Democracy Corps has an important report on voter attitudes, “The Big Decisions Ahead on Economic Renewal and Reduced Debt,” which should be of considerable interest Democratic candidates and their campaigns.
The DCORPS analysis is based in part on a new poll, co-sponsored by Democracy Corps and Campaign for America’s Future, with support from MoveOn.org, AFSCME and SEIU. The analysis provides compelling data indicating that candidates who advocate cuts in Social Security benefits and show little interest in creating jobs “face major voter backlash.”
The poll, which was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research from 7/26-29, provides revealing opinion data and analysis on social security, job-creation and deficit-reduction. From the Democracy Corps analysis of the data:

Voters are united on this key point: Social Security and Medicare are off-limits as a way to reduce the deficit…As Social Security celebrates its 75th anniversary this week in the midst of this troubled economy, voters across the political divide want these programs defended….Voters say spending cuts for Social Security and Medicare should not be part of any deficit reduction plan by a wide 68 to 28 percent margin.

DCORPS founder Stan Greenberg and Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) co-director Robert Borosage held a ‘press call’ on August 12th discussing the implications of the poll for the debate over jobs and deficits. On the same call, progressive leaders from MoveOn.org Political Action and CAF announced major campaign to get candidates on record opposing any cuts in benefits, including raising the retirement age.
In his recent HuffPo article, on the tea party and Republicans Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, who lead the effort to stop Bush’s privatization schemes, explains:

Major Progressive organizations have launched a new coalition to press Members of Congress to defend Social Security and Medicare, and the issue has vaulted to the top of the issue agenda for Democratic candidates across the country. Democratic House Members conducted more than 100 events to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Social Security over the last weekend — and to pledge their opposition to privatizing Social Security or cutting its benefits. That includes commitments not to raise the retirement age — an idea that is just terrific for guys who fly around in corporate jets, but doesn’t go over so well if you happen to haul bricks on construction sites or flip mattresses in hotel rooms for a living……Americans United for Change — which was first organized to run the successful campaign to defeat Bush’s 2005 attempt to privatize Social Security — has launched a major new initiative to stop the “Republican sneak attack on Social Security and Medicare.”
…The public soundly rejected President Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005. You’d think that the experience of the stock market meltdown where millions of people saw their life’s savings go up in smoke would be enough to convince even the most orthodox right-winger that it’s a terrible idea to tie Social Security to the ups and downs of the stock market. But economic reality doesn’t seem to break through the Republican’s ideological and self-interest blinders.

The polling data suggests that House GOP leader John Boehner’s call for Social Security benefit reductions to pay for tax cuts for rich could sink Republican candidates. Adds Creamer:

Congressman Paul Ryan, who would be Chairman of the House Budget Committee if the Republicans were to take back control of the House, has published a detailed “Roadmap” on how he would privatize Social Security and abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers for private insurance. Much of that “roadmap” was actually included in the Republican budget alternative that Ryan convinced the Republicans to support last year. Now that vote has begun to come back to haunt some of the members who would just as soon keep their economic views safely in the closet before the voters cast their ballots.

It appears Democrats have much to gain by focusing media attention on GOP “reforms” that weaken Social Security, whether reduction in benefits or raising the retirement age. Seniors over age 60, who comprised 29 percent of the electorate in the 2006 midterms, will likely be a pivotal force on November 2nd. As Creamer notes of Republicans,

…Many of those swing districts that they would so dearly like to win this fall have lots of senior voters. They had been counting on scaring those voters into supporting Republican candidates with visions of “death panels” and lies about health reform-induced cuts in Medicare.

But it looks like Republicans made a serious mistake, says Creamer:

Many of those seniors don’t like “government spending” — but by that they are definitely not referring to their Social Security or Medicare. They view both as social insurance — as programs they have paid into throughout their working lives in expectation that they would be entitled to the advertised benefits — the same way they would under any insurance plan. In focus groups the moment you tell these voters that Republicans support privatizing Social Security or replacing Medicare with vouchers for private insurance, Republican support plummets.
…The Republicans have a lot to worry about when it comes to these issues. Polls show that if the voters are talking about Social Security and Medicare on Nov. 2, Republican fortunes will drop like a rock. In fact, these two issues are like kryptonite to Republican chances. That’s why you’ll see mainstream Republicans scramble like mad to downplay their true intentions — and change the subject over the weeks ahead. Republican Leader John Boehner — who completely supports Ryan’s “Road Map” — made the mistake several weeks ago of blurting out that he supported raising the Social Security retirement age to 70. Since then he has ducked and weaved when it comes to Social Security.

Despite the gloomy projections of Democratic defeat in the upcoming midterms, the DCORPS analysis indicates that Dems have a formidable card to play regarding the Republicans’ unpopular positions on Medicare and Social Security. And if Dems can find a way to show that GOP candidates are equally-clueless about the public’s desire for a stronger federal investment in creating jobs, predictions of a Republican takeover of congress may prove to be a misguided fantasy.

Politico‘s Ben Smith presents a memo by Administration poll analyst Joel Benenson arguing that “Republican unpopularity could be the Democratic Party’s best defense against its own unpopularity.” According to Benenson’s bullet points:

• Today’s NBC/Wall St. Journal poll underscores the fact that with fewer than 90 days until the mid-term elections, the Republican Party’s standing is at one of its lowest points ever and its competitive position vs. the Democrats looks much as it did in the summers of 1998 and 2002, neither of which were “wave” elections.
• The NBC/WSJ poll shows that not only is the Republican Party’s image at its lowest point ever in their polling, their ratings are still lower than Democrats’ and their party image has worsened much more than the Democrats when compared with the last midterm elections in 2006.

See also Ed Kilgore’s post on the survey here. Further, Benenson adds,

• Only 24 percent of Americans gave the Republicans a positive rating while 46 percent were negative for a net of -22 (28 percent were neutral). This positive rating is not only a historic low, it is down 9 points since May — just three months ago. In addition, in July of 2006, a year in which Republicans lost 30 seats, their rating stood at 32 percent positive, 39 percent negative for only a -7 net rating or a change in the net rating of -15. During the same period the Democratic rating slipped only slightly by a net of -4 points from 32/39 in July 2006 to 33/44 today.
• This overall outlook is also consistent with an ABC/Washington Post poll from a month ago (7/13/10) that showed Americans’ confidence in Republicans in Congress to make “the right decisions for the country’s future” lagging behind Democrats:
– 73 percent say they are not confident in Republicans in Congress while 26 percent say they are, for a net negative confidence rating of -47 points.
– Democrats in Congress are at 32 percent confident (6 points higher than the GOP) and 67 percent who say they are not confident (6 points lower than the GOP), for a net confidence rating of -35, which is 12 points better than the congressional Republicans.
• When asked in the NBC/WSJ poll whether they prefer Democratic or Republican control of Congress after the November elections, 43 percent said Democrats and 42 percent said Republicans. While Democrats had a 10-point margin in 2006 when they gained 31 seats, the previous two midterms also showed a deadlocked preference in the summers of 1998 and 2002 in the NBC/WSJ polls. In both of those elections, the gains were only in single digits: 5 seats for the Democrats in 1998 and 8 seats for the Republicans in 2002.
• In addition, a Pew poll from early July showed that Republicans have a significant image deficit among Americans on the question of which party is “more concerned about people like me.” In that survey of 1800 Americans, 50 percent said Democrats were more concerned about people like them while only 34 percent said Republicans were.

Cherry-picked as Benenson’s data may be, all three polls appear to be methodologically-solid. If Benenson is right, Dems are in a better position, image-wise than Republicans. There’s plenty of room for improvement for Dems, but the GOP is in a deeper mess in terms of the way they are viewed by the public.

Read more…

If you thought the Republican “anchor babies” scam to repeal the 14th amendment citizenship clause was just an escalation of their boilerplate xenophobia, Harold Meyerson gets down to the real nitty-gritty in his WaPo column today:

The Republican war on the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause is indeed directed at a mortal threat — but not to the American nation. It is the threat that Latino voting poses to the Republican Party.
By proposing to revoke the citizenship of the estimated 4 million U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants — and, presumably, the children’s children and so on down the line — Republicans are calling for more than the creation of a permanent noncitizen caste. They are endeavoring to solve what is probably their most crippling long-term political dilemma: the racial diversification of the electorate. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are trying to preserve their political prospects as a white folks’ party in an increasingly multicolored land.

Meyerson’s got numbers:

…The demographic base of the Republican Party, as Ruy Teixeira demonstrates in a paper released by the Center for American Progress this summer, is shrinking as a share of the nation and the electorate. As the nation grows more racially and religiously diverse, Teixeira shows, its percentage of white Christians will decline to just 35 percent of the population by 2040.
The group that’s growing fastest, of course, is Latinos. “Their numbers will triple to 133 million by 2050 from 47 million today,” Teixeira writes, “while the number of non-Hispanic whites will remain essentially flat.” Moreover, Latinos increasingly trend Democratic — in a Gallup poll this year, 53 percent self-identified as Democrats; just 21 percent called themselves Republican.

Meyerson has hit on the longer-term goal behind the repeal effort. But no doubt the Republicans hope to gain some short term advantage from swing voters by whipping up anti-immigrant animosity for the mid terms.
It’s a cynical bet — that Hispanic-bashing will win more votes from economically-fearful whites than they will lose from Hispanic voters. At last count, the Republicans had 91 House sponsors of the measure, which was reportedly submitted in the House last year by former congressman Nathan Deal, who was designated one of “the 15 most corrupt members of congress” by the nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Today Deal became the GOP’s nominee for Georgia Governor. Georgia’s Latino population is smaller in percentage terms than many other states, although it is growing very fast. Still, it would be poetic justice if Deal lost the race by a small margin to Democrat Roy Barnes as a result of the latter’s lop-sided support from Hispanic voters.

Kentucky senatorial candidate Jack Conway delivers a great speech, with a tight balance between highlighting his record, articulating his vision and ferociously attacking his opponent. All in all, this one is an excellent instructional video for Dem candidates:

Clearly, Conway could win — with a little support from Dems, which can be provided on Conway’s ActBlue page.

Take a little break from mid term mania and check out Richard Kirsch’s post “What Progressives Did Right to Win Healthcare” at The Nation. While most of the reportage on the struggle to enact health care reform focused on the legislative lobbying, public opinion trends and policy analysis, Hirsch provides an insightful overview of the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) coalition-building effort that was instrumental in passing HCR, and reveals some organizing techniques that should be transferable to other progressive movements. Hirsch’s post covers 10 aspects of the campaign, a few of which are presented here:

A detailed campaign plan: The HCAN Organizing Committee wrote an 865-page campaign plan incorporating: grassroots and netroots organizing; communications through traditional, paid and new media; coalition building including creating a new organization of small businesses; fundraising; and a new round of public opinion research focused on generating anger at the health insurance industry.
Resources to win: If there’s a single hero in this story, it’s Gara LaMarche, the President of Atlantic Philanthropies, which made a $10 million grant to HCAN early in 2008, assuring that we would have enough resources to launch the campaign in the crucial months before the 2008 election. The $51 million amount we raised between 2008 and 2010 from Atlantic and other funders, including our Steering Committee, was sufficient to run a campaign that placed us at the center of reform efforts.
Building on established progressive capacity: Rather than hiring outside organizers, HCAN built local coalitions in forty-four states, through three established networks: USAction, the Campaign for Community Change and ACORN. We funded seventy-five organizers who coordinated the work of paid and volunteer organizers from the local affiliates of our steering committee members and from other organizations that made up our 1,100-member coalition. HCAN’s online staff, working with MoveOn and others, added a huge Internet presence.
Local coalitions held thousands of public meetings and press events with members of Congress and made hundreds of visits to their offices. Regular call-in days generated hundreds of thousands of calls and faxes. When the Tea Party attacks came in early August, members of Congress called on the HCAN coalitions for help. While our response didn’t make as dramatic press coverage as the angry Tea Partiers, the truth is that the HCAN coalition, working with Organizing for America, turned out as many, and sometimes two to three times as many, people as the Tea Partiers, to Democratic Town Halls around the country during the three weeks before Labor Day. Grassroots organizing continued throughout the campaign, with candlelight vigils outside the homes of wavering members of Congress and thank-you events for members of Congress when they returned home after voting for the bill.

Hirsch’s account shows how progressives can overcome disadvantages like a 24-7 attack from right-wing media by taking a long-term view, refusing to get discouraged, thinking big and outworking the opposition. It’s an inspiring story, and one that contains lessons for progressives about the power of vision and commitment.

In the wake of the Missouri referendum drubbing the individual mandate, TNR‘s Jonathan Chait makes a couple of insightful points and provides an interesting suggestion in his post “What the Individual Mandate Vote Means.” First, on the Missouri vote:

…First of all, Missouri is not a “bellwether” state right now. It (narrowly) supported John McCain in 2008 when the country as a whole backed Barack Obama by 7 percentage points. Second, Tuesday’s election was a low-turnout primary with a massively disproportionate Republican electorate, accounting for two-thirds of all voters.

Chait says the assault on the individual mandate of the health care reform act is the thread which conservatives hope can be tugged to “unravel the whole structure of health care reform” and he designates it “the Leninist plan to collapse the system.” But Chait also explains that conservatives and insurers don’t really want to pull the plug on the individual mandate, which is the financial foundation of the act, and leave everything else in place, in which case the reform law would likely morph into a single payer system.
Chait also suggests that reform supporters consider an interesting proposal in a New York Times op-ed by Paul Starr, author of The Social Transformation of American Medicine. As Starr Explains, quoted by Chait:

…Let individuals opt out of the new insurance system, without a penalty, by signing a form on their tax return acknowledging that they would then be ineligible for federal health insurance subsidies for a fixed period — say, five years.
During that time, if they had second thoughts and decided to buy health insurance, they would have no guarantee that they could find a policy or that it would cover pre-existing conditions. In other words, they would face a market much like the one that exists now. And while that’s hardly a desirable position to be in, they would have made the decision themselves, and the option to step outside the system would relieve Republican concerns about government mandates.

As Chait concludes, “Democrats should work on implementing Starr’s idea. It’s better than having endless political fights over the single least popular aspect of the Affordable Care Act.” Looking at an even bigger picture, it’s a great example of the type of thoughtful modification of a progressive reform that does no damage, but minimizes public resistance. Dems need more of this kind of thinking.

Chris Bowers’s Open Left post, “Memo to Chris Dodd: We already have a unicameral legislature” provides one of the more succinct, lucid and compelling arguments for cloture reform yet presented. Bowers does a surgical shredding Senator Dodd’s case for keeping the 60 vote threshold for cloture. First up, Bowers shatters Dodd’s argument that the 60 vote requirement is needed to affirm the Senate’s unique role and the principle of our bicameral national legislature:

…You don’t need different vote thresholds to have a bicameral system. Consider:
1. 36 states have bicameral legislatures where no filibuster is allowed. Would Senator Dodd claim those 36 states do not actually have a bicameral system?
2. The 60-vote threshold is not in the Constitution. It just isn’t. That was never a requirement for a bicameral legislature.
3. If anything, the 60-vote threshold has created a unicameral system where the Senate has rendered the House irrelevant. Getting rid of the 60-vote threshold would give the two legislative bodies more equitable power.

I would add that the 60 vote cloture threshold is the foundation of gridlocked government, which is the primary goal of the G.O.P. I say this as an admirer of Senator Dodd, who has been one of the more reliable Democratic leaders on many key issues, but who, along with a handful of other Democratic senators, is simply wrong on cloture reform.
Behind the unicameral legislature nonsense, Dodd’s case is essentially fear-driven, the old ‘we’re gonna miss the 60 vote requirement when we are in the minority’ argument. And yes, that could happen on occasion. But majority rule — the foundation of genuine democracy — is really the more important principle at stake here, and if we can’t have that, a 55 vote threshold is a step toward it. The way it is now, urgently needed reforms that could help millions of people are being held hostage by the 60-vote threshold, and that is unacceptable for a any government that purports to reflect the will of the people.
Bowers notes some related reforms that merit more serious consideration, and which might be achievable in a shorter time horizon that that which would be required for reducing the 60 vote threshold:

…if we do a better job focusing on the wider range of proposed rule changes–such as making unanimous consent non-debatable, requiring the filibuster to be a real talkathon where Senators have to stay on the floor (as Senator Lautenberg has proposed), or switching the burden of the cloture threshold on the opposition (for example, 45 votes to continue a filibuster, rather than 60 to break it, as Senator Bennet has proposed)-then the interest and momentum for reform could increase as people debate a wider range of possible reforms.

Bowers concedes that achieving any reform is an uphill struggle in the current political climate. But he adds, “Senate rules are not going to stay the same forever. The rules have changed in the past, and will change again in the future” — a key point for progressive Democrats to keep in mind in working for cloture reform. Although the obstacles are formidable at this political moment, we have to begin somewhere.

Greg Sargent’s ‘Plum Line’ post, “GOP blocks small business bill. Who will get the blame?” at the WaPo should be required reading for all Dem elected officials, their staffers and campaign workers. Here’s what Sargent has to say about how important legislative votes are too often reported and received:

…No matter how many times Dems scream about GOP obstructionism, the jury is out on whether Republicans will take any of the blame for its consequences. Dems run the place, and the public may tune out any argument over Senate procedure as so much Beltway white noise.
The latest: In the Senate today, Republicans blocked a bill to create a $30 billion fund to enable community banks to boost lending to small businesses. Republicans decried the move as another bailout, and it’s now unlikely that it will pass before Congress goes home for vacation in August, with little in the way of jobs bills under its belt.
So how will this story play?…

I won’t quote the graph from the AP story Sargent provides as exhibit “A.” You’ve seen it before in many previous incarnations. The general gist is that ‘gee wiz, those ineffectual Democrats failed to pass something again,’ giving the Republicans a largely free ride. The rest of the AP story Sargent didn’t quote prattles on in similar vein, at one point attempting to make Mitch McConnell sound like the voice of reason and humanitarian concern. Yet another classic example of lazy, gullible or GOP-biased reportage. As Sargent asks,

…Is this how the story will be understood by the American people? Very possible…Republicans claimed Dems blocked votes on the amendments they wanted. Dems countered that they agreed to votes on the GOP amendments, only to have the GOP demand more votes. Get what’s happening here? The larger story is all getting subsumed in a bunch of Beltway white noise.

Call it the ‘White Noise Strategy.” The GOP has been deploying it with impressive results for decades. Sargent quotes a statement from White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, the usual complaint about the Republicans playing politics and how the President will not be distracted — all well and good.
But what’s really needed here is a day of Democratic outrage, making the Republicans eat their numerous statements about small business being ‘the engine of job-creation.’ It should be a day when all Democratic elected officials, from city council members to Obama, get loud on one single message and refuse to talk about anything else. And that message should be fiercely-stated outrage, including displays of raw anger in press conferences, interviews, talk shows and statements, at denying small businesses the help they need to start hiring again. That would be a day that resonates with millions of small business women and men, as well as the unemployed and everyone who has the brains to understand that this is the kind of stimulus that makes sense. Then when October rolls around, remind them again and again about the day of outrage in political ads and a YouTube email campaign.
Small business job-creation is a hugely-important priority for economic recovery. The Republicans have squashed it for now. But there is a choice: Let the white noise prevail again — or get fierce.

We’ve done our share of MSM-bashing hereabouts, and probably not enough shout-outs to the traditional media reporters and columnists who do a good job of covering politics. But MSM groveling at the behest of FoxTV and the wingnuts does seem to be on the upswing, and it requires a lot of effort just to hold them accountable.
For those who think this may be overstating the case, we refer you to Charles Kaiser’s Hillman Foundation article, published in The Nation, which does a solid job of chronicling some of the recent atrocities. Kaiser’s “The Shame of the Fourth Estate.” presents a thorough account of “the perversion of journalism” by “a band of vicious charlatans,” including in his words:

* Time magazine’s decision to ask Glenn Beck to assess Rush Limbaugh’s importance in America for the 2009 Time 100: “His consistency, insight and honesty have earned him a level of trust with his listeners that politicians can only dream of.”
* A decision by the editors of washingtonpost.com to allow Beck to host a chat there to promote one of his books.
* This hard-hitting assessment of Beck by Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik, who gurgled on, “Sure, he may be selling a sensationalistic message of paranoia and social breakdown. But politics, or basic responsibility, aside, he has an entertainer’s sense of play with the medium of TV that O’Reilly, or perpetual sourpuss Neil Cavuto, don’t.” And why would anybody care about a basic sense of responsibility, anyway?
* A worshipful 1,943-word profile of Fox News founder and president Roger Ailes by David Carr and Tim Arango on the front page of the New York Times–which included this perfectly amoral quote from David Gergen, a perfectly amoral man:
“Regardless of whether you like what he is doing, Roger Ailes is one of the most creative talents of his generation. He has built a media empire that is capable of driving the conversation, and, at times, the political process.” And what a wonderful conversation it is.
* And finally, the most sickening piece of all in this splendid cohort: David von Drehele’s obscenely sycophantic cover story of Beck for Time magazine, which told us that Beck is a “man with his ear uniquely tuned to the precise frequency at which anger, suspicion and the fear that no one’s listening all converge;” that he is “tireless, funny, [and]self-deprecating…a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies–if he believed in conspiracies, which he doesn’t, necessarily; he’s just asking.”

Here’s Kaiser on the MSM handling of the Sherrod and ACORN smears and Breitbart’s role.

But far worse than the kid-gloves treatment of Fox and its friends was the inexplicably benign approach the MSM took toward Andrew Brietbart, the original source of the doctored video of Sherrod’s speech before the NAACP that started this whole sorry saga.
In the Washington Post, he was a “conservative activist and blogger”; in Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s story in the Times, he was “a blogger” who “similarly…used edited videos to go after ACORN, the community organizing group;” in the Wall Street Journal he was “a conservative Internet activist” who “argued that the Obama administration is insufficiently sensitive to bias against white people”; in the Los Angeles Times, “a conservative media entrepreneur” and to Associated Press television writer David Bauder a “conservative activist” whose website “attracted attention last year for airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.”
But to find out who Breitbart really is, you would have had to read (h/t Joe Stouter) Joe Conason in Salon, who, “recalling Breitbart from his days as eager lackey to Matt Drudge…warned from the beginning that nothing he produced would resemble journalism.”

Regarding Glenn Beck’s splenetic smearing of the President, WaPo‘s Dana Milbank, quoted in Kaiser’s article, has this:

…Consider these tallies from Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News since Obama’s inauguration: 202 mentions of Nazis or Nazism, according to transcripts, 147 mentions of Hitler, 193 mentions of fascism or fascist, and another 24 bonus mentions of Joseph Goebbels. Most of these were directed in some form at Obama–as were the majority of the 802 mentions of socialist or socialism on Beck’s nightly “report.”

Kaiser has more to say about the Sherrod smear and the press being hustled and intimidated by right-wing ideologues, and it all adds up to a very disturbing picture of one of America’s most important nongovernmental institutions. The time has come for America’s most influential print and electronic reporters and editors to do some soul-searching about their fearful compliance with neo-McCarthyism and reaffirm their commitment to social justice and journalism that serves the people.

In his WaPo op-ed, “Enough right-wing propaganda,”E. J. Dionne, Jr. does a good job of distilling one of the most salient points regarding the Sherrod smear into one sentence:

The traditional media are so petrified of being called “liberal” that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors.

But Dionne points out at some length that it’s not only the wimpy MSM that’s at issue here. He and many progressives rightfully feel that the Obama Administration caved awfully easy on this one:

The administration’s response to the doctored video pushed by right-wing hit man Andrew Breitbart was shameful. The obsession with “protecting” the president turned out to be the least protective approach of all.
The first reaction of the Obama team was not to question, let alone challenge, the video. Instead, it assumed that whatever narrative Fox News might create mattered more than anything else, including the possible innocence of a human being outside the president’s inner circle. She could be sacrificed without a thought.
Obama complained on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.” But it’s his own apparatus that turned “this media culture” into a false god.

After giving the Administration a fair share of the blame for being so easily hustled by prevaricating conservatives, however, it’s hard to overlook the shameless laziness/dishonesty of the MSM’s complicity. The headline for the Post article didn’t really get it. Call it wishful thinking, but I liked Truthdig‘s headline for Dionne’s article better: “The End of the Fox News Era.” Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
Dionne goes on to cite other examples of MSM wimptitude, including the sliming of Al Gore for saying he invented the internet (never mind that he never said it), the GOP’s “death panels” fear-mongering getting huge play, and the trumped up coverage of the “New Black Panthers” voter intimidation case.
The coverage of the Sherrod smear has been so extensive, that whatever fair-minded, persuadable voters were mulling over whether Breitbart and the tea party crowd could be trusted are now leaning toward a healthy skepticism regarding them. Breitbart and his defenders have lost some ground on this one. In that sense, the Sherrod smear did some good in terms of unintended consequences.
Some of the better thinkers have pinpointed a more lofty opportunity in the Sherrod affair that merits consideration. Here’s Charles J. Ogletree Jr., executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and Johanna Wald, the Institute’s director of strategic planning, also writing in The Washington Post:

…In some ways, Sherrod’s tale is a metaphor for this country’s aborted efforts to address race. In its entirety, her deeply moving story was about transformation and reconciliation between blacks and whites. It contained the seeds of progress and healing. She spoke of blacks and whites working together to save farms and to end poverty and suffering. But Sherrod, and those listening to her story, could get to her hopeful conclusion only by first wading through painful admissions of racial bias and struggle.
Racial inequality is perpetuated less by individuals than by structural racism and implicit bias….Implicit bias is a reality we must confront far more openly. A growing mass of compelling research reveals the unconscious racial stereotypes many of us harbor that affect our decisions. Such attitudes do not make us prejudiced; they make us human….
The good news is that structures can be dismantled and replaced and unconscious biases can be transformed, as happened to Shirley Sherrod and the family she helped, the Spooners. First, though, they must be acknowledged. We and others researching race and justice are committed to untangling the web of structures, conditions and policies that lead to unequal opportunities. Our nation has to stop denying the complexity of our racial attitudes, history and progress. Let’s tone down the rhetoric on all sides, slow down and commit to listening with less judgment and more compassion. If Americans did so, we might find that we share more common ground than we could have imagined.

Of course, politicians, as well as the media, can be excruciatingly slow learners. But the Sherrod smear ought to sound the knell for the age of MSM gullibility and general gutlessness. Surely, the time has come to put the childish things away and behave like grown-ups. As Dionne concludes

The Sherrod case should be the end of the line. If Obama hates the current media climate, he should stop overreacting to it. And the mainstream media should stop being afraid of insisting upon the difference between news and propaganda.

The one good thing about embarrassing lessons is that they are usually learned well. If it’s too much to ask of the MSM, it ought to be the only alternative for an Administration that hopes to win a second term.