What liberal Democrats who want to win elections can learn from Republicans and Fox News.
Having grown up in rural Indiana followed by Arizona (two red states – some of my best friends and family are right-wing nuts), I’ve noticed that liberals often misunderstand why there are so many red states. They’re always particularly baffled about why poor and working class people would vote republican. And as I was watching a poorly done documentary about Fox News, it occurred to me that as a former insider, I could clear up some of those misunderstandings and then perhaps we could work a little smarter and get some Democrats elected this November (and in 2008) for a change.…
Article comments
26 - Jim
The reason most everyone knows Fox News is biased and right-wing is BECAUSE of this movie. It came out 2 years ago.
27 - Clavos
Jim #26:
So Fox's bias is so subtle it can't be detected by watching; you have to see the movie?
28 - Staci Schoff
Jim #26, only if you've been living under a rock... conservative people know that Fox News is conservative, that's why they like it! I don't know why that is so hard for people to grasp.
29 - RedTard
Whether you think a news station is liberal or conservative tells you more about yourself than anything else. If it seems many things are slanted to the right and 'mainstream' media seems fair and balanced your probably off the left end. If Fox News seems about right and you're tired of all the liberal nonsense in the papers you're probably to the right yourself.
Both sides think it's all a great conspiracy and everyone that sees an issue any different must be some sort of brainwashed idiot. That type of condescending attitude came out quite well in your article.
You can poke fun at the poor uneducated rural red staters all you want, but it's the poor, uneducated, completely dependent on 15 government programs, unable to complete a simple ballot, show ID, or speak english inner city types that keep your party remotely competitive.
The left is just as cold, calculating, and manipulative as the right. Things dont change. Here's a quote from the Communist, Israel Cohen, in 1914. Read it and see if it still applies today with communism replaced with the lefts new baby, socialism.
"We must realize that our party's most powerful weapon is racial tension... In America we will aim for subtle victory. While inflaming the Negro minority against the Whites, we will endeavor to instill in the Whites a guilt complex for their exploitation of the Negroes."
With this one calculated manipulation, "inflaming the negro minority", you have captured 80-90% of that segment allowing your party to compete and instilled the abovementioned guilt complex quite well (if a white mentions that affirmative action is discriminatory, even though he is right, he'll be silenced by the ultimate slur of racist very quickly).
Of course, the sheeple on your side think your out to help African-Americans, not use them as a tool to gain power. I'm sure a very observant person such as yourself wouldn't have fallen for it though. Right?
30 - Dave Nalle
Why can't the Dem's find candidates like you to run for office?
Because if she did run for office the party establishment would find her threatening, run a hack against her, give him all the money in the world and bury her in negative attack ads.
That's what they did to most of the 'fighting dems' this primary season and to anyone else with a new idea or integrity.
Dave
31 - Dave Nalle
#29 is very perceptive and brings to the forefront one of the big issues the democrats can't afford to face up to. Their party's power is built on exploiting minorities, and in order to keep exploiting them they need to keep them poor and uneducated. If they actually helped them then they wouldn't need the democratic party any more, so they give them false hope and keep stringing them along with it.
Dave
32 - Staci Schoff
RedTard #29, I do not make fun of the "poor, uneducated, rural red-staters." In fact, the opposite, the whole point I made is that liberals should STOP doing that, both because it's inaccurate and because it's not a smart political move.
I don't see any "conspiracies," in the media. All media is biased, but there are plenty of choices all around, as I pointed out.
All political parties exist for the explicit purpose of seeking power. No, I'm not fooled by it, thanks for asking.
33 - Christopher Rose
Dave, in Europe people of all classes vote for both the main parties. Are you saying that in the USA it's only the people at the lower end of the economic and social spectra that would vote for the Democrats?
34 - Dave Nalle
I don't believe I said anything like that, Christopher. People of all backgrounds support both parties here in the US. But both parties have core constituencies which they can always count on - effectively captive audiences. For the democrats that consists of union members and an underclass which they have cultivated or virtually created through the use of draconian social programs which encourage dependence on the state. As their hold on unionists breaks down, they cling ever more strongly to the 'oppressed' groups whose oppression is largely perpetuated by their own policies.
Dave
35 - Christopher Rose
Ah, I see, thanks for clearing that up. If what is happening in US political evolution is anything like what happened in the UK over the last twenty or thirty years (and in some ways I think it is) then that would in part explain the current weakness of your Democratic Party. I wonder how long it will be before some bright young thing comes along and rebrands them as New Democrats?
36 - Bryan
Is that like New Coke?
37 - Dave Nalle
Both parties are in the throes of takeovers from 'new' factions, or at least groups that call themselves new, but in both cases appear to be reimagined statist socialists. On the right you have the Neocons and on the left you have the Progressive Democrats. Both groups believe in a strong and activist state, they just have different ideas of the parameters of the better more moral lives they want to force us to live.
Dave
38 - Christopher Rose
So who are the rising political stars of left and right in the USA and what significant changes do you see them introducing?
39 - Nancy
Dave, I'm perplexed: what "draconian social programs" are you referring to that Dems supposedly use to keep the poor subservient & poor? Also, how do they implement this, since the GOP has been in control for the past half dozen years? Kinda hard, I would think, when they don't have a majority. The latest social program I'm aware of is the tightened definition of 'work' in the welfare program - which is currently ruled by Republicans, not Dems.
40 - Liberal
"Whether you think a news station is liberal or conservative tells you more about yourself than anything else."
Actually, that opinion shows that you're paying attention (and have the ability to be objective which seems to be an uncommon ability here). Shorlty after Katrina, an ABC reporter interviewed some NO residents and asked them who they thought was responsible for the response failures. When not one of those interviewed pointed to the Federal goverment (most pointed to Nagin, some said that everyone did the best they could), he asked again...and again...and again. He even went on to explain what the Feds' role was and how they failed to fill that role. The bias was impossible to miss and it was embarassing.
41 - Freedom
Or there is another option. Libertarian. I'm a very conservative person, but I'm voting Libertarian because these people are the ones that have a concept of what freedom is and they respect our constitution.
I don't even agree with them on several issues! I'd vote for the Constitution party but it's not big enough. Libertarians are getting closer to having a chance.
42 - Liberal
I think that EVERY American is half-libertarian. Libertarians essentially believe that the government should leave everyone the hell alone.
We all believe that the government should leave US the hell alone. Liberals and conservatives just believe that someone else (insert corporations, pregnant women, etc.) should NOT be left the hell alone.
43 - Nancy
That's because if left the hell alone, too many of these parties will abuse their liberties & infringe on the liberties of others as well as violating general laws. I'm thinking here of the behavior of such concerns as Standard Oil in the bad old days when there were NO leash laws regulating them even less than now. Or the pharmaceutical corporations even today: despite the nominal oversight by the feckless & politicized FDA, they basically run the drug trade the way they please, in the process poisoning people - sometimes even to death - with drugs they've manipulated test results, etc. on, and sometimes outright lied about. That's why.
The problem is, where do you draw the line? As soon as a line is drawn, these parties (and their lawyers) figure out a way around it, or exploit the loopholes thoughtfully left in by a compliant congress, and - they're right back at it endangering people again. So another line has to be drawn, and another, and another, etc. and before you know it, you have a 19-inch-thick fine print book of regulations, and it's become intrusive, but people need to be protected from these sorts of preying corporate monstrosities. So what's the answer?
44 - Adam Ash
Great article, Stacy. Fucking brilliant. Mind if I run it on my blog?
45 - Staci Schoff
Thanks Adam, and sure go ahead.
46 - Dean
Just for the sake of expediency, the Dems could out-FOX Bush and the neocons by applying some good old fashioned propaganda about how Dems are better at fighting "terrorism."
One example is focusing on Bush's one-note song about "how safe we are." Take the glaring glitch in our "airline security." We take off our shoes while the cargo could hold practically anything.
All the Dems have to do is focus on and highlight this glitch over and over and (of course) promise to correct it.
The Dems have been on the defensive here,
THe best defense is...
47 - Liberal
RE #43: "So what's the answer?"
Nipples. The answer is nipples.
48 - Marlowe
Ahhh Dave! If the Dems exploit minorities we'll have to assume the Rebs simply run over them....
And by the way... On my concern over where this country is really heading, re: Sectarian conflict...
How odd... Here I was pushing these crazy thoughts and I see that KEVIN PHILLIPS is coming out with a book saying the exact same thing... AMERICAN THEOCRACY....
Hmmmm
Marlowe..
49 - Liberal
Sorry for the delay, but the revelation of the answer came as a complete surprise to me. (I must have channeled it.)
The first hint was when I was working on a client's internet history and discovered pages upon pages of Kirstin Dunst's nipples. I then remembered seeing poster after poster of Janet Jackson's nipple. It just came together. Nipples is the answer!
The problem with American politics is that it does not concern itself with what Americans really care about. No one cares about offshore corporate tax shelters or the imminent extinction of the black-capped vireo or a few thousand dead foreigners. What America cares about is nipples!
One half of the country wants to see the nipples of one half of the country. The other half of the country wants to prevent that half of the country from seeing the nipples of one half of the country. (Everybody can see the nipples of the other half of the country, but no one cares.)
The half of the country that doesn't want the nipples of half the country to be seen does want them to be used for their intended purpose and will do anything to prevent the owners of the nipples from doing anything that would interfere with God's plan for the nipples - but not in public, please.
Of course the vast majority of Americans care more about who touching whom's nipples than any of the stuff we rant about here.
Finally, of course, some want to make sure that if your nipples can be seen you can only touch nipples that can't be seen and vice versa.
So, the answer is nipples. I'm just not sure what the question is.
50 - -E
Congrats! This article has been selected as one of this week’s Editors’ Picks.
51 - thereisnospoon
that's utter bullshit.
1) Fox News is seen as a legitimate news organization in the minds most of its watchers. Bill O'Reilly does not draw over 2 million viewers as an "entertainer" like Jon Stewart. Moderates are influenced by his punditry.
2) John Kerry did not lose because he *personally* was a sissy elitist liberal, or because of his wife. He lost because of the ineptitude of his campaign and the triangulation of his politics.
This post assumes that John Kerry was a bad candidate--but that Howard Dean would have been even worse. That is not true.
Howard Dean--that liberal northeastern pansy-- would have beaten George Bush, and Karl Rove knows it.
It's about taking a stand. When a liberal takes a stand for liberalism, he beats a republican taking a stand for lying bullshit every day of the week.
52 - Bill
This entire essay is just rightwing talking points. If I didn't give her the benefit of the doubt for being a civil and friendly writer I'd say she was a faux lib using an ad hominem defense persona to repeat conservative memes.
53 - Richard
I really think we've just about reached the point where the hundred year-old idea that media can be unbiased has been discredited. Every person has his or her biases, and whether they want them to or not, those biases influence the way they report the news.
For the last fifty years or so especially, reporters and editors have tended to lean left. Whether that's a result of too many liberal professors impressing their views on young journalism students, or conservative parents being more likely to say "Journalist? Why don't you major in a real career?", I'm not sure.
(I do suspect that second reason is one of the key factors as to why there are so few conservative writers or entertainers, however.)