Thom Hartmann discussed on his Friday show the effect of media consolidation on presidential contenders. The "Howard Dean" effect I like to call it, enables the corporate media to consistently pushed on the American public these contemporary, if not altogether boring candidates like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton while the truly progressive and exciting candidates like Barack Obama are downplayed. It is time for the netroots to take organized action against the true obstacle to democracy . . . the consolidation of free press.
Thom Hartmann made a compelling case against a truly progressive candidate winning the democratic nomination by alluding to Howard Dean's failed presidential bid.
I think what Hillary Clinton is doing is that she is not running a primary campaign right now. She is running a general election campaign. She thinks . . . I believe that she and her advisers think that the primary campaign is probably hers and so she is playing to the center and not her base.
The danger in that and there is a substantial danger, and the republicans understand this well, and that is that if you leave your base behind . . . you got nothing. 'Cause the center isn't enough. You gotta have the base and then build from the base. I think she is pursuing a strategy that is frankly dangerous. But I'm not a political consultant and I may well be wrong and time will tell, we'll see.
Hartmann is right that Clinton is not running a primary campaign but I think he is clearly wrong by concluding that running towards the base is an effective strategy for winning. John Kerry was far from an overwhelming progressive in contrast to Howard Dean but won the primary as a consequence of not running towards the base. The same can be said of Bill Bradley's lost to Al Gore in 2000. Bill Bradley campaigned as a liberal alternative to Gore but succumbed to Gore's "quasi-incumbent" status and far less liberal campaign.
Hartmann then goes on to contradict his instinctive strategy for success by making the following argument:
. . . Oddly enough, that might not be such a terrible thing and here's why: With all the caveats that I've put as the preference to that, here's why. Franklin Roosevelt when he was running for president in 1932, his first election, as the country was in the depths of the great depression, certainly uh well into the second year of it . . . moving terrible terrible times. And Herbert Hoover, the republican president, who brought us the republican great depression, was running on a platform of "prosperity is just around the corner." Just like Bush with the Iraq war right? Or Tom Friedman, "just another six months and everything 'll be fine." And Franklin Roosevelt did not run to his base as it were. He didn't run a campaign based on his base.
. . . It was a successful campaign. It worked for him [FDR]. And then once he became president and had the power of the presidency and the bully pulpit of the presidency then he was able to move ahead with a very progressive campaign.
Obviously he is using FDR as an example to suggest that maybe Hillary Clinton, while not campaigning as strong progressive, could still possibly enact a strong progressive agenda as did FDR. However, FDR also had a past record, particulary during his term as a New York governor, of enacting strong progressive policies unlike Hillary Clinton.
The most disturbing aspect of all this is that we clearly have candidates who are campaigning on strong progressive platforms yet the media pushes the corporatist. Further dampening this realization is the strong reservation among the netroots in labeling the media as the problem, however, the sad reality remains that the media has been far more damaging to our country than the petty minded republicans who were in power for the last thirteen years.
Hartmann finally gets to the heart of his argument by describing Howard Dean's fall from grace:
. . . And the goal ultimately is to govern as a progressive which is really where America is but for some reason she [Hillary] thinks she can't say it or some reason, many politicians think they can't say it. And I say that the largest reason is what happened to Howard Dean and that is the media will get you.
. . . Here's the Howard Dean story. I was watching Howard Dean being interviewed by Chris Matthews, this was four years ago er uh yeah, the 2004 election. Three and a half years ago. The week he was on the cover of Time and Newsweek, everybody assume Howard Dean was going to be the democratic nominee and there was a very good chance that he would win the election against George W. Bush. Frankly I think that had he been the democratic nominee he would have won the election against Georg W. Bush. Which is the reason why the club for growth spent a million dollars in the primaries to run ads against Howard Dean. A republican group running ads against a democratic candidate, the only democrat they ran ads against. They wanted to take him out. The republicans famously want to pick who they're running against.
Anyhow, Howard Dean was talking to Chris Matthews. He was getting all this wonderful press coverage and everybody loved him and he was the darling of the media. He was the darling of everybody and uh Chris says, "what are you going to do about media consolidation?" And Howard Dean says, "break'em up."
He [Chris Matthews] says, "whaddya mean?" Howard Dean said words to the effect of, I don't recall the exact language, was the effect of, "our media companies should be media companies. It shouldn't be a defense contractor."
Chris Matthews says, "you realize we're talking on MSNBC a company owned by General Electric which is a defense contractor among other things." And Dean was like, "Yeah!" So Matthews was like, "so you're saying that GE should divest itself from MSNBC?" And Howard Dean was like, "yeah, break it up. This is a violation of the antitrust laws." And Matthews face was like I can't believe I'm hearing this. And I turn to Louise [Hartmann's wife] and said, "that's the last positive press coverage he's going to get." Sure enough the next day, literally the next day on all the networks, Howard Dean was being treated like a crank and a crack pot and that was the turning point in my opinion.
- Thom Hartmann 9/28/2007 transcribed by lovingj and not to be taken for a perfect transcription
The media assassination of Howard Dean was his ultimate undoing and Naeem Mohaiemen of Alternet describe this phenomenom best in his February 2004 article by saying following:
In the end, Dean threatened a troika of powerful institutions. He was a threat to the political parties (because he attacked Democrats' centrist drift), to media (because he criticized their cowardly reporting) and to big business (because he would roll back chummy tax-benefits for corporations). All three institutions responded with venom and destroyed Dean's candidacy.
Ultimately, Howard Dean was a threat to the establishment. The corporate media was not going to allow a candidate to succeed who did not follow by the rules. We are witnessing the same "Howard Dean" effect being applied to John Edwards when he speaks out about the system being rigged or Barack Obama standing up against the corporate media's complacency to blindly follow convential wisdom in terms of foreign policy.
The netroots believes in strong progressive leaders who show the will and determination, through their platform, to exert real change on a broken country. This would seem to be a very realistic goal yet Howard Dean stated one tiny progressive proclamation on Hardball:
What I’m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.
Dean stated the truth and was punished for it. We can no longer stand passive and watch our leaders fall prey to the corporate hold on American influence. It is now time that the netroots launch a massive campaign to fight media consolidation and undo the damage Bill Clinton caused by signing into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It is now time we start organizing and informing average Americans about the perils of limited free press and deregularized media. It is now time that we act as swiftly to undo the MSM's hold on our country as we do in expressing our voices of rage at the policies by the Bush administration or Bill O'Reilly's idiotic rants against Daily Kos. It is now time that we act on the real threat to democracy and prove why the netroots, unlike the DLC, is the democratic force for change.
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