There is an element in the blogosphere that is just as obsessed with peripheral bullshit and their own narrow agenda as the lazy process-consumed corporate media that Elizabeth Edwards laid into this morning. One example was the howling outrage from certain quarters when Barack Obama had the audacity to say that Social Security funding is in crisis. This was interpreted as an example of buying into right-wing frames. After the successful 2005 effort to kill Bush’s privatization plan, which including a coordinated effort to beat back the talking point that Social Security is in crisis, Obama’s comment seemed like a betrayal.
“I can’t understand how Obama can be this out of touch,” economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote recently. “As a political matter, I don’t understand why he would essentially try to undermine the first big victory progressives won against the Bush administration and the rightward tilt of the Beltway consensus.”
Never mind that Obama opposes privitization and said that Social Security is not in crisis both immediately before and after his offending comment. This one slip was seized on as if Obama were a stalking horse for Grover Norquist.
The latest example of faux outrage is Barack Obama’s decision to appear on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace this morning. Nevermind that Obama has boycotted FOX News for months and even helped kill off a debate that FOX was due to moderate. Bonddad is so outraged by Obama’s appearance on FOX that he is going to write-in Frank Zappa rather than vote for someone that would legitimize FOX News. Matt Stoller hyperventilates:
You can’t trust the Obama campaign, they will lie to you to promote right-wing institutions.
You see, if the blogosphere comes up with some strategy like a 100% boycott of FOX News, or never, ever saying that there is any solvency issue with Social Security, no candidate shall violate their new rules. Violate those rules and you are unworthy of support. Better to vote for a dead guy.
Speaking of strategy, Elizabeth Edwards points out:
A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.
Calling the long-term solvency of Social Security a ‘crisis’ in an interview is not a reflection of Obama’s ideas and proposals for Social Security. It’s just a violation of the blogspheric ‘strategy’ for fighting off privatization. Likewise, going on FOX News says nothing about Obama’s ideas and proposals for dealing with mass communications. It’s just a violation of the the blogosphere’s ‘strategy’ for delegitimizing FOX News.
I don’t disagree with the underlying strategies. But that’s all they are. It’s takes a tremendous amount of self-important chutzpah to decide you are going to reject a candidate for using a different political strategy than the one you advocate. If a candidate’s political strategy involves pandering to fear and xenophobia, or racism, or misogyny and homophobia, then I can understand why their strategy might, in itself, cause a person to foreswear any support. But an appearance on FOX News Sunday or a throw away line in an interview?
I’ll conclude with two points. First, we should heed Elizabeth Edwards’ words. Obsessing over strategy is not our job. Second, we should have learned by now that the Obama campaign is better at strategy than we are at giving strategic advice. If Obama had followed the blogopshere’s advice he would have been marginalized long ago as a fringe candidate of the far left. Let them do the strategizing. They seem to know what they’re doing.
Good post. I would also add that Fox News Sunday is not like Fox News (the cable network.) It is a production for the Fox Broadcasting network, whose local stations have a bit higher standards. I am not a fan of Fox News Sunday, but it is no better or worse than “This Week” with Snuffilufigus or “Meet The Press” with the Pumkinhead. Really.
I saw Obama’s interview with Chris Wallace this morning and he was really good. He knows what he’s doing. Chris Wallace was tough and focused on the same stupid shit that Snuffilufigus or The Pumkinhead would have – you know, gotcha shit. But Obama showed that he’s not too much of a wimp to sit down with Fox News Sunday. And he might have even changed some minds of those who look to Fox for their news and information.
You beat me to it: it’s just amazing that the lefty bloggists can go off on screaming hysteria fits when they don’t even know which network is involved. Why, they all shriek over at Open Left, Kos, and the rest, does Obama need to talk to all the trogs who are Fox News’ only audience? The fact is that millions of normal, non-political-junkies see Fox network news as pretty much the same as what they get from their local NBC, CBS, and ABC affilates, and they’re pretty much right.
But the “strategists” can’t even bother to get their markets right before belching out a depth of ignorance that would make Hannity or OReally proud. This whole manufactured flap at least serves one important purpose: there’s no longer any mystery about why progressives hardly ever win against the most ignorant, wackjob opposition imaginable.
I have to say, this joint here is becoming a last refuge from the stampede of lefty blue-haired old ladies lifting their skirts fleeing hither and yon from the attacks of imaginary mice. Surely we can do better.
My first comment on Booman — Hi! I just wanted to signal my agreement with you. The Booman is very sane. Parts of dkos are, too. In fact, there was a huge live-blog thread on the debate, and most of the commenters understood what Obama was trying to do and overwhelmingly supportive, even when he “threw dkos under the bus” — which I’ve no doubt will prompt the next fainting spell among libs.
Welcome!
Disagree about Fox sunday. It is far less balanced than the other sunday shows. ANY show with that gigantic shit Kristol on it is degenerate, period.
However, Obama was simply excellent. He was calm, sensible. He admitted to flaws. He praised others. He was gracious, thoughtful, balanced. He said one thing I have problems with, but now I can’t remember what it was.
I believe he helped himself. And, as I note below, Chris Wallace behaved like a journalist. He didn’t try to cram answers down Obama’s throat like he usually does. Perhaps he was told that if he did that, Obama would leave. Wallace was quite reasonable.
the panel on FNS is a little worse, but arguable FNS overall is better because you know they are right-wing, whereas the others pretend not to be.
btw, i was floored by stoller’s comment. what a howler! lol.
This was a smart move to appear with Chris Wallace. Does everyone forget that Wallace was critical of the morning crew for distorting what Obama was saying about his grandmother?
Thanks, Randy H., for differentiating between Fox (with the Simpsons and the sports) and Fox News. I watch hardly any TV and didn’t know that Fox News Sunday was on Fox and not Fox News.
That puts all this hysteria in a different light, doesn’t it?
(I’m of an age to be blue-haired, but I’m not afraid of mice, or much else, for that matter.)
Matt is still in mourning over the Edwards campaign and is constantly being proded by Joe Trippi.
I posted over there that we NEVETR see detailed posts about the Republican style campaign of the Clintons. How the Clintons are destroying the Democratic party and HATE the progressive movement when it doesn’t serve their agenda…. Taylor Marsh brags that Stoller says she is a blogger on the level of Digby….LAUGHABLE…..can you imagine! She can’t even clean digbys toilet. His post about Obama and fox was so over the top, there are no words to describe it fully.
Note to the blogosphere: ignoring the problem will not make it go away. Obama went on Fox and pretty much forced them to give him a fair and even-handed interview. Yes, they’re going to spend the next week trying to spin it into him being a baby-eating demon who’s trying to steal the nomination from their pal Hillary, but they’re going to have a hard time of it.
to be clear, I don’t even disagree that it was self-defeating to go on FOX News. I just don’t care very much. It’s not that important. And even if it is a strategic mistake, it doesn’t effect my support or lack of support for Obama. Nor should it.
Absolutely agree with your point about how unreal the “advice” is from some lefties. For example, Paul Rosenberg at Open Left is a really well-read guy. I can’t keep up with him when he starts talking about Gramsci and the “Versailles media”. But his view of the left-right divide seems overly simplistic and dismissive of someone like Obama in the way that only academics can be.
I’d love to see what the Kossacks have to say about this.
You absolutely nailed it, BooMan. This very thing has been bothering me for a few days, and I thought Stoller was being annoyingly alarmist to say the least. (Stoller did sort of the same thing over Obama supposedly supporting mercenary warfare, etc. awhile back I recall.)
It’s a bit disconcerting to think a few humble, self-evident points like the ones you just made actually need to be made, but they sure as hell did. It reminds me of all the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments when Obama supposedly threw Wright “under the bus” when he distanced himself from some of the content of Wright’s sermons. That was simply smart politics, and he had little choice but to do so, the ultimate goal being to win the General in November.
People need to pick a candidate and trust their judgement and their ability to plan and execute strategy. If they can’t trust their candidate’s overall approach on stuff like this… well, it’s possible their candidate isn’t as good a fit for them as they thought.
I just went over and actually looked at Matt Stoller’ 5th Grade rant just now. I tell you, that guy really needs to grow up. Reminds me of his hyperventilationg over Obama’s Reagan-loving remarks to the Reno Gazette Journal edit board. Without even watching the whole interview, he threw an absolute hissyfit over an out-of-context YouTube snippet from the interview. And to think people look up to this guy as some sort of leader or truth-teller.
My comment I left at his post today:
Good one. Yeah, the Obama/Reagan thing had totally slipped my mind. (It already seems years ago, somehow.)
I don’t want to dump on Stoller too much — he’s one of the good guys, and all — but he does seem to have a hair-trigger outrage mode. It gives him the appearance of perhaps taking himself a bit too seriously at times, like he’s got kind of a diva-like quality.
Or maybe he just likes to stir the pot, who knows.
my comment on the “social security in crisis thingy” – there are plenty of ostriches to go around – heads in the sand on the left and on the right. Some people just don’t want to be told the truth, prefer to hear with their asses. Paul Krugman is Ostrich-in-Chief. He has been grinding at Obama, not a good word to say that leaves one to wonder whether Krugman is not a bigot. A racist. He has been called out by his peers. Just can’t be that dishonest.
Listen up baby boomers, there ain’t no social security trust fund. No money. Nada. All gone – raided a long time ago by Bill Clinton and W. Bush. How do you think Bill funded the 1990s prosperity and Bush, the Iraq war?
All they left were IOUs and with the economy heading down stream, with less incoming revenues, the cost of the Iraq war, Feds still printing; hyperinflation is due to hit 2009. Tip of Debtberg. 18 million Baby boomers due to begin collecting, not in 2030 but in 2009.
Oh, the feds will print all the money we need. Not quite.
We’s already been robbed and the new multiple crisis(es) ahead won’t make good those IOUs. No one to finance these. You’ll be told “we can’t afford what was promised.”
Hmmmm, let’s see if what you get can buy one week of food, $6/gallon gas, heating oil at $4.50 gallon. Keep watching American Idol or whatever the new teevee show is on Faux abc and CNN. Don’t prepare.
The crisis window: 2009-2012, Big Ugly brings a wall of hurt. End of the world as we know it.
Taxes, Food and every thing are going higher, whether under McSame, Clinton or Obama.
Pity and sympathy for the next one who sits in the oval office.
And makes the liberal blogosphere a joke. We have The Clinton’s and Friends always going on Fox, nary a peep. Bill Clinton goes on flippin’ Rush Limbaugh and there’s silence. We have Clinton supporters in the blogosphere quoting Rove, Kristol, Buchanan and Scarborough as proof that Hillary is better than Barack. Hillary Clinton blames MoveOn.org for her losses, she’s adopted so many GOP talking points and campaign tactics that it’s hard to believe she’s a Democrat at times. And we’re supposed to be upset that Obama went of Fox and This is The END, he’s nothing but another lying politician, and all that stupid faux outrage that makes up the liberal blogosphere. Those people are twits.
I thought Obama was very very good on it. And, AMAZINGLY, i thought that Chris Wallace was … fair and balanced. I never heard him do such a good job. The questions were fair. He did not badger the witness, like he does sometimes – perhaps Obama made them promise to allow him to answer questions instead of the usual Chris Wallace crap of putting words into people’s mouths.
The questions about Wright and Ayers were reasonable. I thought Obama did an especially good job with the Ayers question.
Obama was excellent about Petreus. It’s very important to re-assert civilian control over the mission.
I only questioned one answer. Now I can’t remember which.
But if you want outreach to “reagan dems” where better than Fox sunday? OK, maybe a Nascar race, but that would be called pandering.
Of course, listening to that gigantic piece of SHIT Bill Kristol is always a self-control moment. If I could use waterboarding on a single human (alledgedly), Kristol would be the one. What a …. words fail me. I loath that crapulist with every fiber of my being.
Amen. And why you are the best commentator out there.
Ignore Krugman. He may have been something once. But now his hatred of Obama is so deep he is blinded by it.
Same thing for the Clintons.
And let us not spend time fighting the MSM. We know what they want, McCain. So don’t fight there fights. Ignore them, make fun of them, show them how wrong they are, but don’t get bogged down in their nonsense.
This is what Obama will be the best at doing.
And let me add on the Fox bit.
I like Matt, most of the times.
But Fox is the same as CNN and ABC, so good for Obama for going on their.
It will not change the way anyone looks at Fox.
Matt, you made a statement so stupid, I can only say it is a Fox talking point.
Obsessing over strategy is not our job.
I don’t have an issue with the blogosphere obsessing over strategy if they are doing it from an analytical point of view. But this was yet another example of some bloggers thinking that they are part of a strategic team who should be listened to instead of simply analyzing the strategy. They always get in trouble when they think they are part of the process(or worse yet, they actually become part of the process) instead staying outside the process and figuring out if the process is working or not.
In general I think it’s a good thing to ignore Fox. But I’m betting that lots of people in Indiana get most of their news from Fox News. So it was a risky strategy for Obama but there was a lot of upside if he could pull it off. We’ll see how he did as we watch reaction from the non-blogosphere over the next few days.
a key word is ‘obsessing’.
I didn’t miss that. I used it, in fact.
Ok, I just finished watching the interview and I have to say that I wasn’t too impressed with Obama. Not at all.
First, he didn’t “take them on” in the least. Maybe that was a better strategy but if so, he shouldn’t have had his spokespeople say he was going to take them on. It made him look weak. (And I also thought he came across as a bit condescending.)
And I felt about him the way I felt when he first started running – that he wouldn’t give a real answer on this whole reaching across the aisle issue. He is either misleading on that issue or he’s just dumb about it. I forgot what bad answers he had on that but it all comes back to me now.
A very disappointing interview. Obviously geared once again to attracting non-Democrats. I doubt it’s going to attract any of the Hillary coalition to change sides.
Well I mostly agree BUT….
Who forced the Dems to use the modern 50 state strategy? The bloggers.
Who were the people who stopped Bush’s social security plan by reminding people that there is no crisis?
The bloggers.
Who were the people who forced Lieberman out so that he is not campaigning for McCain RIGHT NOW as a Democrat?
The bloggers.
Who were the people who came up with the strategy that turned “stay the course” into an anvil so heavy the Republicans ran away from in a desperate pivot two months before the election?
The bloggers.
well, thanks for giving us credit, but I don’t think we can take credit for all of that. Obama has been famously stand-offish to the blogosphere ever since the throngs at Big Orange gave him an electronic lynching for daring to say that some of his friends should be given a break over voting for Judge Roberts. He hasn’t followed Matt Stoller’s advice, thank God, or any of the other well known bloggers. He did this all by himself using his own strategists.