of unemployment.
And how investing now in infrastructure improvements and green technology development would go a long way toward creating well-paying jobs.
Screw the deficit. Yes, longterm it’s an issue, but the Republicans blew it up over 8 years of Bush-Cheney “deficits don’t matter” and that should be repeated over and over and over again.
Obama will get blamed for unemployment and all the Bush disaster detritus no matter what he does, so he and Democrats could at least sound concerned about the unacceptable unemployment level in this country.
Don’t leave a vaccuum. Republicans abhor one, and are ready and willing to fill it with nonsense.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus):
As opposed to unemployment?
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle:
They should, but they won’t, because even without the actual Evan Bayh there are still Bayh-esque “deficit peacocks” among the Democratic party, including McCaskill, Warner, and Manchin.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
Still invalidates your argument. Between two issues, the media chose the one it liked. It liked the shiny goofy scandalous made-up issue rather than the one that was complicated and difficult to fix and had real-world consequences.
Isn’t that SOP?
OzoneR
@MagicPanda:
If you mean because they don’t own news outlets, then yeah
OzoneR
@Elizabelle:
They do, in some places, like here in New York, they’re crawling all over themselves to take credit for the high speed rail money. In Florida, they’re crawling all over themselves to bash the governor for not taking said money.
Three weeks ago, the President gave a speech saying exactly that, the media talked about Donald Trump
James E. Powell
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes, but you’re making the mistake of thinking the deficit, a simple matter of mathematics, is the same as The Deficit, an insatiable monster intent on taking even more of your hard-earned money and giving it to young bucks & immigrants. They will use it to buy steaks & champagne, pausing from time to time to have a laugh at the expense of white males.
Fixed.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus):
The shiny, goofy, scandalous issue has been out there for over two years and didn’t reach critical mass until Trump made it happen.
Complicated and difficult to fix economic issues were front and center for quite a while from mid ’08 on, and the complicated and difficult issue of health care reform was practically all anybody talked about for most of ’09. Which invalidates your argument.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
On the contrary. The power of the looney fringe, which is THE story behind mentioning birtherism, has been an issue since ’09. In fact, the media has done its damnedest to invent this issue from scratch. The media did not discuss the complicated and difficult issue of health care reform. The media discussed old people screaming about death panels in town halls. They don’t want to touch an actual issue with a ten foot pole.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
I thought Obama put it quite well in his birth certificate press conference. If he’d given a conference about jobs or national security, it *would not have been featured*. Do you think he hasn’t? He has. But the media hates real issues with a passion. They like political horse races and meaningless scandals.
Elizabelle
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, hear you on bluedog-ma.
However, I honestly believe that unemployment, and lack of access to acceptable healthcare, is a bigger personal issue for constituents in each of those Senators’ states.
We need to remind them of that. Fulsomely.
College students can’t get jobs. College costs are rising; prospects for good, gainful employment remain tight. The middle aged who’ve been downsized may never find a secure, well paid job with an employer again.
You have to start now — yesterday, really — to get those who supported Obama in 2008 feeling they are front and center, and they are being heard.
I’m not talking the manic progressives.
I’m talking college students and young people who have a real stake and need to feel their Senators get it, and aren’t just playing to the “Meet the Press” set.
David Broder is dead.
Let him rest in peace.
Deal with the problems facing people out in and out of the workplace NOW.
Elizabelle
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus):
Is there anything we can do to get them past their reticence to do their jobs and focus on matters of importance?
Because the Tea Party and RNC get their message out there quite well.
We need to be relentless too.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus): @Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus):
Now you’re simply being obtuse.
smith
I can only speak for my local newspaper (The Democrat & Chronicle) but they have basically become Tea Party apologists. Every other day there is a front page story or an editorial from one of the newspaper board members about those “awful” unions that won’t bow and scrape to the corporations.
There are about 1-2% of public servants here who make between $100,000-200,000, mostly because they are working overtime because of staffing shortages (911 dispatchers, police officers, prison psychiatrists)so to the D&C this obviously means that all public servants and unions are greedy pigs who should have their benefits snatched away.
Mnemosyne
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
I thought that the economic issue in 08 was that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loaned money to black people, and the health care issue in 09 was that the government was going to set up death panels to kill Grandma.
The issue may have been in the news, but that doesn’t mean that the media actually discussed it in a substantive way that helped people understand the underlying problems.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@Elizabelle:
It’s worth trying. It’s sure not something to give up on, because it could get even worse. But the Democrats ARE trying. They GIVE these speeches we want them to give. People went ‘Why wasn’t Obama at that plant opening?’ He’s been to several of those events. That’s not what the media wanted to talk about, so you didn’t hear about it.
The Tea Party and RNC get their message out because it’s the message the media wants. Not because it’s a conservative message, but because it’s built on stupid, flashy lies and makes it EASY for the media to pretend that politics is nothing but a game and people who care about issues are suckers. It requires no fact checking and it makes great headlines.
We could get the same coverage. All we’d have to do is abandon good governance and campaign purely on ginned up lies. We’d end up with a nation-destroying platform like the Republicans and being torn apart inside as a party like the Republicans.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Mnemosyne:
How substantively an issue is covered is irrelevant.
The idea that the employment issue is being pushed off the front pages by the “shiny goofy” issue of the deficit is ridiculous on its face.
Mnemosyne
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
So why is it that we’re hearing about the deficit 24/7 and not unemployment? Do you think that people don’t really care about unemployment and the media is just following what the audience wants? Do you think that the deficit really is more important than unemployment and the media is right to be focusing all of its interest on it?
What is your rational explanation for the fact that unemployment is not an issue right now but the deficit is?
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
How substantively an issue is covered is completely relevant. The priorities used in choosing how to portray an issue will be very similar to the priorities used in choosing what issues to portray.
The media likes their scandals (even if they’re made up) and political horse races. If one side wants to discuss real issues that affect people’s lives and have nuanced solutions, and the other side wants to scream ‘deficits will destroy America!’ the media’s going to be breathlessly gathered around Politician #2 going ‘Tell me more!’ That it’s bullshit he’s making up will make them like it MORE.
dopealope
What a great post title! This should be a category tag.
El Cid
A lot of my coworkers think that the reason the jobs aren’t coming back is because of all the government spending.
That’s something they can prove with an entire range of folksy homilies and bitter hostilities at how liberals imposed communism upon us and also analysis heard from many top right wing radio shows.
Ken
During my lifetime, I have had periods of being “between jobs”. I did not care what The Deficit was, nor was I particularly concerned about any marginal tax rates. I wanted employment.
Maybe if the GOP were truly concerned about deficits they would not have been so eager to engage in unfunded wars. The military actions for the past ten years have really been freebies for the GOP; they get to show how manly they are while volunteer army sheds its blood and the Chinese are holding the IOU’s.