Democrats and MSM -- drowning together
We continue to read post-mortems of the 2004 election written by liberals trying to figure out what it all means for the future. None that I have read seem to understand the situation. In simplest terms, the Democratic Party, as we presently know it, is dying. It would already be a corpse, if not for the increasingly frantic efforts of the MSM to keep it on life support. Of course, the more the news media tries to prop up the party, the more it hastens its own demise. They are like two drowning men grabbing desperately at each other for help, but merely making it less likely that either will survive.
With each passing day, the MSM loses more of its credibility because of the political partisanship of its news coverage. It loses even more as the shoddiness of its product is exposed by fact-checking bloggers. Millions of Americans no longer bother to get their news from it and the number continues to grow. Changes in information technology present significant enough challenges to the viability of old media. They simply cannot hope to survive if they continue to bleed credibility with foolish partisanship while pretending to be unbiased. The attachment to liberalism and the Democratic Party is helping to kill the MSM.
The Democrats are in even worse shape. In 1976, the Republican Party died in the train wreck of Watergate. It was already a weak, sick old man and the shock of Nixon's scandal was too much to survive. The party of Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush died. There was no public support any more for a party which agreed with the Democrats on domestic policy goals while simply carping about the price tag.
Ronald Reagan gave birth to a new GOP. Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and George W. Bush nurtured and developed the new party. Intellectuals provided a wealth of vibrant ideas and policy proposals. They were aided a great deal by Democrats who seemed intent on driving their party off a cliff. Now, a quarter of a century later, we can see that the Republicans look almost nothing like the party of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
The Democrats, however, look very much like the party which elected Jimmy Carter in 1976 -- only more so. Even Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of the liberal New Republic magazine has written that liberalism is dying from a lack of intellectual fresh air. [The Peretz piece deserves a separate post as does the impending death of the current Democratic Party.]
How is the MSM hurting the Democrats? I previously had a post on how the MSM helps mediocre liberal politicians rise to leadership positions while toughening up Republicans (see Soft Democrats). More importantly, liberal partisanship in the news media distorts reality for Democratic voters and politicians. As I wrote in my first post, Democrats end up believing their own spin. Isn't it amazing how many liberal pundits and politicians still believe that the economy was in terrible shape in 2004? It is hard to make sound strategic and tactical decisions when you don't have accurate information. For example, in the last week of the campaign, John Kerry focused his whole campaign around the ridiculous Al-Qaqaa story that the NY Times was flogging relentlessly. A stupid decision which was influenced by the partisan bias of the Times' reporting.
Wait just a minute, I can hear the reader thinking, doesn't the liberal bias of the MSM help Democrats get more votes on election day? What about Newsweek's Evan Thomas and his estimate that the MSM's efforts to defeat Bush would be worth 15 percentage points in helping Kerry? My answer -- yes, the MSM boosts the Democrats' share of the vote. The problem is, not enough.
Liberal economist, Ray Fair at Yale, has an econometric model that has been reasonably accurate in predicting presidential elections based on the relative state of the economy. In 2004, the economy was so strong that his model predicted that President Bush (as the incumbent in a strong economy) would get 58% of the vote -- a landslide. On election day, Bush only got 51% of the vote. I think it is fair to say that the baldly partisan coverage of the MSM managed to convince a lot of voters that the economy was bad and cost Bush around 7% of the vote. So yes, the MSM delivers a lot of votes for Democrats and has for a long time.
The problem for Democrats is that, even with this tremendous boost, they can't win. And the MSM's ability to deliver votes in the future will decline as their credibility and ratings continue to tank. Imagine a truly non-partisan news media. Without the artificial boost the MSM has provided in the past, the Democrats' share of the vote would be revealed to be in the 45% range (or lower) and declining. They would be forced to ask themselves the kind of tough questions Republicans had to address in 1976. Significant change would likely follow. But the MSM's partisan boost is masking the need to change. Instead, Democrats keep thinking that they aren't in trouble and don't need to change.
What we will likely see for the next decade is an MSM whose influence slowly erodes along with a Democratic Party which continues on the path to the bottom. The MSM will keep providing just enough life support to prop up the corpse and keep liberals from having to face the truth. The Democrats won't change until they have no choice. The MSM is ultimately hurting them because they can't produce enough votes to win, only enough to put off the day of reckoning.
With each passing day, the MSM loses more of its credibility because of the political partisanship of its news coverage. It loses even more as the shoddiness of its product is exposed by fact-checking bloggers. Millions of Americans no longer bother to get their news from it and the number continues to grow. Changes in information technology present significant enough challenges to the viability of old media. They simply cannot hope to survive if they continue to bleed credibility with foolish partisanship while pretending to be unbiased. The attachment to liberalism and the Democratic Party is helping to kill the MSM.
The Democrats are in even worse shape. In 1976, the Republican Party died in the train wreck of Watergate. It was already a weak, sick old man and the shock of Nixon's scandal was too much to survive. The party of Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush died. There was no public support any more for a party which agreed with the Democrats on domestic policy goals while simply carping about the price tag.
Ronald Reagan gave birth to a new GOP. Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and George W. Bush nurtured and developed the new party. Intellectuals provided a wealth of vibrant ideas and policy proposals. They were aided a great deal by Democrats who seemed intent on driving their party off a cliff. Now, a quarter of a century later, we can see that the Republicans look almost nothing like the party of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
The Democrats, however, look very much like the party which elected Jimmy Carter in 1976 -- only more so. Even Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of the liberal New Republic magazine has written that liberalism is dying from a lack of intellectual fresh air. [The Peretz piece deserves a separate post as does the impending death of the current Democratic Party.]
How is the MSM hurting the Democrats? I previously had a post on how the MSM helps mediocre liberal politicians rise to leadership positions while toughening up Republicans (see Soft Democrats). More importantly, liberal partisanship in the news media distorts reality for Democratic voters and politicians. As I wrote in my first post, Democrats end up believing their own spin. Isn't it amazing how many liberal pundits and politicians still believe that the economy was in terrible shape in 2004? It is hard to make sound strategic and tactical decisions when you don't have accurate information. For example, in the last week of the campaign, John Kerry focused his whole campaign around the ridiculous Al-Qaqaa story that the NY Times was flogging relentlessly. A stupid decision which was influenced by the partisan bias of the Times' reporting.
Wait just a minute, I can hear the reader thinking, doesn't the liberal bias of the MSM help Democrats get more votes on election day? What about Newsweek's Evan Thomas and his estimate that the MSM's efforts to defeat Bush would be worth 15 percentage points in helping Kerry? My answer -- yes, the MSM boosts the Democrats' share of the vote. The problem is, not enough.
Liberal economist, Ray Fair at Yale, has an econometric model that has been reasonably accurate in predicting presidential elections based on the relative state of the economy. In 2004, the economy was so strong that his model predicted that President Bush (as the incumbent in a strong economy) would get 58% of the vote -- a landslide. On election day, Bush only got 51% of the vote. I think it is fair to say that the baldly partisan coverage of the MSM managed to convince a lot of voters that the economy was bad and cost Bush around 7% of the vote. So yes, the MSM delivers a lot of votes for Democrats and has for a long time.
The problem for Democrats is that, even with this tremendous boost, they can't win. And the MSM's ability to deliver votes in the future will decline as their credibility and ratings continue to tank. Imagine a truly non-partisan news media. Without the artificial boost the MSM has provided in the past, the Democrats' share of the vote would be revealed to be in the 45% range (or lower) and declining. They would be forced to ask themselves the kind of tough questions Republicans had to address in 1976. Significant change would likely follow. But the MSM's partisan boost is masking the need to change. Instead, Democrats keep thinking that they aren't in trouble and don't need to change.
What we will likely see for the next decade is an MSM whose influence slowly erodes along with a Democratic Party which continues on the path to the bottom. The MSM will keep providing just enough life support to prop up the corpse and keep liberals from having to face the truth. The Democrats won't change until they have no choice. The MSM is ultimately hurting them because they can't produce enough votes to win, only enough to put off the day of reckoning.
posted by Stan at 10:35 AM
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