Haven't done one of these in a while...it's an occasional item about things that aren't in the news or haven't happened, which is therefore newsworthy.
1. Minimum wage as a campaign issue, or for that matter a minimum wage dust-up in Congress. Seems like a natural for the Democrats. James Galbraith has been pushing it, but most Democratic pols seem oddly uninterested.
2. A third party candidate. Yes, Americans Elect is around, and nailing down ballot positions all over the place, but still no high-profile candidate. For context: Ross Perot's kick-off on Larry King was on February 20, 1992; John Anderson began his campaign some time after the Wisconsin primary, which was on April 1. So it's getting late, although the Americans Elect ballot line is certainly a wild card.
3. The Presidential Election Campaign Fund. Those who go back earlier than the 2008 cycle might remember when the big danger was that it would run out of money. It's now presumably overflowing with money, no? Oh, this is also an excuse to link to what I wrote about related campaign finance stuff over at Post Partisan today.
4. Toss up between gun control and, of course, the Fairness Doctrine. I'm getting scared though, that Republicans are really giving up on the fantasy that Democrats are going to bring back the Fairness Doctrine any minute now.
Friday, April 13, 2012
More on That Awful NYT Rosen Article
Over at Plum Line today, I'm not at all nice to an awful NYT article about the Hilary Rosen phony controversy, following up on Greg's item about it earlier. His item: the article was misleading about Rosen's connection to the campaign. My post: the article was generally far too gullible about the idea that there was a real controversy between the campaigns.
But wait! There's more!
Greg likes me to keep things short over there, so this didn't fit. But while most of the article bought the Romney spin, there's a detour that, I suspect, conservatives would take as confirmation of serious bias against them at the Times. Michael Shear and Susan Saulny wind up pivoting away from botching the campaign story to covering the supposed “cultural debate.” We get interviews with two “real” women. From both sides of the issue? Nope. One is “not a Mitt Romney supporter” who says that people should leave his wife out of it…and then talks about GOP attacks on contraception and other Democratic talking points. The other is an Obama supporter who brings up Ann Romney’s wealth. Now, of course it’s true that women tilt strongly to Obama in the current campaign, but still, I suspect any Republican reading that part of the article would accuse it of bias.
After which, they return to the campaign story, and give the Romney campaign an unanswered shot at the “Obama economy.”
Generally, complaints about media bias miss the point; there's plenty of bias in the "neutral" press, but it's rarely the product of ideological or partisan bias. And overall, this is the story that the Romney campaign wanted written -- they want to pretend that Democrats in general, and the Obama campaign in particular, have no respect for "stay at home moms," and the article supports that (false) version of the Rosen affair. But the women-on-the-street portion of it winds up putting Democratic talking points in the mouths of ordinary citizens, which is certainly not what the Romney campaign would want.
Just terrible.
But wait! There's more!
Greg likes me to keep things short over there, so this didn't fit. But while most of the article bought the Romney spin, there's a detour that, I suspect, conservatives would take as confirmation of serious bias against them at the Times. Michael Shear and Susan Saulny wind up pivoting away from botching the campaign story to covering the supposed “cultural debate.” We get interviews with two “real” women. From both sides of the issue? Nope. One is “not a Mitt Romney supporter” who says that people should leave his wife out of it…and then talks about GOP attacks on contraception and other Democratic talking points. The other is an Obama supporter who brings up Ann Romney’s wealth. Now, of course it’s true that women tilt strongly to Obama in the current campaign, but still, I suspect any Republican reading that part of the article would accuse it of bias.
After which, they return to the campaign story, and give the Romney campaign an unanswered shot at the “Obama economy.”
Generally, complaints about media bias miss the point; there's plenty of bias in the "neutral" press, but it's rarely the product of ideological or partisan bias. And overall, this is the story that the Romney campaign wanted written -- they want to pretend that Democrats in general, and the Obama campaign in particular, have no respect for "stay at home moms," and the article supports that (false) version of the Rosen affair. But the women-on-the-street portion of it winds up putting Democratic talking points in the mouths of ordinary citizens, which is certainly not what the Romney campaign would want.
Just terrible.
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Al Green, 66.
Getting right to the good stuff:
1. Fred Kaplan on Iran, Israel, and the US elections. Not cheerful.
2. 2016 alert: GOP state senators in New York blocked the creation of that state's ACA health insurance exchange...so Governor Andrew Cuomo created one by executive order. Reporting by Thomas Kaplan.
3. Tea Party-friendly new Senator Ron Johnson is about to sack his legislative staff, according to reporting from Meredith Shiner, mainly because he's more interested in being a showhorse than a workhorse. I'd love to see evidence of how these sorts of Member-staff problems predicts, or doesn't predict, other long-run problems. Has anyone ever collected these data?
4. And a couple of baseball links. Giants (and Orioles) fans who missed this on Sunday should read the NYT column by Emilie Miller, Jon's daughter; and Ben Jacobs interviews, Rick Santorum, baseball fan.
Getting right to the good stuff:
1. Fred Kaplan on Iran, Israel, and the US elections. Not cheerful.
2. 2016 alert: GOP state senators in New York blocked the creation of that state's ACA health insurance exchange...so Governor Andrew Cuomo created one by executive order. Reporting by Thomas Kaplan.
3. Tea Party-friendly new Senator Ron Johnson is about to sack his legislative staff, according to reporting from Meredith Shiner, mainly because he's more interested in being a showhorse than a workhorse. I'd love to see evidence of how these sorts of Member-staff problems predicts, or doesn't predict, other long-run problems. Has anyone ever collected these data?
4. And a couple of baseball links. Giants (and Orioles) fans who missed this on Sunday should read the NYT column by Emilie Miller, Jon's daughter; and Ben Jacobs interviews, Rick Santorum, baseball fan.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Elsewhere: Campaign Watching, Budget Myths
Before I wrote about why silly campaign flaps happen here, I wrote something for Plum Line earlier about which things to ignore and which to pay attention to during the presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, over at Post Partisan I risked the wrath of Joey Ramone and beat up on Maria Bartiromo because she bought the phony GOP spin that Congress didn't pass a budget last year. I'm really not sure why this one gets to me as much as it does; of course, there's plenty of phony spin on the campaign trail. But there's something about this one that leaves me constantly correcting it. Probably all the time I've put in explaining the budget process to people, but who knows?
At any rate, it's one thing for the campaign to come up with phony spin; it's another for a reporter to be totally snowed by it (and more; as Brian Beutler reported, she also bought the "Obama's budget got zero votes" junk). I'd ask whether CNBC is normally this gullible and ill-informed when they report the financial news, but I suspect I know the answer.
Meanwhile, over at Post Partisan I risked the wrath of Joey Ramone and beat up on Maria Bartiromo because she bought the phony GOP spin that Congress didn't pass a budget last year. I'm really not sure why this one gets to me as much as it does; of course, there's plenty of phony spin on the campaign trail. But there's something about this one that leaves me constantly correcting it. Probably all the time I've put in explaining the budget process to people, but who knows?
At any rate, it's one thing for the campaign to come up with phony spin; it's another for a reporter to be totally snowed by it (and more; as Brian Beutler reported, she also bought the "Obama's budget got zero votes" junk). I'd ask whether CNBC is normally this gullible and ill-informed when they report the financial news, but I suspect I know the answer.
Why These Awful Campaign Flaps Happen
Look, we all know why these phony controversies flare up during presidential elections. It's just institutions. First, you have tons of pundits and reporters sitting around ready to talk about the presidential campaign, but essentially nothing much is going to happen between now and the conventions, which are months away. Second, you have the cable networks, which have to fill up 24 hours a day, and often have very little else to do.
Third, you have two campaigns, fully staffed, fully aware of the legends of campaigns past -- including the one about how Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush by having a then-state-of-the-art rapid response "war room," and the one about how John Kerry lost to George W. Bush because he failed to respond to some crazy stuff fringe conservatives were saying until it was too late. Never mind that 1992 could be more or less completely predicted by the economy, or that Kerry actually did better in 2004 than some "fundamentals" models predicted, suggesting that perhaps the candidates and campaigns pushed things a bit towards, not away from, the Democrats that year.
Anyway, all those people are hired to monitor everything said on CNN and MSNBC and FNC and the network news and blogs and twitter and the rest of it and to make something of it, and they're not going to get a boost to their careers if they report back that nothing of any real interest was said today. No: they all have a serious career incentive to create this kind of flap.
So are we all just helpless before it? Mostly, yes, but not completely. First, obviously, reporters (and their editors) should think hard about whether they want to participate in it. Granted, some are going to; that's what they do. But for the rest of us, my suggestion isn't to react by being outraged about the outrage. It certainly isn't to assess who won, or to ponder What It Tells Us about the candidates and the state of the campaign. The only ways to respond are to remind everyone it doesn't matter (as Ezra Klein was doing very nicely on twitter today), or, even better, to just laugh at the whole thing. Just refuse to take it seriously.
Third, you have two campaigns, fully staffed, fully aware of the legends of campaigns past -- including the one about how Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush by having a then-state-of-the-art rapid response "war room," and the one about how John Kerry lost to George W. Bush because he failed to respond to some crazy stuff fringe conservatives were saying until it was too late. Never mind that 1992 could be more or less completely predicted by the economy, or that Kerry actually did better in 2004 than some "fundamentals" models predicted, suggesting that perhaps the candidates and campaigns pushed things a bit towards, not away from, the Democrats that year.
Anyway, all those people are hired to monitor everything said on CNN and MSNBC and FNC and the network news and blogs and twitter and the rest of it and to make something of it, and they're not going to get a boost to their careers if they report back that nothing of any real interest was said today. No: they all have a serious career incentive to create this kind of flap.
So are we all just helpless before it? Mostly, yes, but not completely. First, obviously, reporters (and their editors) should think hard about whether they want to participate in it. Granted, some are going to; that's what they do. But for the rest of us, my suggestion isn't to react by being outraged about the outrage. It certainly isn't to assess who won, or to ponder What It Tells Us about the candidates and the state of the campaign. The only ways to respond are to remind everyone it doesn't matter (as Ezra Klein was doing very nicely on twitter today), or, even better, to just laugh at the whole thing. Just refuse to take it seriously.
Catch of the Day
I'm not sure whether to give the Catch to Kenneth Vogel, who did a nice piece of reporting about it (assuming of course that he got it right, but it looks good to me) or to Conor Friedersdorf, who turned it into a fun item: let's say the Catch of the Day goes to both of them for pointing out that Sarah Palin is churning through quite a lot of donor money without producing anything beyond, as Friedersdorf points out, building her personal brand.
Friedersdorf, addressing the Sage of Wasilla directly:
Still, it certainly does seem to me that there's just an enormous market out there willing to be exploited by fraudulent "conservative" hucksters, and as Friedersdorf says essentially no effort from anyone within the Republican network to do anything about it.
And: nice catch!
Friedersdorf, addressing the Sage of Wasilla directly:
Do you think the money of rank and file conservatives is well spent building your personal brand? Why should anyone trust you as a steward of their money again? Did you think you'd get away with this just because the conservative media is curiously silent when popular movement figures shamelessly fleece the rank and file?It's that last one that's the key, isn't it? Palin is only perhaps the most obvious, and perhaps the most shameless, of a long series of people who treat conservatives as easy marks. Yes, there's some of that on the other side, but really there's just not much. Well -- someone, perhaps it's my brother but I don't really remember, makes the case that it's just a matter of people serving different markets, with liberals very willing to fork money over to those who make them feel good about Taking the Issues Seriously and other highfalutin things. In other words, that people on both sides are easy marks, but just that they demand different things. Perhaps so, but if what you demand of snake oil is that it looks and feels and works like real medicine, then I'm not sure you're really buying snake oil. Unless you're able to persuade me that all liberals care about is the "looks and feels" part of it.
Still, it certainly does seem to me that there's just an enormous market out there willing to be exploited by fraudulent "conservative" hucksters, and as Friedersdorf says essentially no effort from anyone within the Republican network to do anything about it.
And: nice catch!
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Nicholas Brendon, 41.
The good stuff:
1. Nice post by Jordan Ragusa on Americans Elect.
2. Bill Clinton is responsible for "38 percent of all presidential mentions of the word." What word? Stupid. Yup, stupid. Great research from Eric Ostermeier. My guess is that Clinton has to be also responsible for 90% or so of the presidential uses of the phrase "brain-dead," too.
3. Michael Tesler on race and opinions of the president's dog. Really.
4. Jamelle Bouie makes the case for Mitt Romney to go positive.
5. And Jodi Cantor on empty governors' mansions.
The good stuff:
1. Nice post by Jordan Ragusa on Americans Elect.
2. Bill Clinton is responsible for "38 percent of all presidential mentions of the word." What word? Stupid. Yup, stupid. Great research from Eric Ostermeier. My guess is that Clinton has to be also responsible for 90% or so of the presidential uses of the phrase "brain-dead," too.
3. Michael Tesler on race and opinions of the president's dog. Really.
4. Jamelle Bouie makes the case for Mitt Romney to go positive.
5. And Jodi Cantor on empty governors' mansions.
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