History is Happening Now

I have recently begun to listen to Air America’s Rachel Maddow Show, which is a fairly entertaining and informative program, and Maddow mentioned the other day that she has noticed a systematic anti-Obama bias in the stories coming out of the AP.

No sooner was I alerted to this claim than–lo and behold–I read the AP’s “analysis” of Obama’s decision to select Biden as his VP candidate.  The headline of this “analysis,” written by Ron Fournier, reads “Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence.”  The “analysis” begins like this:  “The candidate of change went with the status quo.”

This “analysis”–which confirms Maddow’s observation (which was, I should note, targeted not just the AP’s analyses but also its journalism), and almost borrows talking points from the McCain campaign’s playbook–has rightly set off a firestorm on the blogosphere, led by Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly, who observes, among other things, the basic lack of logic in Fournier’s “argument”:

By his logic, any potential running mate shows a “lack of confidence” — picking Hillary would mean Obama lacked confidence in his ability to win over women voters; picking Bayh would mean Obama lacked confidence in his ability to win over independents and conservative Dems; picking Webb would mean Obama lacked confidence in his ability to win over voters concerned about national security; picking Kaine would mean Obama lacked confidence in his ability to win over voters in the South; etc.

Beyond the amply documented fact that Fournier is very cozy with Republicans, and the controversy over the direction Fournier is taking the formerly more neutral AP in, there is a more important point here:  this is what we’re going to be getting, not only from the AP but also from every major “Serious” source of journalism, from now until November.  We’ll have reframing of every decision Obama makes in negative terms, attacks on his character and fitness to command based on the slimmest of evidence, practically naked partisan attacks on every utterance he makes by supposedly objective journalists (like our friend, Matt Lauer). 

It is in this context–the usual context within which the right-leaning mainstream media establishment operates–that Sacha Zimmerman, over at The New Republic, can worry about how troubled she is that Maddow is getting her own show on MSNBC:

I really like Maddow and have found her thoroughly compelling throughout this latest campaign season, but I am not so thrilled about this trend toward partisan networks and news. By all means we should have progressive and conservative commentators and analysts, but is there no room for argument between the two? Where have all the iconoclasts gone? With this split in the networks and a near perfect red-blue divide nationwide, it seems that we are more and more retreating to our comfortable trenches and refusing to acknowledge anything but spite, paranoia, and conspiracy theory when it comes to the other side. And, since cable news is not exactly renowned for its nuance or intellectual rigor, knee-jerk reactions can pass for smart commentary. I think Maddow will be a wonderful host (and God knows MSNBC could use a smart woman), but how exciting is it really if she is just preaching to the choir?

It is in this context that Democrats, no matter how completely mainstreamly centrist they are, will always have to fight.  Even being at the center of the center of the political spectrum–which I think is a fair description of Obama-Biden, and no insult on my part, just an observation–is no guarantee that you won’t be painted as a terrorist-loving, Weatherman-supporting, radical antiwar, Code Pink-worshipping, soft-on-national-defense commie/anarchist or whatever.

Slight deviations from the center toward the left are regarded–by the stalwart liberals at TNR–as mortal crises to democracy and journalistic integrity.  Meanwhile, systematic bias toward the right by supposedly objective news wires, like the AP, to say nothing of Fox News, is just par for the course, occasionally noteworthy when their bias becomes too blatant to ignore, as it is in this case, but usually accepted as being as natural as air.

As a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University has shown, the media has indeed covered Obama more than McCain.  Thing is, that coverage has been overwhelmingly negative.

Welcome to our political discourse.

Here’s what Joe Biden wrote about America for The Atlantic Monthly just over a year ago. I think his short essay captures the revulsion that many of us feel toward the Bush Administration, and the threat we face from right-wingers going forward.

The NYT reports that Joe Biden is going to be Obama’s running mate.  From the perspective of iconography–old gray suit next to young biracial change candidate–and as a way of correcting what the mainstream media perceive as Obama’s “weakness” on national security, he is a good choice.

I don’t know enough about Biden to make much more of an informed comment, but I’d like to link to Glenn Greenwald, who is critical, I think rightly, of certain of Biden’s comments in an interview with Matt Lauer:

LAUER: [McCain's] argument — the Democratic Party itself, somewhere in the late 1960s, became weak on national security, at least perceived to be weak — we started to see a party wringing its hands and blaming American for what’s wrong in the world. Now, as we look at the upcoming election, particularly between a war hero and Barack Obama, do you think that’s going to be a major problem for Democrats?

BIDEN: I think that’s what they’re going to revive. There’s truth to that. I ran in 1972 as a young 29-year-old guy who won the Senate seat, being the guy who was viewed as a hawk, because I didn’t join in that mantra.

It was Bill Clinton — and, I might say, me pushing it — saying that you had to go to war in the Balkans to end genocide. It was John McCain initially saying, no no no you can’t do that — the Republicans voting, no no no we can’t do that.

I find this sort of response infuriating.  The problem here is Biden’s claim that “there’s truth” to the idea that the Democratic party is “a party wringing its hands and blaming American for what’s wrong in the world,” a party that apparently once blamed America first as a “mantra,” before Clinton showed them the royal road of military interventionism. 

And Biden’s claim is so historically accurate, too!  Apparently John “Missile Gap” Kennedy and Lyndon “Carpetbomb” Johnson were wussy peaceniks, whose mantra was a flower of love for every Vietnamese civilian. 

How can Biden concede such pivotal Republican propaganda points to Lauer?  Will Biden back away from these sorts of attacks on his own party as Obama’s VP?  Why do Democrats feel the need to show how manly and tough they are as a strategy for defeating Republicans?  It only reinforces, and does little to neutralize, their talking points.

I think you damage your chances of winning the White House if you go around accepting that your own party is “wringing its hands” and “blaming America” for the world’s problems, then proudly suggesting how willing you are to go to war, proving your manliness, showing how willing you are to stand up to the sissy “antiwar” wing–who of course by 72 were being blamed for having started the Vietnam War and lost the White House to the “antiwar” Republican candidate, Richard Nixon–of your own party. 

Still, all things considered, Biden may be a good choice, at least as a way of appeasing the moronic Matt Lauers of our idiotic mediasphere, until our pundit class finds another character-based smear to fire off at Obama.  Obama, of course, should respond to such smears by promising to bomb some other country–not Iraq, of course–into oblivion, maybe Afghanistan, or–who knows–maybe the Balkans again, just to show the hand-wringing, America-blaming, peacenik-mantra wing of the Democratic Party how tough an Obama-Biden ticket would be.