Kevin's made the point before, and repeats it today, that Democrats have to run to the center more than Republicans because more people identify as conservative than liberal and therefore, they have to appeal to fewer "moderates" or people in the center than the Democrats do. Or put another way, since there are so many more people in their base, they have to pander to it to win while the Democrats have to pander to the center in order to get a majority.
The problem with this analysis is that he thinks all this has something to do with how people self-identify, as if the people who identify as "conservative" are all really conservative or the moderates and liberals are truly moderate and liberal. I don't know that that's the case. Sure it's true in some cases, but I don't think people necessarily identify with these ideological labels out of ideology. It's more of a tribal ID or a social designation.
And I think it's fairly clear that a huge propaganda campaign to demonize the word liberal that has lasted nearly 30 years has taken its toll on the willingness of people to wear it. Even I, old time lib that I am, have found myself in large social and business situations in which self-identifying as a liberal is uncomfortable....
Boy howdy! As they say in the trade. The GOP just voted to block discussion of the Defense Authorization Act. If Dems had done this, the only thing you'd hear for the next week would have been, "Why do the Democrats hate the troops?" And yet, not only do the Democrats not even dream of making such a politically potent attack on Republican obstructionists, the Republican senators are acting in defense of a position that even a majority of Republicans oppose. How, exactly does Kevin Drum's reasoning explain that? Simple: It doesn't.
The weekend before last, in "David Weigel and the death spiral of American journalism", I pointed out that the Post's de facto firing of Weigel represented an internalization of rightwing media attack standards. As evidence, I returned to a 2002 analysis I had done of the Media Resource Center (MRC), whose "Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting" was top-heavy with examples that were not reporting, but rather people giving their opinions in opinion forums. Indeed, the first place in one category, the "Pushing Bush to the Left Award", went to Eleanor Clift for opening her mouth on the The McLaughlin Group. Who knew that McLaughlin was part of the liberal media conspiracy?
I found this practice somewhat strange and confusing. But I was assured by MRC staffer Richard Noyes that I was the first to find it so. Similarly, when I did the math and found that MRC's judges had been harsher on opinion pieces, online columns and the like than they had been on network news reports, Noyes assured me, "I think that probably misses the point. I think what, particularly with our judges, they do tend to focus on personalities," rather than actual biased reporting.
And so it was that the Post's termination of Weigel due to opinions expressed in private emails was directly modeled on MRC's style of "media criticism", one that attacks people for their opinions, and then lies about it by calling its attack fest its "Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting".
And then, the following week, 20-year CNN editor Octavia Nasr was fired for a tweet. The Post itself reported:.
Octavia Nasr has been fired. CNN fired the editor responsible for Middle Eastern coverage after she posted a note on Twitter expressing admiration for a late Lebanese cleric considered an inspiration for the Hezbollah militant movement.
Octavia Nasr later apologized for her tweet, but CNN's senior vice president for international newsgathering, Parisa Khosravi, said Wednesday that Nasr's credibility had been compromised.
The Atlanta-based Nasr worked at CNN for 20 years, starting as an assignment editor on the international desk. Her job was mostly off the air, but she occasionally would appear as an on-screen analyst during discussions of Middle Eastern news
