Who is out of step with the country, really?
We get our sense of where the country is at largely from the media. When elections and opinion polls tell a different story, we have to ask questions about the media. FAIR has put out an critique of the news media’s analysis of the Democrats’ electoral victories of this week. A major theme of news coverage is that election night was a victory for conservative democrats who will move the party rightward, and that they were strategically opposed to anti-war democrats. FAIR argues that this is in fact a distortion, citing exit polls showing the majority of voters were against the war and looking at the actual positions of winning candidates on traditional democratic issues.
4 comments on “Who is out of step with the country, really?”
Another analysis:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2914/
Progressive Caucus Rising
This election was no victory for centrists
“We have a lot of work to do,” says Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif), shown here at a Capitol Hill news conference on the Federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina in February. “Hurricane Katrina was a stark reminder of the failure of our government to address the challenges of inequality and poverty that still confront our nation.”
Don’t buy all the crap coming from GOP talking-point memos or the blather from mainstream pundits. The midterm elections do not signal a move to the center. Yes, a few conservative Democrats were elected, but the big gainers were progressives. In particular, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is on the rise…
Alexander Cockburn also wrote a good piece about how the election suggests that the left-leaning democrats were the most successful. It’s on Counterpunch.
This is the URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11082006.html.
Here’s part of his take: “Tuesday’s polling results have confronted and answered two questions that the national Democrats tried to dodge throughout Campaign 2006. They didn’t want to take a clear position on the war and they didn’t want to attack the Clinton-Bush free trade consensus. On Tuesday antiwar and anti-free trade candidates prospered. The voters want the US out of the Iraq and they want decent jobs. Who are the Democrats who will speak to these concerns? Not Hillary Clinton. Not Joe Biden. Not Barack Obama. Maybe John Edwards, if he listens to his wife. What triumphed on Tuesday was not the Rahm Emanuel platform but something far closer to what Ralph Nader spoke for in 2000 and 2004.”
Here in California, supposedly one of the most “blue” states of the nation, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger won by a landslide. He did so partly on his movie star popularity, partly on his apparent turn toward bipartisanship and working with the Democratic controlled legislature. His opponent ran on traditional Democratic issues.
Perhaps most Americans now perceive the Republican party to be dominated by ideologues and corrupt politicians, and believe it was a big mistake for us to go into Iraq. But basically, I think most Americans are more pragmatist and moderate than liberal or conservative.
Comments are closed.