“Journalists are accountable to
their readers, listeners, viewers and each other. Journalists should encourage
the public to voice grievances against the news media; admit mistakes and
correct them promptly, and abide by the same high standards to which they hold
others.”
You would
have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to see the coordinated cooperation the
Republican Party received from the news media to bring about their so-called
historic win from a 37% voter turnout, one of the lowest in history. Whoop-Dee-Doo! Don’t be misled that Republicans had some
great ground game and people were falling all over themselves to jump at the
chance to vote for them. No! They’re still more unpopular than President Obama,
but what they did have was an effective media campaign that doomed Democrats’
chances by forcing them to abandon their twice-elected Democratic president.
Republicans
did not win because they had a clear vision for the Country or they had earned
the respect of the American people for helping the Country get back on its
feet after the worse economic downturn since the Great Depression. GOP voters did not care that Republicans in Congress had shut down the government, threatened to default on the full faith and
credit of the United States. It didn’t matter to GOP voters that they had obstructed
every effort to make the Country fairer and more equal. All GOP voters wanted
were candidates that could beat the Democrats and were willing to punish Barack
Obama for being a black man occupying space in the White House other than as
the butler or cook.
Republicans
had great cooperation from conservative bloggers who behaved in their typical
rabid dog fashion and intimidated spineless Democratic candidates in so-called
red states by tying them to Conservatives’ #1 nemesis…Barack Obama. They see
him as their bitter enemy who was unbeatable in two presidential elections. They
still haven’t gotten over it. Even progressive bloggers wrote an onslaught of
highly critical pieces which surely made some Democratic voters think, why the hell am I voting for these people?
One way the Sunday
news shows helped Republicans’ efforts to suppress Democratic voter turnout was
by simply making voter suppression a non-issue. For some folk, if it’s not in
the news then it must not be true. Another
way was that they relied on journalists like Bob Schieffer, host of CBS Face the Nation, and Chuck Todd, host of
Meet the Press to carry water for
them.
Schieffer generally
favor Republican guests and the door to his CBS studio is always opened to critics
and haters of Barack Obama. Schieffer supports the conservative position on
issues and regularly levels abrasive criticism against the President. To have Bob
Schieffer, host of the highest rated Sunday news show, catering to your Party's point-of-view is a win-win for the GOP no matter how you analyze it.
Todd gained
more GOP fans when he joined the merry band of conservative and progressive hypocrites
on MSNBC’s
Morning Joe show excoriating Alison
Grimes for refusing
to answer whether she voted for Barack Obama. Todd, a staunch critic of the President and
the Democratic Party in general, declared that Grimes had disqualified herself.
Chuck Todd: “The idea of -- I'm sorry even to say you
regret your vote that would almost seem as disingenuous. But that is -- can Kentuckians
expect her to cast a tough vote on anything? Is she ever going to answer a
tough question on anything? You want to be a U.S. Senator? If you can't say --
if you can't find a way to stand behind your party's president, you can
disagree with him but can't answer that basic question and come across looking
ridiculous. I think she disqualified herself.”
Republicans
thanked him publicly for his cooperation by using Todd in an ad against Grimes,
which probably drove a few thousand Republican viewers to his failing show and drove
even more viewers away from the Democratic candidate. Though I was not a fan of
Grimes and definitely did not support her strategy of dividing the party into
Clinton Democrats and Obama Democrats, I joined the chorus of those calling Chuck
Todd unethical for interjecting his personal opinion about a candidate; thereby
giving an advantage to the opposing candidate. He should have remained fair and
objective, especially as a news director for a major news organization. But I
don’t know anyone who thinks Chuck
Todd has an objective bone in his body.
The Democratic
National Committee (DNC) bought into the GOP narrative, peddled by the news
media, as to what Democrats were up against in the midterms, and out of fear, they
sidelined their most valuable player Barack Obama. Their strategy was not to
lose. They never had a strategy to win.
1.
Convince white men that the black President’s
approval rating of 42% to 45% is the lowest of any white president before him
and only conservative white men can save the Republic from the black guy.
Repeat it constantly and avoid comparing his approval to previous presidents.
Have a slew of prominent white men, whom all vote Republican, on CNN, Fox News,
and MSNBC attacking every decision the black guy makes. If you listen to cable
news, Barack Obama has the lowest approval rating of any president in history, which is a bald-faced lie.
2.
Distract from the Democratic Party’s economic
successes and the fact that 10 million Americans now have healthcare because
President Obama and the Democrats in Congress risked their political futures to
pass it. How to distract? Push media coverage painting the highly
successful Democratic black president as “the
other” and his policies of equal pay, education reform, equality for all is
bad for America, particularly white Americans. Keep comparing him to former
presidents, all of whom are white, to drive home the point to white men and
older white voters that when they look back on the Country’s greatness, white
men were in charge.
Of
course that strategy counted on silence by minority reporters from pointing out
that the good, the bad, and the ugly of America happened under the rule of
white men until just six years ago when the first non-white male was elected as
President of The United States. Before then, it had been over 200 years of
total white male domination. A lot
of ugly sh*t happened during that time which created a stain on America’s image
that can never be washed away.
3.
Instill fear by making white Americans fearful of
an African disease, an imminent
attack by a crazed Muslim terrorist
group, and an influx of Hispanic
children crossing the border carrying diseases. The news media was culpable in
pushing GOP hysterics that Ebola was spreading rampant on the continent of Africa. It was so effective
that, not surprisingly, gullible Democratic candidates jumped on the bandwagon
of wanting to impose a travel ban on ALL of Africa, not just the infected
areas.
4.
Force Democrats to adopt GOP’s
preferred strategy by
pushing candidates into a corner to see President Obama’s approval rating
through the lens of the GOP and Republican-leaning independent voters, thereby;
ignoring his 76% approval rating amongst all Democrats and 87% approval amongst
black voters. Republicans got a major lift from the news media for carrying out
this specific strategy.
5.
Trick Democrats to adopt a win with white only voters’ strategy by placating to that strain of
anti-Obama voters in the Democratic Party who have racial animosity toward the
black president and started voting Republican because of it. Republicans and
the media knew this strategy would alienate black voters, and they selectively
put white Democratic candidates on the spot to defend the black guy at the
expense of losing a more likely white racist voter. The Democrats chose the
more likely white racist voter. This strategy infuriated black folk and their
trust level for white politicians took a dramatic nose-dive. Blacks, who didn’t
vote, point to how Democrats treated President Obama as a reason not to trust
white politicians. Quote unquote.
Fox News role in GOP win
CNN role in GOP win
CNN, that
bastion of negative news coverage, probably wasn’t asked to cooperate with the
GOP in taking over Congress. They volunteered because wherever the majority of
white folk are on issues, there is CNN promoting that position. So, no way
would they be left out of gaining some of that anti-Obama rating from Fox News.
They just threw a ton of negative sh*t out there about President Obama and the
Democrats and whatever stuck, they ran with it. They didn’t try to be fair,
balanced, or ethical. Of course, they think they’re a pillar of integrity. Barf…barf…barf!
MSNBC role in GOP win
That bunch of
progressives on MSNBC, the ‘liberal my ass’ channel, played a role in the GOP
win too, maybe unwittingly but their negative coverage fed into black folk and
many Americans’ distrust of politicians in general. Chris Hayes (All In With Chris Hayes) and Rachel Maddow (The Rachel Maddow Show) are
both equal opportunity offenders, so Democratic candidates should never
consider them a friendly progressive venue. That distinction is reserved for
progressive/libertarian guests like Glenn Greenwald. Hayes and Maddow gave
their viewers a lot of unflattering facts
about Democratic and Republican candidates that would make some first time
voters and young voters say, ‘F**k this,
I don’t trust any of these people in either party.’
MSNBC content
writers for Ed Schultz (The Ed Show)
and Al Sharpton (Politics Nation)
shows must be GOP moles because 80% of the content for those shows is about how
disgusting Republicans are. Like people don’t already know that. I would bet
you a dollar to a dime that relentless coverage of GOP antics had a
demoralizing effect on Democratic voters and apathy ensued. Some Americans probably
thought not even voting will stop the GOP.
You would expect two boisterous bleeding heart liberals to focus
primarily on the positives about America, instilling optimism, a platform to
educate viewers about how the political process works, and so on. It’s not like
Schultz and Sharpton are journalists or claim to be unbiased. So having a format
like that would not be out of line because they are billed as opinion shows. The
shows’ content writers limit reporting on the great things that President Obama
and Democrats have achieved in the last six years. They spend way too much time
on how pathetic the GOP is. Like I said,
we already know that.
I stopped
watching both shows (, and MSNBC in general,) because I simply grew tired of them
regurgitating GOP hysterics while progressive gains sometimes were tabled for
later on in the show, like the last fifteen minutes, or barely discussed.
Even if I
didn’t mention the king of hypocrisy Joe Scarborough’s role in the GOP win, you
would know that Mr. Hypocrite, host of MSNBC's the Morning Joe Show, had a hand in depressing the Democratic vote.
Surely, the guy writes his own content, and it is all about how bad of a
president the black guy is compared to previous white presidents. He had a slew
of left-leaning guests who were big supporters of the Democratic Party before
Barack Obama became the Party’s standard bearer. These ‘I don’t like the black guy’ Democratic operatives were more than
willing to pour water on the Democrats chances for victory.
Black activists and educators’ role in
GOP win
We can’t
leave out cooperation the GOP received from black activists and educators who
have an ongoing beef with President Obama for not showing enough of his
“blackness.” What the hell does that mean
anyway?
Baptist
minister Michael Eric Dyson and Melissa Harris-Perry, host of MSNBC The Melissa Harris Perry Show, issued a
venomous attack on President Obama regarding what the two perceived as a lack
of their preferred response to the
shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Surely, both being respected
voices in academics, knowingly or unknowingly, convinced some blacks to stay home
because it would not make a difference. Dyson
seemed to want the black president to raise his fist and say, ‘F the police,’ while
Harris-Perry signaled she wanted him to apologize for racism and all other ills
of society.
Cornel West
and Tavis Smiley, the two poverty pimps, played a major role in riling up poor
black folk to distrust ALL politicians, even the black guy in the White House. They
have hoodwinked them into believing that the answer to all of their money woes rests in the hands of Barack Obama and the reason
they’re still broke or living paycheck-to-paycheck is because the uppity black
president doesn’t care about poor people. Smiley and West probably tell their
anti-Obama supporters to pooh-pooh on JFK’s famous quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your
country.” Poor people should be the first in line at the polls in every election.
If Democrats
had been fortunate enough to have this degree of media cooperation and outside support
to get out their message, they could have won too. Oh wait…screech…. back up…nothing
was going to save Democrats this election cycle because they let the news media
and Republicans sucker them into believing that President Obama, their most
valuable asset, was a drag on the party.
Besides Democratic
voters expect a hell of a lot more from their candidates than GOP voters do and
will not support candidates who are too spineless to stand up for their
convictions. Democrats tried to run away from being Democrats and it backfired
on them. It was a colossal failure of judgment on their part.
Oh well, if
you don’t believe in something, you will fall for anything, and Democrats fell
hard for GOP messaging. Of course, the GOP could not have been victorious without
help from the news media. Cue the applause.
That's my yada yada and I’m sticking to it!
