All of us hear conservatives moan and groan regularly about the "liberal media." Yet with the growth of cable news channels, the media, at least in television, has become firmly conservative.
The Issues:
Liberalism and conservatism are not simply two ways of approaching a problem. The core disagreement between liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans is about what our problems actually are. This fact is evident upon examination of the much-maligned exit polls. When asked for the issue they found most important 72% of Bush voters and 68% Republican House of Representatives voters said terrorism or moral values. Four out of every five Kerry voters and 76% of all Democratic House voters chose Iraq, the economy/jobs, healthcare, and education. Before the election, when asked, "Who do you think will do a better job on Iraq?" Bush had a small majority. Yet in the exit polls, he got clobbered on that issue. ...
If one of every ten people who picked Moral Values or Terrorism as their top issue had chosen Iraq instead, and assuming the exit poll data for those issues held, it would provide about a 5% swing for Kerry nationally. He would have won Ohio by over 100,000, and he would have taken Iowa, Nevada, and New Mexico from the Bush column as well. Florida would be 50-50 and in a recount and Colorado might be too. Kerry would have a shot at 300 electoral votes. We would have turned Senate races in South Dakota, Kentucky, Florida and Alaska. A recount in North Carolina and a runoff in Louisiana would determine the majority in a 49-49 Senate. That sounds more like a mandate to me.
The Problem:
How do Americans determine which issues are most important to them? Mostly by what they see and hear from the media. In the last year, it's been breastgate and the FCC reaction to it, gay marriage imposed by a court in Massachusetts, gay marriage in San Francisco, and an atheist in California trying to get "under God" out of the pledge of allegiance. Talk and news shows these days, at least on television, give liberals and Democrats short shrift. Keith Olbermann gives us time on election reform, Lou Dobbs on jobs and the economy, and Newsnight's Aaron Brown on Iraq. But Newsnight also occasionally overplays values issues. Chris Matthews does his best to give us a fair shake, but he overplays values issues at times as well. Joe Scarborough is horrible; we do better with Pat Buchannan on that show. FOX News doesn't give our agenda a second more than it has to.
Fair and Balanced my foot. We get hosed by the television media. And the media isn't going to start giving liberal issues enough time if we just ask nicely. We need to formulate media strategies to counter this conservative bias.
Solutions:
- Start a liberal cable news network. This is a lofty goal but it needs to be pursued.
- Force our issues. When Republicans in Congress try to cut funding for education or healthcare, we need to call attention to it. If they try to pass an appropriations bill with some bad amendments attatched to it (like this weekend), we need to filibuster. We blew a chance to do that this weekend on the omnibus bill. On Monday, none of the evening talk/news shows even mentioned the Istook Amendment controversy, or the fact that the appropriations bill was 3600 pages long. The media needs to cover these issues, so we need to give them a reason to cover them.
- Don't let the Republicans force their issues. Don't filibuster court appointees indiscriminantly. Save the filibuster for the Supreme Court. If the GOP brings up a gay marriage amendment, move to a vote as fast as possible. We'll win the vote, so we shouldn't worry about debating the issue on the floor.
- Be respectful. Don't call Bush a Nazi, don't call Condoleeza Rice Aunt Jemima, and most importantly, don't insult Bush/red state voters. Republicans can win elections with hate, Democrats cannot. The extreme right likes to portray Liberals as angry, and we shouldn't let them do that.
- Chip away at FOX News. Write letters to their advertisers. Sign petitions. Boycott products advertised on FNC, and tell your liberal friends to follow suit.
- Use the Internet. If you have moderate friends, send them news articles about GOP corruption and everything that's going wrong in Iraq. Googlebomb prominent Republicans. Republicans will never match Democrats on the internet, because the freedom of the internet is the antithesis of the conservative ideal of censorship.
I welcome your comments.