I’ve been watching cable news tonight. It’s a habit I have been trying to kick, and I am having some success. But tonight, I watched some CNN and some MSNBC. The quality of the news presentation is still putrid, but there is something new afoot. Gone is the swagger of the right-wing’s pundits and talking head hacks. It’s not just the White House staff and chief-of-staff Andrew Card who are burnt out…it’s their chattering class, too.
Kate O’Bierne, Ed Rollins, Bay Buchanan, they aren’t on point, they aren’t even using talking points, there is no message discipline at all.
Chris Matthews asked Ed Rollins what he would do if he was hired to put the broken pieces of this administration back together. Ed said there was nothing he could do because Bush wouldn’t listen to him.
Kate O’Bierne tried to explain away a Pew poll that said:
The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is “incompetent,”and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: “idiot” and “liar.”
Her heart really wasn’t in it. She tried to blame it all on Iraq, as if that was some kind of excuse for being considered an incompetent, idiotic, liar.
I’m not sure how Rove’s outfit lost its ability to dominate the terms of cable news debate, but I see no signs of Rove’s hand in tonight’s cable news. It’s like the Establishment will no longer return his calls. I think Feingold’s stand has kinda shook Washington out of its stupor. Now they are just acting confused.
Tweety looked at the polls that showed a plurality of 48% have a negative view of the President and think he is a liar. He shook his head, said he’d checked the poll numbers three times because he couldn’t believe it. He thought the American people loved George Bush, because of 9/11. But more independents want Bush impeached than want him censured.
To be sure, the media isn’t exactly picking up on the strength of Feingold’s position. They are more stunned by the cratering of support for the President. But the background for all of this is that everyone knows Feingold is correct, no one really considers him as the type of politician that does cheap stunts, or grandstands for effect. Everyone knows Feingold is a principled and deeply serious politician. No one has the heart to attack him. No one really wants to come to terms and deal with the implications of Feingold being dead right. But they know it’s there, and then they look at seriousness of the polls.
Bush is tottering. I won’t be all that surprised if, if the Dems suddenly begin to coalesce around Feingold, that the whole apple cart might go over.
I think the rightwing gasbags in the pundit class are desperately trying to determine when it’s safe enough they too can come out openly and start blaming Rumsfeld for the tragedies in Iraq and the failures of the Bush agenda there.
Evidently David Brooks, following Kristol’s lead, blasted rumsfeld today in the NYT, and the rest ofthe media wingers want to be able to do that too but they’re still a little nervous about retaliation from the neocons.
As I’ve commented before on the realtively recent signals being put out by the neocons, look for Rumsfeld to be gone by October of this year; maybe Hadley too.
Beginning tomorrow I’m taking a two-week news “vacation” to recharge my batteries. Other than posting directions to see RenaRF’s band in Winchester on April 8 and tomorrow night’s happy story diary I’m going to be news free.
Not to steal the thread, but this reminds me of those times (every 12 years or so) when I’m right about something and my wife has to reluctantly admit it. As painful as this may be, fellow Democrats and broadcasters have to now make the same difficult admission.
Its like all of them – politicians, commentators, tv personalities – live in some kind of echo chamber. And at times, the dissonance between what they spin around inside and what’s happening outside gets them all off kilter. I just hope you’re right that the dissonance is getting so severe that they might wake up. I remember hoping the same thing for some of them as they covered the devastation of Katrina. But they did seem to settle back in to the echo chamber.
You know, these guys read the left-wing blogs and the right-wing blogs. And they know we are dealing with facts and the right is just bullshitting. It’s not that they don’t know what’s going on. It’s just that they are not really prepared to deal the change of government right now while things are going so badly in Iraq.
Obviously, a change of government is exactly what we need. But it is too hard to figure out how that could all go down.
several ways a change of government could come about – and will, since it does appear to be too hard for the parties one would think would be expending the most effort on the question.
burnt out did you say? Well lying, it’s hard work and does catch up with you. sooner than later. In this case, later.
5 years of lying, yea it’s hard work. And the Iraq denial will only hold so long.
Not to beat a dead horse, Iraq is breaking up. Rawstory provides link to this article which if true has to be the worse news yet.
“al-Sadr has formed a shadow government in Baghdad” declaring, Sadr city an independent district with its security forces and its own courts which do not only judge local residents but also Shiites from other areas of the capital.
I haven’t been able to watch cable news for about a year and a half now. Gets me way too riled up. I can’t even hear Bush’s voice without going, kinda, bonkers and yelling things. But that’s just me.
Nope, not just you.
not just you, dear — the spouse won’t even let me watch Shrub on TV because I’m supposed to be watching my blood pressure levels…
This article in the NYT bears on this subject.
To my mind there are some really major struggles going on now within the ruling junta for control of the agenda.
I have refused to watch for a looooooong time; but, I was having a quick bite and flipping around the 24/7’s to see what the air bombing coverage was like. Stopped just as Larry King was introducing his guests for the first 1/2 hour: Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Christoper Hitchens, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Time magazine’s DC head (I forget his name). — Please forgive any names misspelled; too exhausted at the moment. —
It was just as you noted: very strange turn of events. Maybe it’s an outlier, but Hitchens was treated as the nutjob; Graham admitted BushCo made lots and lots of mistakes in handling the war (though we should stick around for as long as it takes to help rival factions end their 1400 years of hatred of each other — because we just have to); Feinstein had to answer to the one call they allowed to go through — and oh, boy, what a call: a woman seething with anger at the Dems for not doing anything to challenge this administration forcefully on the war and all else; vanden Heuvel was armed with all of the pathetic facts; and the Time mag guy basically had the final say on the matter: it’s not all wine and roses, and it’s because BushCo dropped the ball from the very beginning. Even the way Larry King was behaving was strange: he wasn’t challenging the reality that the war is in deep loss territory.
After this hastily put together 30 minutes, before Larry went to commercial he introduced his booked guest: Micauley Caulkin (sp?) who had this priceless look on his face as if to say, “Oh, man…I have to follow this?”
I hate it, can’t bare watching it, but still tune in just so I can keep abreast of the latest propaganda.
Today for example (as I posted in comment to MSOC’s Bombs Away diary at MLW):
This morning MSNBC was showing some of the first video footage released by the Pentagon from the operation. Now, the amazing thing was the correspondent had just finished stating that this was footage from today direct from the Pentagon, blah blah blah, rah rah rah, when a date stamp appeared for a few seconds in the upper corner of the video displaying “March 8” and some other information.
This evening it was interesting hearing CNN stating the mysterious lack of any response to questions why there were no reporters in the field with this operation. All the video footage being shown was reported as from today’s operation released by the Pentagon, but pretty much all you saw in the distance was a flat, desolate, barren landscape in aerial views above troops that looked more like training excercises. Of course, I was more inclined to think that after seeing the footage in the morning on MSNBC.
They must have finally wandered into the blogosphere.
seemed to be even snarkier than usual — on the “pre-emptive strike” strategy he said in the opener, “Oh yeah, that’s worked so well in Iraq.” Had some other good lines too. I think his recent media appearances (Colbert Report, Al Franken) has girded his loins…
Hey Cali, I thought the same thing last night … that Keith should have put up a slide that said “NOW, with extra snark!” for last night’s show. He’s the only cable news show I watch (save the Daily Show), and I love how he manages to sneak in his snark in very clever ways … He’s the man to watch!
he just tells the truth. It’s really not that hard.
Thanks for your report on this, BooMan, as someone without a tv at home.
One wonders, really, what’s happened to Rove — or did his hand always rest on the buttons a bit more lightly than we’ve assumed? He, too, answers to someone — & not the man whose cranium he’s said to occupy.
Thanks for this update. Lately I’ve been listening to NPR and watching the PBS News Hour only, so I haven’t been aware of this.
Could Rove be preoccupied with another matter? What’s Fitzgerald been up to lately, anyway?
Or is the ship simply taking on enough water that all the rats are nervously yeeing the exits, even Karl – after all, he has to think about life after W as well.
I think most of the pundits never got their talking points directly from Rove, the talking points filtered down through the party to people each pundit did rely on as a source, and those sources are more worried about their own reelections now than repeating what they’re supposed to repeat. The White House is far less powerful so Republicans in Congress are willing to give reporters their own opinions instead of the same regurgitated b.s.. Their party is only going to get more fractured as the year goes on.
They love him because of his tax cuts. They don’t realize that most of us never saw a tax cut and still wouldn’t like him if we did.
during his interview on C-Span was (paraphrasing) that the top guys at MSNBC don’t like criticism of Bush but Keith’s ratings are higher than anyone else’s — that’s the bottom line reality of broadcasting. It’s about ratings and money and the content follows that.
If recent polls can be believed, we aren’t the “radical Bush-hating minority” anymore. Despite the propaganda, despite controlling the news cycles, the public has seen thru the veil of lies.
I think it started with Terry Schiavo: average folks had a gut reaction to the Prez and Repubs directly interfering in a private family decision. There were just too many people who had to make a decision like that or knew someone who did or knew someone who knew someone…
The Social Security PR campaign failed for the same reason. People asked themselves, “Does this mean Mom and Dad are going to have to move in with us? Oh, no!” It had the potential to directly impact too many people in a negative way.
Then, Katrina shredded just about every power point in Bushco’s arsenal. They didn’t keep New Orleans safe by shoring up the leevees. They didn’t know how to handle a major disaster. People thought, what if this had been a terrorist attack? They didn’t come to the aid of the affected and still haven’t made any meaningful headway in reconstructing the Gulf coast. Again, people have been directly affected and other people know someone who has been or know someone who knows someone… Six degress of separation and all that.
The port deal just exploded the whole mythos to smithereens. The cognitive dissonance caused by telling people for five years to fear and hate Arabs and then wanting to give away our port operations to Arabs was too much for even the apolitical and apathetic to dismiss. Millions of people snapped out of their trance of indifference and cried out, “WTF!”
Now, they’re looking back on Iraq: How it started, how it’s been handled, where it’s going. They are supporting censure and/or impeachment not because they necessarily understand the implications of warrentless wire-tapping but because they know the Prez lied about Iraq and he ought to be punished for lying about something.
Public awareness has shifted and the media can respond to that or become irrelivant. It’s about ratings and money; that trumps the CEO’s political affliation. Their stable of right-wing pundits and commentators doesn’t know how to talk about the real concerns and feelings of the viewing public.
Ed Rollins and David Gergen did a lot of nervous laughing last night with Tweety. The transition is going to be difficult on cable news; they’re going to have to find new talking heads who can smoothly lay out a new message — as soon as the big-wigs can figure out what that needs to be. The angry emails are pouring in and they know they have to change. They need a message that advances their corporate agenda but doesn’t piss people off.
I predict: Hillary and maybe Warner are going to be seen as the antidote to Russ Feingold and will be appearing more often. They won’t be called liberals; they’ll be labeled “moderate Democrats.” They’ll get promoted because, egad, the bosses sure don’t want anyone like Feingold or Howard Dean running the government and cutting off their war profits (which are significantly higher than their broadcasting profits). The pendulum is swinging back to the left and their only option is to try to keep it from going too far by creating a “faux left” option.
I agree that Hillary is the safe establishment candidate now, she is going to have at least a 5 to 1 money advantage in the primaries over anyone else, but I still don’t think she’s electable. The big media corporations are going to regret the 14 years they have spent demonizing her.
You are not the first person to express this view about Hilary. If Hilary is considered “unelectable,” I don’t think that is because she is a lady. I don’t know if it is what you intended, but I interpret it as Hilary is seen as too liberal.
At the same time, there are people who don’t find Bush appealing, and maybe some who even have some vague discomfort forming about the policies, but they still support them, psychologically I think it would be disturbing for them not to. They would then beceome traitors, obstructionists, with the terrorists, all those labels that have been ingrained.
So I think many of them may feel a little confused, they’ve been so inundated with cognitive dissonance that they are creating their own!
Hilary is of course not “liberal” if by liberal one means opposes US policies. There is no Democrat who can afford politically to actively oppose them.
The question for the Democrats is will the cognitive dissonance work in their favor enough to make people more amenable to a fresh presentation of the policies, and some changes in implementation, like outsourcing crusade wetwork, in larger enough numbers than in 2004 to make a difference to Diebold.
And there is also the fact that by 2008, the issue will not only be Iraq and Afghanistan, but Iran, and other targets bubbling up the charts….
Being female is a disadvantage, as there are many sexist people who will never vote for a woman, but that alone doesn’t make her unelectable because it can be overcome by the right candidate. Being hated by so many people is a disadvantage, there are millions of Americans who loath her as much as I loath people like Limbaugh. Those people will not only vote, they will actively campaign for any opponent she has.
But the main reason I don’t think she’s electable is because I can’t figure out who her base is supposed to be. It’s not just that most conservatives and moderates think she’s too liberal, it’s also that many hard-core liberals see her as a DLC moderate sell-out. She has the money and party support to bulldoze to the nomination, but I can’t see the majority of primary voters enthusiastically supporting her regardless of how much she spends. Hillary is very vulnerable to a candidate emerging who is enthusiastically supported by the party base. Not that I see such a candidate on the horizon.
Plus, even if she did win in the general election it would be close because of her negatives, and I am firmly in the camp who believe that vote totals in key areas have been changed by Republican operatives in the last 3 cycles. Democrats aren’t going to win any close elections until we get the crooks out of the process.
hillary has a huge base. She will do well in big states and in the south, but I’m not sure she can win in Iowa or New Hampshire. Iowa should belong to Russ, and NH will align around someone else.
Hillary would never make it in the caucuses. Iowans may have loved Bill, but Hillary doesn’t have a real base here. And she can’t win on name recognition alone. If Russ runs, I also predict he will take the win in Jan. 2008, because I’ll sure be out on the streets working my butt off for him. I sure hope Vilsack doesn’t decide to run for President, because if he does, he’s going to experience the biggest embarrassment of his political career … he would fare even worse than Gephardt did in 2004, and probably not even place. As for the rest? Warner and Clark might stir a few folks up, but it’s still too early to tell.
Right now, I think Hillary’s biggest base is in the African American community. That could change, but not without a lot of hard work by one of the other candidates that makes it very clear that they have an aggressive agenda to address African-American concerns, and that Hillary is not offering anything close in comparison.
The only politician currently on that track is John Edwards.
I’ll take your word on big states, but where is her base in the south? I would say more than half of the people in southern Alabama and NW Florida think of Hillary as a symbol of everything they hate in politics. I have never spoken with a single person around here who speaks highly enough of her that she will definitely get their vote against all opponents. Of course, I’m deep in the heart of Rush Regurgitation country. Maybe elsewhere in the south is different.
I don’t have the numbers handy, but I think Hillary would clean up in a state like South Carolina where a huge percentage of the Democratic Party is black. In the north, and in rural states, the percentage of the Dem primary voter that is black is very low in comparison to the south. That is why she will do better in South Carolina than in Iowa in the primaries, even though the reverse would be true in the general.
That would be a Revolution. And a violation of the Patriot Act.
Kate O’Bierne was not saying that’s why he’s incompetant (the war), but that the war was what was affecting his downwarding sliding numbers and the disenchantment of Americans. At least that’s the meaning I got..I do agree with you that the tone of the reps. has changed in recent weeks, hard to defend the indefensible.