Now...I'm not one for early morning politcal news coverage. I usually don't have time to bother with TV in the morning and rely on the internet when I get a chance. This morning, I stopped to, if only because I had to check the weather. What I found was a rather...unsettling whack across the head.
Now the only news channel I actually watch regularly is MSNBC, and that's mostly only for Keith Olbermann. As such, it's the one I turned to this morning. Of course, watching this morning, and the characterization of the issues, you'd never think this was the same channel of Olbermann and Maddow. The spin, the overt bias and softball, and the overall framing was all for the sake of a singular narrative that they seem to want to run with permanently:
Obama is in trouble, and Democrats need to be afraid. Nearly every single question was framed in 'How did McCain succeed so well?' 'What can McCain do to soothe these voters now that he's in control?', while we got 'What's Obama going to do about his white woman trouble?' 'Does his fundraising worry you?' 'You think he can win without Ohio now?' In other words, they're already making the narrative: Obama can't win, because we say so.
To highlight this, MSNBC had the head of the parties in Ohio due to both candidates canvassing there.
The RNC chair, Jo Anne Davidson, got softballs about how to placate voters on the economy. Her solution? It essentially boiled down to 'Drill Here, Drill Now', and 'Give money to the businesses, not the governments'. For the most part, she was tossed fluff, and was allowed to trot out all the lines necessary. The only real prodding point was pointing out that there was a good Dem registration advantage in Ohio now, and the anchor still ended up turning it into a chance for talking points by asking 'how will you turn that around?'. No critical questions or anything.
In contrast, the DNC chair (whose name I sadly missed) immediately got the question 'Do you think you can win without Ohio?', as if framing the idea that Ohio is totally lost to the Democrats now. She ended up asking it twice too, because his first answer wasn't satisfactory. They even brought out the canard that 'Obama lost 83 counties in the primary, how can he win Ohio now?' Nearly every question was to try and push him back on his heels and portray the Democrats as 'weak, ineffectual', essentially screwed.
This was the same even when they had spokesmen on both sides of the party to talk about things. Talking about the polls, the Republican side essentially got 'Why is Palin so good for McCain?' whereas the Democrats got 'So what the hell are you going to do now, huh?'
Even with Mayor Willie Brown, a Democrat, you essentially got crap about 'Let Hillary Clinton go for Palin, because Obama's an elitist candidate, he can't touch Palin'. The frame that Obama is an elitist, and Palin is just too common to touch, it seems to have even gotten internalized by our spokespeople in the media.
I mean...this was only one morning's worth of coverage, but it seemed to speak volumes, and it tells me that we have a problem that we need to hit back on. We're massively losing the media narrative, and the polls are only giving the media the excuse to try and further bury Obama's chances.
So....what do we do? How do we beat back the press? How do we try and pull back the narrative?
Unfortunately, there's little we can do nationally, at least as far as the big name channels go, aside from trying to encourage our big names, Olbermann, Maddow, the big blog names like Kos of course, etc., to turn the narrative back toward McCain and Palin's negatives (which is getting woefully undercovered at this rate, at least on a large scale).
Aside from that? Go local. Try and get through on your local media and get the word out. Obama isn't dead, and the land minds for the GOP are there, they just need to be pounded on. Letters to the editor and call-ins, local campaigning and canvassing, get things out through word of mouth.
And as a general piece of advice, for everyone on this side of the aisle, those here, party advocates and spokesmen, simple supporters observing but not quite directly involved in the process: DON'T PANIC. While there is urgency to act, panic does nothing but make it look like we're in further disarray. Like everyone, including Obama just now, said, the ups and downs are always going to be there, and the conventions just finished. The polls will swing down again, and that can be when Obama, the Democrats, we ourselves, can get the foothold to turn back this narrative before it becomes too ingrained. And if we turn to hasty strategies borne from panic, we're more likely to shoot ourselves in the foot through bad attacks rather than help ourselves in any way.
I'm worried, I can't deny that. But right now, we need to push back rather than scatter and fire wildly in hopes we hit something. While we always knew it was gonna be a problem, we gotta keep our eyes forward, and fight this crap when it's coming rather than fret 'Oh, why didn't Obama do this?' 'Why didn't Biden do that?'
We're gonna have to Beat the Press, before the Press beats Us.