Talk radio is the 'Right's' most important political tool.
It allowed guys like Karl Rove to take Lee Atwater's techniques national and improve on them. How can the 'Left' evaluate their political losses and the failures of their representatives if it has no organized analysis of and reaction to what is blasting from the the loudest radio stations in the country all day long?
They can use it to target individual counties and states with sustained individualized swiftboating and misinformation campaigns to keep real progressives from politics, while promoting the most hypocritical and ignorant regressives the right can produce. They take free potshots at Democratic candidates and representatives while the Left cranks the music.
The talk radio monopoly has had 20 years of free speech free ride to establish a nationwide base of myths and distortions and exaggerations that many liberals even go along with. Now it's a giant media bandwagon on automatic, with the ability to instantly mobilize a loud, often racist, and coordinated minority to take whatever pro-corporate position is needed to enable and obstruct whatever their think tank puppet masters want.
Fox TV is a symptom- Fox could not turn the Democratic Party into the Democrat Party. Wisconsin/Walker and union and middle class decline are symptoms. The toxicity of 'liberal media', 'socialism', and 'muslim' are symptoms of the talk radio problem.
The acceptability of and the inability to confront the US military industrial complex on torture, Guantanamo, Bradley Manning, and domestic terrorism are symptoms of giving talk radio a free speech free ride. Of not at least complaining to the local Limbaugh station and their local sponsors for helping him sell Club Gitmo T-shirts and coffee mugs.
The same with the acceptability of the Tea Party racism. If it can blast all day from the loudest radio station in your state, the one that will broadcast your state University basketball games in the NCAA tournament, and no one complains, what's wrong with it?
And with the help of paid callers and call screeners to reinforce the credibility of their habitual liars and coordinated repeaters of think tank talking points they can message over and around just about anything the Democratic Party wants to do.
Reacting to an occasional racist or sexist comment from Limbaugh or Hannity completely misses the cumulative and immediate effect they and their fellow propagandists continue to have on US politics.
It makes national discussions based on fact impossible. But there is no searchable written record of what the main local and national talkers are saying and how often and what that effect is. Instead of factoring in radio repetition political analysis often starts after it has been pounded into the earholes of tens of millions of Americans and shows up on Fox. As long as that is the case the political Left will continue to analyze and react with a severe handicap.
And without factoring in and reacting to the radio, evaluations of Obama and Democratic Party performance continue to be inadequate, often unfair, and hamper strategies for fixing the rest of our problems. Forget meaningful media reform (including the radio), or election reform until the radio is fixed. Americans will be amazed how much they can get done once the radio is fixed.
I'm not saying that everyone must react to the talk radio problem but until the 'Left' takes on and fixes the Right's most important political and media tool on an organized basis it cannot say it is getting its representatives' backs and it cannot expect them to stick their necks out.
Americans are going to have to work harder at everything until they fix the radio.