His bark is worse than his bite.
Just a year ago, Fox News Channel was considered a pariah in many Democratic circles. But it appears that the cable news network is no longer on the outs.
Fox may indeed be more unfair to Democrats than Republicans (and I believe this to be the case), but some would say that this simply makes up for the unfairness that Republicans have had to endure from CNN and MSNBC. It is unfortunate that those doing the squawking on this, do not oppose bias per se, but only bias against their views and their candidates.
At what point are we going to get past this myth that news reporting should be unbiased? At what point are we going to realize, in postmodern fashion, that neutrality is impossible? At what point are we going to insist that all news should be reported, not in an unbiased way, but in a fair way? It is indeed possible to be biased and fair at the same time.
I try hard to be “fair and balanced” when I look at these kinds of things, but I have to confess that, in this long election season, my patience is running out with the left-wing and right-wing political extremists, who in their self-righteousness, believe that their views should be taken more seriously than the views of everyone else.
Fox, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Washington Times, is a conservative counterestablishment institution designed to ape the functions of the real thing, doing double duty by firing up the troops with custom-crafted ideological spin, "analysis" and phony scholarship while confusing the rest of the world with nonsense disguised as news.
The question of Fox's malevolence is settled. What remains is a disagreement among liberals over an appropriate response. Some argue that liberals ought to refuse to participate at all because it is impossible to do so without playing by Fox's fixed rules. But by sitting it out, the counterargument goes, they are shutting themselves off from cable's largest audience, and inviting the accusation of fear and wimpiness.
As John Edwards explained when announcing his withdrawal from a Fox debate, "There's just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending to be objective." He also noted that he had appeared on the network more than 30 times. Edwards is right. The proper response to a Fox attack disguised as a question is, "Well, Brit, I appeared on this biased show of yours to set your viewers straight about the BS you and your fellow right-wingers have been handing them. Now here's the truth..."
"Divisive" or "descriptive"? Jeremiah Wright talks to reporters at the National Press Club.
Barack Obama's former pastor is making the rounds... and stirring up more controversy for the Democratic presidential candidate. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that he will try to change national policy by “coming after” Obama if he is elected president.
Wright ended on a note straight from the 1960s: “I believe a change is coming.”
But is it the same kind of change Barack Obama promises? They may share the same economic populism that blesses marching on the picket line, but Wright’s views on race don't seem to have much in common with Obama's public statements to date. Wright’s separatist message is hardly post-racial, while many have acclaimed Obama as embodying that unifying ideal. Obama said in his Philadelphia speech on race that “the profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is... that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made.”
In that March 18 speech, Obama expressed the conviction that he represents a new generation of post-grievance black leadership, ready to take on the challenges that confront blacks in places like Detroit today: Crime and family disintegration.
But his good friend and pastor of 20 years is a symbol of how much of the black establishment still revels in old-school demagoguery.
We knew there would come a moment when the first black man with a realistic shot at becoming president would have to reconcile black anger and frustration with white fear and resentment. It's a critical test: acknowledging the righteous anger of people frustrated by continuing racial inequality without looking like the kind of Angry Black Man often rejected by more conservative white voters.
Who knew that the race-based bullet wounding Obama's campaign would come from friendly fire -- his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright -- adding yet another unpredictable twist to the most unconventional electoral contest in history?
I've already pointed out how the initial stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons have distorted many of his points. So I'm not saying he shouldn't feel compelled to defend his church and his reputation by facing down the media he way he has by speaking to PBS' Bill Moyers, speaking to the Detroit NAACP Sunday and speaking to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. as I write this.
But Wright's recent appearances will continue to hurt the candidate, because the reverend is the radical Obama never was, and he's close enough to give skeptical white voters an excuse.
Hillary Clinton is closing the popular vote and delegate gaps with Barack Obama. But also she needs superdelegates, such as Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., if she hopes to win the nomination.
The Democratic nomination contest could go all the way to June, and perhaps even to the Democratic National Convention in August.
One thing many people haven’t noticed about Hillary Clinton’s 55 percent to 45 percent victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary is that it put her ahead of Obama in the popular vote. Her 214,000-vote margin in the Keystone State means that she has won the votes, in primaries and caucuses, of 15,112,000 Americans, compared to 14,993,000 for Obama.
If you add in the votes, as estimated by the folks at realclearpolitics.com, in the Iowa, Nevada, Washington, and Maine caucuses, where state Democratic parties did not count the number of caucus-attenders, Clinton still has a lead of 12,000 votes.
Moreover, she may be able to maintain that lead, despite an expected Obama victory in North Carolina on May 6, by rolling up big popular vote margins in West Virginia on May 13, Kentucky on May 20 and Puerto Rico on June 1. So it’s likely that Clinton will be able to argue that undecided super-delegates should heed the will of the people.
Hillary Clinton may be behind, and she may lose. But she is now widely seen as the tougher of the two candidates, the one who is more resolute, who will fight harder and longer (and, yes, more unscrupulously) to achieve her desired ends. An edge in toughness is hardly a good quality to cede to your opponent.
Some Democratic officials who were worried about having Senator Clinton at the top of the ticket in November are now expressing concern about Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton’s bar-brawl tactics have raised her negatives sharply, but they’ve also raised doubts about Mr. Obama. Is he a fighter? Is he tough enough to take on the G.O.P.?
One of Senator Obama’s favorite phrases is “the fierce urgency of now.” There is nothing more fiercely urgent for him right now than to reassure voters and superdelegates that an Obama candidacy will not lead to a Democratic debacle in November.
Hillary Clinton celebrates her victory in the Keystone state with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama in Pennsylvania on Tuesday by enough of a margin to continue a battle that Democrats increasingly believe is undermining their effort to unify the party and prepare for the general election against
Democratic superdelegates will have to think about the long months of summer ahead. The truth is that Senator Obama would be the most left-wing main party presidential nominee in history. He is far outside the mainstream, and large crowds in stadiums don't translate into huge vote margins in general elections. The young love him, yes, but the old are really going to trust John McCain to protect them. The superdelegates are going to be upset that Operation Chaos revived Hillary, and if she comebacks, she'll always be Rush's nominee, but he just played the role of Burgess Meredith/Mickey Goldmill in Rocky. (Bill will be Paulie -- a fine analogy.) Hillary will have shown the toughness to do what it took to win.
(Moderator's note: Hewitt called it early in the day Tuesday.)Joel likes: The Democratic race will continue
Hillary Clinton has won the Pennsylvania primary, and something akin to formal permission to continue campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.
With most of the Pennsylvania vote counted, she's ahead 55-45.
That's a credible victory, if not perhaps so dramatic a finish as would have been needed to fundamentally change the reality that the senator from New York is unlikely to win the Democratic nod.
Clinton will keep campaigning. This race will continue for at least two more weeks, and probably longer. That will excite Clinton backers, just as it will disappoint Obama backers.
It's messy. It's frustrating. But this is what democracy looks like. And it will keep looking this way until Obama beats Clinton in a state she's supposed to win -- or until Obama finally wins not just a plurality but a majority of delegates.
Hillary Clinton greets supporters at the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia.
The Pennsylvania primary is more than a contest between Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It's a showdown between two rival labor union factions and whether they can deliver for their presidential candidate.
It seems clear that this year’s establishment candidate, Hilary Clinton, will not have organized labor rush to her rescue. Part of this may be political payback for her husband’s presidency. After aggressively supporting Bill Clinton twice, many labor unions felt that his administration either ignored them or endorsed legislation (such as NAFTA) that was inimical to union interests.
But there are more fundamental issues that explain labor’s shift. For starters, the leaders of today’s unions are different from those of yesteryear in personality and ideology. Consider Andy Stern, the charismatic president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and arguably the most important labor leader in America. Stern didn’t get his start in the union movement working at a steel mill; instead, he attended the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s and first joined the SEIU as a social worker. Unlike Meany or Kirkland, Stern is unabashedly liberal on nearly every policy issue. And when Stern was unhappy with the leadership of the AFL-CIO, he spurned the old labor line about “solidarity,” withdrew the SEIU from the AFL-CIO, recruited like-minded unions to do the same, and formed an entirely new labor federation, dubbed Change to Win.
If the national news media had been right, the culinary workers' union would have swept Sen. Barack Obama to victory in Nevada's Democratic presidential primary.
That, of course, is not what happened; Sen. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote -- though not the most delegates to the party's national convention -- in the Silver State. But the attention paid to the culinary workers' endorsement of Obama suggests labor unions will play a more prominent role in this year's presidential election.
Nearly 14 percent of Pennsylvania workers -- 745,000 people -- are union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Union members don't vote in lock step, said Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County Labor Council, but the figures are pretty high. About 70 percent of union workers vote how their union advises them, Shea said.
