Discussion for article #238901
Thank you for the most informative and thought-provoking article I have read on this upcoming election to date. I only wish I felt better about things having read it.
I would love to get the author’s take on Bernie vs Hillary vs Joe.
40 Likes
Nice article. What it/we need, perhaps, is a relational bubble chart showing each candidate and the amount of money/percentage of funding coming from which plutocrat/pac. It would be illuminating to see who’s really responsible for this clown-car of an election.
ETA: I mean, as much as is possible post-Citizens United.
19 Likes
Great article. The part about Rubio drove it home for me, I remember thinking it was BS for the Times to go after him for having a boat, so you’re right, it’s the inconsequential stuff that gets repeated.
6 Likes
This country doesn’t have an ISIS problem. It has a massive political graft and corruption problem.
Local media have been talking about it in their individual states but you don’t hear a peep about it in the the national media. Each state now has at least one billionaire social and/or multinational monopoly billionaire setting the political agenda in that state by getting state initiatives/amendments to be put on the ballot…that would only help them. They hire people to collect citizens’ signatures using fraudulent means and then use fraudulent advertising to convince people they are needed.
The same thing has pretty well been going on in our nation’s Capitol in Congress through Tom DeLay’s K Street Project lobbyists on behalf of the same billionaires. But the corporate media has become oddly shy in using its new found Corporate Citizen free speech in reporting how these billionaires (and their own corporate media owners) are spending their unlimited Top 1% campaign dollars.
Our election process has always been somewhat of a cesspool of unfounded political slurs and accusations. The FTC used to have the power to pull ads that were fraudulent. St. Regan ended that over 40 years ago saying it was too much regulation. Now our elections are being funded by some of the worse political graft and willing political party whores in the history of democracy. .
When even the TeaParty yokels have to turn to a two bit, land developer grifter like Donald Trump to get what they feel is justice because they know their GOP Establishment is so corrupt, you know that the SCourt got it all wrong…on purpose.
Conservative Republicans declawed the FTC, set up K Street and gave the Top !% control of our election process by ending all campaign finance restrictions. They have no principles nor any ethics and haven’t since Nixon was forced out of office for getting involved in a petty crime. Rubio is the problem. He offers nothing but graft to the highest bidder. It’s become a Republican way of life.
Meanwhile our nation is being plundered by foreign multinational interests with the help of wealthy Americans and our workers abused. Bernie Sanders speaks this truth (which Hillary championed in 2008) and voters on both sides of the political spectrum are applauding. There always comes a time in history for one party over another to show political courage. This is one of them.
38 Likes
Spot on!
3 Likes
I was curious to see Jon Stewart’s take on Rubio’s boat, but when I clicked on the link, all I saw was a discussion of the War on Christmas. Please fix.
2 Likes
I agree with all that, though I’d add that the poor quality of national political coverage isn’t accidental. Nearly all national media has consolidated ownership into a few giant corporate entities, and this sort of tail-chasing irrelevancy is exactly what you get when the press is serving the interests of its owners rather than doing journalism.
I’ve long thought that dynamiting the ownership structure of national media is an essential prerequisite to making our politics healthier.
13 Likes
The print version of Politico gets its advertising from position paper mills and lobbyist law firms. that’s all you need to know about them and their coverage. Like CNN they should exist for the rest of us as an object of scorn. We’ve certainly had the rich in politics–Truman famously worried more about “the Pop” than the Pope when it came to JFK and we shouldn’t forget having two branches of the Roosevelt family represented, but those were more obvious and the money wasn’t being laundered with the complicity of the IRS. Besides watching the Kochs someone also should be watching what’s happened to the campaign to have a constitutional amendment to address Citizens United. If that ever becomes a real thing (maybe Bob Reich hasn’t been able to over come Common Cause’s bluenose-ishness?). That’s the kind of single issue campaign that would make the Koch influence more obvious to a broad range of people and less escapable for Politico.
8 Likes
" As of this writing there are 15 declared candidates. "
Check the FEC website. There are over 500 across all parties who’ve filed the necessary declarative paperwork.
http://www.fec.gov/press/resources/2016presidential_form2dt.shtml
Here’s a link on that.
As for the article, rather than reading Mr. Perlstein’s view that " all this noise doesn’t amount to an ongoing story by which citizens can understand what is actually going on," maybe he could point to the places that do the best job of it and what how readers can fill in the gaps.
One of my left-leaning personal faves is Charles P. Pierce’s blog over at Esquire. It has the added advantages of being free and having a reasonably intelligent cast of regular commenters. WaPo’s Plum Line blog can also be informative, but WaPo limits the number of free pages you can read and the comments are troll-fested.
2 Likes
Brilliant…and sadly, has pretty much always been the case as far as media coverage of electoral campaigns.
What a sad commentary on our democracy, but tune in Squint and the Meat Puppet (as Charlie Pierce refers to Joe and Mika) and what do you see and hear…dueling clips of Trump and McCain because THAT is that the media believes is campaign coverage.
Wage inequality, global warming, the horror of campaign spending and corruption, the actual records of candidates seeking the nod, wall street predations, minimum wage, future of Social Security and Medicare?
Who cares about that stuff…Trump just handed out Lindsay Graham’s cell phone number…Squirrel!!!
6 Likes
Your entire post duplicates my feelings exactly. I would have spent a couple of dozen more paragraphs releasing my feelings about POLITICO, however.
5 Likes
Great discussion of the "pollution that passeth all understanding’ in our political hearts and minds. Also, very discouraging. I can’t yet see when it will change.
Here’s a link to a very lengthy thinkpiece by Barney Frank entitled "Why Progressives Shouldn’t Support Bernie", and it should be read as thoroughly as Perlstein’s piece. Barney makes the case that a battle between Bernie and HRC would do the Democratic Party much harm because of intraparty struggles, and concludes
I wish we lived in a country where the most relevant political dispute was over how far to the liberal side the electorate was prepared to go. Until we do — and I will continue to work with Sanders and others to get us there — spending our resources on an intraparty struggle rather than on working to defeat our very well-funded conservative opponents is self-indulgence, not effective political action
10 Likes
Terrific article! Best piece on the current situation, media and political, I’ve read. More like this one, Josh. Sacred cows make great sandwiches.
4 Likes
I disagree strongly with Frank’s article. Even his final paragraph that you quote is utter nonsense. So, what, instead of actually engaging in discussions and activities to move the party towards what he proclaims he desires, we should instead just suck it up and wish upon a star?? That’s absurd.
Even worse, Frank is essentially arguing that we not even have primaries, just let the Powers That Be make the decisions about who to run, and the rest of us should be grateful that the bestow such pearls of wisdom before us. Which of course guarantees that there will NEVER be any discussion about how far to the left the electorate is willing to go…nor would there be any point in having any discussion. Well, at least for all the rest of us dirty peasants in the party.
Lets review a major piece of evidence that pokes a HUGE hole in Frank’s argument…a man I like to call Mr. President, Barak Obama. First point, according to Frank, the 2008 nomination should have just been handed over to Hillary…and that by not doing so, it cost us dearly. Except of course, we won the election in 2008. And the follow up election in 2012 with the same candidate. Indeed the length of that primary battle engaged people across the country…not just a few activists in the early states. And that engagement is what led directly to an extremely powerful ground game being developed, the likes of which the GOP was totally unprepared for. (and arguably, still aren’t…even though its kicked their butts twice now). Hand the nomination to Clinton as Franks said? That never comes about.
Competition is good. We need to be hashing out the direction of the party, specific policy disagreements, and bringing as many people into those discussions as we possible can. The problem that this article is rather long windedly making is that, despite the historically large number of people in the GOP primaries, the electorate isn’t being engaged…its a very small number of billionaires that are making the calls. Its just that they don’t all agree with each other; but it is much closer to the back room nomination process that Franks is pining for.
11 Likes
Joe Biden is how we got Clarence Thomas.
1 Like
Did you campaign for McGovern?
It used to be that big-money backing of candidates was illegal, so it was a reporter’s job to snoop out and report this activity. The news was universally greeted with appropriate shock and shame.
Now, thanks to Citizens United (one of the worst, most ironic case names ever), it is not illegal. Reporters have no incentive to investigate, and the government enforcers of even the remaining sliver of propriety have been choked off from funding and members; they acknowledge publicly that cheating cannot be investigated.
Plutocracy is de facto, and nearly de jure.
8 Likes
I think I was 8 at the time, so no.
But I am not entirely sure I get where you are coming with that. Or how anyone can take Frank’s article as a serious suggestion for how the party should conduct primaries. We want to be the party of inclusion, to have a great big tent…but only want candidates and voices from one wing of the party to be heard? Eat the cake and keep it too?
3 Likes