This Rachel Maddow interview is worth reading (despite the fact that it’s in Playboy). https://t.co/GSKkouRcV6 pic.twitter.com/U1ZtvHL389
— laura olin (@lauraolin) February 6, 2016
Not necessarily the most upbeat commentor, but yes, worth reading:
After almost eight years of President Obama, we are once again talking about change. As a liberal, are you still feeling hope?
Theoretically. But historically speaking, after Democrats hold two terms in the White House, the public picks a Republican to replace them. There are a lot of determining factors in who wins. People say it’s the price of gas and the growth in the economy, but sometimes it’s the we’re-ready-for-something-new thing. There’s a reason that, almost without fail, in every midterm election the president’s party loses seats. There are psychological cycles in American politics that are pretty easy to read, and in 2016 Democrats are facing one of those cycles in which they are structurally disadvantaged. It’s a matter of civic and international interest whom the Republicans pick, because even if they pick a fascist, structurally speaking that fascist or that con man, let’s say, will have a 50 percent chance of becoming president of the United States.
I’m a liberal, but the thing that interests me most in American politics is center-right to far-right politics, because (a) it’s a laugh a minute and (b) there’s no stasis. There’s no solid core moving forward. You never know who’s going to come along…
Do you think emotions and opinions have overtaken analysis and facts in the American media? Or is it just some collective fantasy that news used to be more objective?
I don’t have any animus toward the old news model, but I do think it’s facile and reductive to claim news was once unbiased and is now biased. Every time you choose which stories are important that day, you’re using news judgment and your subjective perspective on things. I lived through a lot of news cycles as an American citizen before I was ever in the media. Much of the news I cared about was designated as unimportant, frivolous or not worthy of mainstream attention, and that was someone’s political decision.
Which stories are you talking about?
Well, I’m thinking about the AIDS movement. Growing up as a gay kid in the 1980s and 1990s in the San Francisco Bay Area when that devastating epidemic hit, and it being literally laughed at in the White House briefing room and never treated by mainstream media as anything other than a sidebar medical issue or a human interest story about fags. That was someone’s subjective decision. I make subjective decisions too. I just own it…
Rachel Maddow's smart & did a good job last night. But why did MSNBC put a liberal commentator on that debate stage? https://t.co/TdDlapdpr5
— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) February 5, 2016
The first sentence answers the second sentence. https://t.co/eXEZkOuGd4
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) February 5, 2016
Baud
Kurtz makes Chuck Todd look like Edward R. Murrow.
Trentrunner
Incidental, but why hasn’t Howard Kurz died in a fire already?
WereBear
Love Rachel. In a platonic sort of way :)
Suzanne
@efgoldman: I wish we could also talk about the other kinds of bias than the simple left-right. The media exists to perpetuate itself, and they have found that appeals to emotion and TEH CRAYZEE are effective to that end.
Redshift
Yeah, we get it, Fox News employee Howard Kurtz. Having a fast-right loon like Hugh Hewitt as a GOP debate moderator is unremarkable, having an open liberal as a Democratic debate moderator is unacceptable. (Leaving aside the conservative activists masquerading as journalists that Fox had moderating its debates.)
I wonder why that is?
Baud
@efgoldman: Yeah, she answered the second question but not the first.
Trentrunner
The media bias towards what’s INTERESTING over what’s IMPORTANT is the biggest media bias problem.
Baud
What history is this?
Baud
@efgoldman: I find it hard to find a consistent set of news sources I can trust.
Adam L Silverman
But there’s something else too. The first is how American television news does its reporting, not just what it choses to report. Everything is hyped within an inch of its life. Everything is a crisis. Everything is hyperbolic. I think that some of this is the influence of talk radio, which being commentary based and rooted in personality developed that way. But the reason Wolf Blitzer is unwatchable isn’t just the editorial decisions, its the presentation style. Another major issue is the simple reality that the media is for profit. Or almost all of it is. So the dubious style and types of presentation is also partially driven by the need to sell advertising and generate revenue. Finally, there is still some good long form news journalism. ProPublica does excellent stuff. As does Esquire and Vanity Faire and Harpers and Rolling Stone. Yet those last four we wouldn’t normally think of as news reporting media. And there are excellent local stories that still happen. The Tampa Bay Times reporting on Florida’s Stand Your Ground Laws and its practical effect. The same papers repeated reporting on the treatment of migrant farm workers also comes to mind. Finally, the political media has become coopted. Even Maddow. Hence the I’m the cool, nerdy/geek girl mixologist at the media-political events. The first/founding director of my higher headquarters once remarked to me that when assigned to a billet you could either go in and do the job or you could make a lot of friends. The former are effective, but often have limited life spans. The latter are always much less effective if not completely ineffective, but usually wind up staying around forever. Dr. Maddow has already made her decision as to which category she belongs in.
jl
@Baud:
” What history is this? ”
This is media history information product. Shut up and eat it.
Why aren’t you out drinking and campaigning, anyway? If the media history information product is correct, the people will turn to Baud! 2016! for a little fun with the crazy.
Heliopause
Not really, when you consider that (1) Gore didn’t actually lose the popular vote to Bush, (2) Carter only served one term, (3) Humphrey lost by a very narrow plurality to Nixon and possibly would have won if Wallace hadn’t split the vote, (4) the Dems won five straight before Eisenhower, (5) prior to that you’re so far back in time that the electoral landscape is not comparable to today.
But aside from this zombie bit of CW not being true, sure.
Baud
@jl: I’m going out tonight. Unfortunately, I’ll miss Jeb!’s last stand.
jl
Also, is that a pic from the Playboy rag. I thought they ditched the pix. If they are going to sub weird and ugly pix that don’t look the old person for trashy nekkid pix that didn’t look like the person (because hotted up), what’s the point?
Germy
@efgoldman:
Very true. Last month I read “The Wayward Press” a collection of essays by Robert Benchley (under the pseudonym “Guy Fawkes”) critiquing some of the bad journalism he saw in his daily newspapers. Conflicts of interest, advertising disguised as news… the same bullshit we see today. It just wasn’t blasting out of screens 24/7 like today.
Mike J
@efgoldman:
If they had kept Jean Seberg on selling them, they’d still be in business.
jl
@Baud: Maybe Jeb will let you stand beside him while he endures this defeat. Maybe put his hand on your shoulder and cry. A boost for Baud!
alan
In the GOP, Bush I is the only one in my lifetime to won a third GOP term, and then back to the 1928 before that: Hoover. That worked out so well. If the GOP puts up someone the Village can pretend is moderate (a low bar) we’re in trouble.
I want Megan and Rachel both on the panel for a debate in the Main Event! Might be like the old Crossfire when the guest would be ignored while Buchanan and Brady yelled at each other.
Frankensteinbeck
@Heliopause:
I don’t think even the 1980 electoral landscape is comparable to today. Things are much more stratified, and while it’s still strong enough to choke the government, O’Reilly’s ‘white establishment’ doesn’t have the power to absolutely sweep control like it did during Reagan’s presidency.
WereBear
Still, my largest peeve with the media is that they never explain anything. They used to. But now, never; it’s like they are allergic.
Because if you try to explain things, certain people and ideas will be exposed…
Baud
@alan: Yep. I think Rubio would be a hurdle because of those factors.
mellowjohn
at least to me.
HinTN
@efgoldman: Yep, and thank you very much
Tom Q
@Heliopause: Thanks for rebutting this completely unsupportable piece of CW that is brainlessly parroted by all sort of people in the DC pundit class. It basically extrapolates from an extremely limited set of examples, ignores contradictory evidence, and pronounces itself infallible.
The Lichtman Keys to the Presidency system — which deals with every presidential election since the foundation of the two-party monopoly in 1860 — makes the case that every presidential election is a referendum on the term just ending, so if a term is viewed as unsuccessful-to-catatastrophic (like Hoover in ’32, LBJ in ’68, Carter in ’80, Bush in ’08), the electorate will understandably choose to change parties in the White House. But if things are perceived to be going well. the electorate will stay with the incumbents no matter how long they’ve been around — before the Dems’ five-term stretch in the 30s/40s, the GOP had four straight terms from 1896-1912, and you correctly point to Bush ’88 and Gore-if-the-voters-had-their-way 2000.
One thing that does make succeeding a retiring president more difficult, in Lichtman’s system, is that simply not being the incumbent costs them a Key, and then a fierce intra-party fight is another debit. Thus, Bush’s easy path in ’88 was a help to his candidacy, but the chaos of the ’52 & ’68 Dem primary races helped doomed their candidates. This is one reason why I keep telling people, hoping for this year’s nomination race to be long and robust isn’t one that history would support, if you’re looking for your party to win.
Patricia Kayden
@Redshift: Exactly. When has Fox News not had a rightwing blowhard on a Republican debate panel? Kurtz needs to take several seats with his biased self.
WereBear
Exposes Kurtz bias (not that it isn’t a billboard anyway) that liberals/progressives have no seat at the table.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
What a terrific interview! Rachel is just so fucking smart and funny and thoughtful.
There’s a lot I don’t like about the Playboy culture (to the extent I’ve even thought about it for more than two seconds at a time in the past thirty-plus years), but the interviews have always been top-notch. Their interviewers/writers/editors used to do an incredible job, and it’s pleasing to see that this is still the case.
Brachiator
@Trentrunner:
That’s also the biggest problem with people.
@Adam L Silverman
Finally, the political media has become coopted.
The political media has always been co-opted.
eemom
Color me unimpressed. Considering the following Maddow has, which gives her an opportunity to educate people, she could have been a lot more explicit about the degree to which Teh Media has become a tool of the plutocracy, and how much is at stake in this election.
I guess a gazillion dollar a year gig and large worshipful following from self-congratulating liberals kind of dulls one’s sense of responsibility to, you know, care about what actually happens.
Jewish Steel
@Baud: Horseshit villager history that signals I should skip this article.
redshirt
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Well, now that Playboy no longer has any nudity, people can read it for the articles. Like they always were.
An upmarket Maxim.
Feathers
I gave up on TV news when the promos for upcoming broadcasts stopped being updates, with a one sentence version of an event with “details at 11,” and started being “Today’s bombing – News at 11.” And you go – WTF A BOMBING!!!! At least now if that happens I can jump on twitter and find out that it was a kid with a bottle rocket in Rhode Island.
dww44
@Redshift: Color me obtuse, but Kurtz’s remark is like, “Duh”?
mclaren
The link to the interview blows out with a “404 – Page Not Found” error. Standard stuff.
“Nothing on the internet is reliable” — Alexander the Great
redshirt
@mclaren: mclaren, why do you often only show up at the ends of threads? Is it East Coast bias or a different schedule or a choice?
dww44
@Tom Q: Gotta agree with this.
Need to share it with Booman who had a post today about Kevin Drum’s belief that a long hard fought primary season makes the eventual nominee a better general election candidate, i.e. Obama.
mclaren
@Heliopause:
Superb! And thanks to Tom Q for the pointer to Allan Lichtman’s keys.
By my count, there are only 3 Lichtman keys rating ‘false,” and it takes 6 to flip the White House. So this confirms my intuition that 2016 will see another Democratic victory.
The Lichtman keys, by my scoring are:
Key 1: The incumbent party (in this case, Democrats) holds more seats in the U. S. House of Representatives after the midterm election than after the preceding midterm election. False.
Key 2: There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination. False.
Key 3: The incumbent-party candidate is the current president. False.
Key 4: There is no significant third-party or independent candidacy. True.
Key 5: The economy is not in recession during the campaign. True.
Key 6: Real (constant-dollar) per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth for the preceding two terms. True.
Key 7: The incumbent administration has effected major policy changes during the term. True. (I’m counting the ACA and the withdrawal from Iraq here as major policy changes. You could also include gays in the military and the decision to de-emphasize DEA targeting of marijuana in states with legalization.)
Key 8: There has been no major social unrest during the term. True. (I don’t think Ferguson MO counts here.)
Key 9: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. True.
Key 10: There has been no major military or foreign policy failure during the term. True.
Key 11: There has been a major military or foreign policy success during the term. True. (The Iran deal. You could also include greasing Osama.)
Key 12: The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or is a national hero. False if Hillary is nominated, but this could flip to ‘true” is Bernie is the nominee.
Key 13: The challenger is not charismatic and is not a national hero. True.
I’m counting only 4 Lichtrman keys scoring as false for the Democrats here, or possibly 3 as false in Bernie is the nominee. Either way, the Lichtman Key score says a Democrat will be the next president.
redshirt
@mclaren: I like your take. I quibble only with 12 – I think Hillary is and can be a charismatic, national hero if she can seize her destiny. It’s right there before her.
mclaren
@redshirt:
East Coast bias. I’m in a deep blue state on the West Coast. 3 hours time difference from the rest of you guys.
redshirt
@mclaren: Got it. Fair enough – our country is big enough for size to make a difference on social websites. 3 hours can be significant.
Notmax seems to hang by a thread, for example.
Is there anyone from Alaska on this blog?
mclaren
@redshirt:
I screwed up on that one. Going back to the original source, Lichtman defines ‘charismatic’ and “national hero” only as a national leader who leads America in a war. That excludes both Hillary and Bernie, so that one is false no matter what.
When Lichtman says things like “major foreign policy disaster,” he means something massive, on the scale of the Vietnam war. When he says “charismatic national leader,” he means a national idol on the scale of Dwight Eisenhower or FDR.
So it’s 4 Lichtman keys false. Signs don’t point to a recession next year. So it’s not clear how the Republicans could win the White House even if GDP growth slows in 2016, because the metric includes the last term of Dubya’s presidency, and that GDP growth was so godawful and negative that 2016 is bound to be better economically going forward.
redshirt
@mclaren: Would you put Barack Hussein Obama as a True for #12?
mclaren
@redshirt:
That’s kind of a tough one. Obama gave the go-ahead for the raid that got bin Laden, which is pretty much war leader stuff. On the other hand, we aren’t really at war with Al Qaeda. We’re just bombing and pointlessly occupying countries overseas, which is very different from a war. Most people think of a war as something that ends, a military action with a definable goal, and the Global War On Terror is just endless overseas bombing with no definable conclusion.
So I’d score Obama as “false” for “charismatic war leader” even though Obama is very charismatic as a person.
redshirt
I’d say winding down Iraq and Afghanistan gives him war leader credentials.
mclaren
@redshirt:
The problem with casting the Global War on Terror as a traditional war is that whenever one unwinnable foreign war winds down in the GWOT, another one heats up. Now we’re embroiled in Yemen and Pakistan.
What Lichtman was getting at with his keys system is that if America is in an actual war, it usually ends, and the president in charge gets some credit. But overseas conflicts in the era of the Global War On Terror never actually end, they just play musical chairs. This is one of the biggest problems with the crazy attempt to define “terror” as something we can deploy troops against — it’s useless and pointless and usually counterproductive. So being president during the Iraq mess gets you no points, ”cause America will just play musical chairs and wind up bombing and occupying (for a couple of years, until we get tired of it and leave) some other third world hellhole.
I won’t even go into the issue that the JSOC is currently operating with black ops teams in 134 different countries. See “How Many Wars Is the U.S. Really Fighting?”, The Nation, 24 September 2015. When you’re in that many “wars,” they’re no longer wars and the president no longer gets an electoral boost from it.
The plain fact is that Americans are sick of all the endless foreign wars, and the polls show it — only 1 out of 4 Americans polled want more U.S. military involvement overseas.
redshirt
@mclaren: “Embroiled in Yemen and Pakistan” is far different then Iraq and Afghanistan. FAR different.
As perhaps befits the nature of this new conflict? As you say, it’s happening in many countries. A different, new kind of war for the 21st century? Drone led, special forces backed, silent and in the shadows, I know I wouldn’t trust W to lead this kind of war like Obama has.
mclaren
Whatever we’re involved in, it’s certainly different from traditional wars. The Pentagon’s quadrennial defense review is in chaos because they realize traditional military force complements made up of air power + tanks + artillery + troops are useless for these new 21st century insurgencies/occupations/whatever-you-want-to-call-’em. But the Pentagon can’t come straight out and say “we need to drastically reduce the U.S. military” because that would take away their feeding trough.
See the Pentagon Quadrennial Defense Review for 2014. It’s a dog’s breakfast, a complete mishmash of chaotic mutually contradictory policies and imperatives. No wonder the U.S. military can’t win a bar fight. Long-time ex-military critics like Chuck Spinney and William S. Lind have been hammering away at this for years. See William S. Lind’s “What Militarism Means” and “Why Soldiers Lie” for a good breakdown on the problems with our military.
I don’t think it matters who is president when America’s military goals and methods are as incoherent and contradictory and impossible to accomplish as they are right now. The problem is systemic.