So, in Massachusetts, we have a sitting Senator, with a two-year voting record, and a decently long voting record as a State Senator, (voting notably for “Romneycare”, among other things). His life story is interesting and even inspiring, coming from a deeply unstable family environment to really make something of himself.
On the other hand, we have a law professor at a top school, who also came from a fairly humble background; working her way from a public law school background to being the pre-eminent voice for consumers against a predatory, out-of-control financial system. She’s published several books on the topic. She has a long work history, and a sizeable published record. If you wanted to know what she cares about, what kind of senator she’d be, or where her priorities lie, it’s not hard at all to find out. Dig in.
And yet, all we’re hearing about is a miniscule side issue; something that has absolutely no impact on what kind of service either of these people would render to the Massachusetts or US public. This story should be left to the Howie Carrs of the world to snicker about. It should have stayed at the level of a racist dog whistle: “Lie-a-Watha”, ho ho ho. If not pretty, it’s all in the way of things – that’s just politics.
How much is the MA public hearing about major ideas? The candidates’ respective plans for the economy? For income inequality? Whether or not to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — which affects one sixth of the economy, touches practically every man, woman, and child in some way, and is the most significant piece of social legislation since Medicare? Global warming — which has unimaginably immense consequences for Massachusetts, much less the world?
And yet, Scott Brown brings this idiotic non-issue up at every opportunity. His whole campaign has gotten stoned on its own stash of tendentious oppo, or is enslaved to some internal poll that says this is totes the silver bullet, dude.
Or maybe he has absolutely no confidence in his ability to defend his own voting record, to tout a big portfolio of accomplishment on behalf of his constituents. Hrm, wonder where that is.
I know I’m being boring, but this is just some serious horseshit we’ve been seeing. We could have had another Kerry-Weld 15-round heavyweight battle; and instead we’ve got a picayune squabble that would embarrass a first grade recess in its triviality.
Does this race matter or not? Hello?
Addendum: To be clear … We posted that video yesterday of the Brown staffers making asses of themselves. We will fight on that level if we have to. We will fight on meaningful things or meaningless things, because you have to win the politics game to play the policy game — where it’s all consequential. But the public should demand better — and I think by and large, they do.
Discuss
8 Comments . Leave a comment below.…yet, I have become jaded and cynical about the voting American public
The modern campaign will rise or sink to the audience’s level of sophistication.
Large swarths of the voting population are just not sophisticated in their information collecting and decision making. Republicans have figured this out long ago with their simplistic, aphoristic, sloganeering. Horseshit like “what part of illegal don’t you understand”, “I am sick of paying of lazy people’s food stamps” and “lie-a-watha” works because it is instantly digestible. And this stuff works not just with the Howie Carr/RMG die hards, but with a certain percentage of the everyday people who pay very little attention to actual politics and policy discussion. Even people who tend to do vote Democrat.
We can stay in denial and keep blaming the media for only covering the trivial issues and not providing substance, but you can’t force feed a public that doesn’t want to spend more that 30 seconds-to-2 minutes on learning about a candidate or issue.
I don’t know what the answer is. And I am extremely grateful that there are large patches of the internet like BMG that provide substance and depth and work hard to increase the public understanding of important policies and candidate positions. And I definitely do think we should rage against the dying of the intellectual light. But I think going forward that the progressive and Democratic movements have to have clear and accessible low-information strategy going forward.
Or what they’re being fed?
Do you think that much of the public isn’t just flat-out disgusted by the level of discussion? That they don’t find this stuff childish?
You know, a lot of people are fairly passive consumers — including myself, when I’m not super-informed or passionate about something. Folks will buy Celine Dion records — but they also buy Beatles records, depending on what they’re exposed to.
IOW, I think (hope) you somewhat overestimate the effect of the demand-side in our media and public discussion. I think the supply-side could do a lot better, and even flourish if it didn’t insult people’s intelligence so much and so often.
I was for so long on the “what they’re being fed” side of the argument. But we’ve had this very legitimate complaint for years, haven’t we? When the blog/citizen journalist revolution came about, the hope was that it would hold traditional journalism to the flames and make the media more accountable. To a degree, it has, yet we still lament the media’s woeful inadequacies. What has changed since we started this complaint, way back in the WMD days, that media and journalists refuse to do their jobs? I think relatively little.
I would also say that there is a HUGE amount of high-quality journalism available available on TV, radio, print, and the internet, but people don’t seek it out. We got Rachael Maddow, Bill Moyers, Pro Publica, 60 Minutes and others doing excellent stuff, but people pass it up. They don’t want it. I get serious complaints from my girlfriend anytime I dare put on anything that looks like news or a documentary a la Frontline. And anytime I try to pass along ny of this stuff to my friends, who claim to be curious and want to learn about this, they generally skip it or watch it uncritically and unengaged.
I do think it is a lot more about the culture of the audience and less about the crappy job of the media, but this is just my hypothesis. But what if I am wrong? We have be saying for years that journalists are refusing to do their jobs and the media is deficient in coverage, but where has our current strategy gotten us? It’s been 8-10 years of the same complaints and the same results? No? Maybe the news reporting media has gotten worse? When do we admit that our current model of combatting journalistic incompetence has failed and try a new direction?
Or perhaps we need to attack the problem from a different angle? The people like us that want good reporting and cogent analysis know where to go. The water is all around us, but we can’t make any of the horses drink it – yet. I would propose that we shift our focus from how shitty a job the media is doing, because it seems like we will always be dissatisfied with the “lame-stream media”, and work on a strategy that deals with the unsophisticated nature of the audience.
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And do I think much of the public isn’t just flat-out disgusted by the level of discussion? I do. And people who care should be disgusted. But then there is the Fox/Howie Carr demographic, that get high ratings and generate a ton of money for media outlets, that live for that disgusting level of discussion.
And other posts today quoting Rachel Maddow and Brian McGrory and the whole host of other pundits to someone validate their posts or comments are pointless.
Three or four people here are voting for Brown and all the rest are voting for Warren. All of our minds were made up a long time ago. The last 5-10% don’t care about the issues, and they can’t rely on any objective sources. Brown says he is a moderate. Most people here say he’s an extremist. People here say Brown’s against women, he says he’s for women. Those last few people are not going to take the time to sort through all that (and even if they did they would have to weigh the objectivity of the sources) and make a determination. So Brown’s strategy is the correct one. As reported by the NYT (my bold).
I would love to see polling evidence that this is going to work.
Or rather, I would prefer to see evidence that it’s not working. That’s what I suspect anyway.
If “the last 5-10%” don’t care about the issues, what DO they care about?
What do you say to centralmassdad, who wrote on Monday (emphasis mine):
Are you suggesting that CMD doesn’t care about the issues?
When the message that Scott Brown is hammering is “saying that rain isn’t wet”, do you seriously suggest that emphasizing it will sway undecided (or loose-in-the-socket) voters towards Mr. Brown — especially when accompanied by videos like yesterday’s? Are you good with Senate staffers — on the federal payroll — conducting themselves like that? Are you really satisfied with Scott Brown’s response?
Elizabeth Warren is working hard to keep this race focused on issues and policy. Scott Brown is doing all in his power to distract that focus to ANYTHING else. Why do you suppose that is?
However, I think they don’t see the point of voting to make them happen. They’re all the same, everything is fixed, etc.
I think the mystery of the undecideds right now is not what separates them from decided voters, but what separates them from non-voters. They seem more like non-voters who feel a nebulous civic duty to vote just to have done it, rather than a decided voter who is caught in the middle.
When John Kerry takes the high road and ignores the Swift Boat attack, the media say “he needed to address that right away, you can’t just let that kind of accusation sit out there unchallenged.” When Warren responds to the attacks, they say “she has appeared on the defensive.”
For what it’s worth, in my opinion Kit Seelye is a hack. She rose to prominence by writing hatchet jobs on Al Gore on the trail in 2000. In particular her admitted misquote about the Love Canal near Buffalo led to a huge conservative media push in the direction that Gore exaggerated his own accomplishments (though even Gore didn’t meet with kings and queens!). This had an effect on the election results.
She went on to claim, in the Times, that John Kerry’s military records praised his “patrician demeanor.” The records actually praised his “dynamic leadership” and “use of the English language.” She covered Wall Street favorably in from 2005 to 2007 and, this year, labored to explain away Rick Santorum’s comments about black people. His mouth got stuck and he was saying “people’s lives” and somehow “black” came out.
(How Freudian is THAT?)
Seelye started an August 21 piece “The pickup truck is back, in a big way.” Her twitter is full of subtle digs at Warren and subtle praise for Brown. Amazingly, she retweeted Brown’s Sept. 12 post: “It would be unfortunate if Elizabeth Warren attacked me with her ads, as Globe reports. I had hoped for better. http://www.boston.com” No retweeting of any Warren posts.
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