Im-Politic: The Adolescents’ Crusade

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Establishment Media, Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, National Rifle Association, NRA, opioids, Parkland, school security, school shootings

How to say this delicately, without coming off as a callous old fogey? Those stunningly eloquent and impassioned Parkland, Florida students who survived Valentine’s Day’s appalling massacre, and Americans of all ages flocking to the anti-gun violence movement they’re creating, are unintentionally giving their compatriots a reminder of why we don’t let high school-ers run the country.

Although my life has never been in danger from any source, and I have never had to attend burials of dozens of my peers within days, I have no difficulty understanding why anyone with these experiences, and especially impressionable young people (yes, a cliché, but no less true for it), would want to do everything possible to make sure that they and no one like them suffers this ordeal again. Further, who can blame them for trying to shame politicians and others into supporting their various favored policy responses (which appear to focus on tighter gun restrictions and to a lesser extent on improving mental health care), and threaten those office-holders who they believe oppose their desired gun curbs in order to keep their National Rifle Association (NRA) campaign contributions flowing?

Improvements on all fronts, including gun accessibility, obviously can and should be made. For example, I’m impressed with proposals to set 21 as the minimum age for any gun ownership. And closing the “Charleston loophole” in the national background check system? Absolutely. And these on top of the other measures I blogged about last Wednesday – including tighter school security along with longer-term measures to provide better and more comprehensive mental health care and, maybe most important of all, whatever changes are needed to transform a culture that has so slighted family and community, and has so glorified so many forms of instant gratification – including violence.

But the Parkland students whose tough demands and often strident statements have attracted the most attention are going to run into a big obstacle as they seek political and policy change – which of course they have every right to do. They’re going to find out that, as important as preventing or reducing the number of school and other mass shootings undeniably is, it’s not the only problem facing the nation. Arguably it’s not the gravest problem facing the nation. More important, that’s what the vast majority of Americans to date believe.

The proof, in this case, is in the polling. We’ve had a few surveys that gauged public opinion in the immediate aftermath of Parkland, and they do contain good news for the students and others pushing for more effective gun control. For example, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found 50 percent-46 percent support for a national assault weapons ban, and agreement by a 58 percent to 37 percent margin that the Florida high school shooting could “have been prevented by stricter gun laws.”

But the far more important results – and the ones that politicians will be zeroing in on – make clear that, even when memories of Parkland couldn’t have been fresher, Americans have recognized the importance of other priorities, too. Specifically, a CBS News sounding asked respondents the following question:

“In this year’s Congressional elections, how important will the issue of gun laws be to your vote – will it be the single most important issue, will be important but so will other issues, or will it not be important to you?”

The results? Only 18 percent described gun issues as their most important. Seventy percent said it was one of numerous priorities. Even 72 percent of Democrats, who most strongly favor tougher gun laws, agreed with this proposition.

A Quinnipiac University survey reported much the same. It asked respondent, “If you agreed with a political candidate on other issues, but not on the issue of gun laws, could you still vote for that candidate, or not?”

By a 54 percent to 34 percent, respondents said that they could support a candidate regardless of their gun laws stance. Forty-two percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents agreed.

And before you start throwing a fit, if you think about it, this perspective is entirely justified. Consider the following: According to an organization that runs a “Mass Shooting Tracker,” 590 Americans last year died in such incidents. And this database defines mass shootings relatively broadly – as incidents in which at least four people are shot (as opposed to at least four killed). Everyone of good faith should agree that that’s 590 too many.

But here’s the human toll of another national problem: opioid addiction. According to the federal Center for Disease Control, in 2016 (the latest figures available), 63,600 Americans died of overdoses from such drugs. Fatalities are growing fastest, moreover, among Americans in the 15-24 years age group.

To be completely and emphatically clear, I am not depicting any of these other national challenges as excuses for business-as-usual about school and other mass shootings. We rightly expect our elected leaders to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead, I’m observing that, as the Parkland students seeking to concentrate Americans’ attention tightly on these issues wade into national politics, they’ll (continue to) discover not only that there are reasonable arguments on the other side that so far have convinced people who are not moral monsters and who do not have “blood on their hands,” but that there are plenty of other fish in that sea. And many are not only just as big. They’re just as virtuous.

P.S. – recognizing this perspective goes double for most of the Establishment Media members who have covered this story.  For unlike the Parkland students, they don’t deserve any slack. Because they’re supposed to be adults.     

 

Im-Politic: Clinton’s Campaign Sure Thinks the Mainstream Media is “With Her”

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2016 election, ABC News, Bernie Sanders, CBS News, CNN, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media, MSNBC, NBC News, NPR, PBS, The Intercept, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wikileaks

The word “surrogate” is defined in dictionaries as “a substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office.” Now thanks to the Wikileaks disclosures of internal emails and other strategy documents from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, we know that the Democratic candidate and her operatives believed that many members of the Mainstream Media fit that description for her upcoming White House race as well.

According to a memo released by Wikileaks on Friday, and first reported (to my knowledge) on The Intercept website, the list of journalists viewed by the Clinton-ites as reliable conveyors of her message included numerous opinion journalists whose liberal leanings are no secret. Examples include E.J. Dionne, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post; and David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins of The New York Times.

There’s nothing wrong in principle with their presence. There’s no evidence so far that any of them offered their services to the campaign either voluntarily or in response to a request. And unless material comes out indicating active collusion, although surely most are bristling at the suggestion that they’ve been in the tank for anyone in politics, none of these pundits has any control over how they’re viewed by politicians.

But the Clinton characterization of other list members is much more troubling. Dan Balz of the Post isn’t exactly a pure-play columnist – presumably that’s why his employer doesn’t place his pieces on the op-ed page. But his “news analyses” are supposed to occupy some middle ground between opinion and hard news. That concept isn’t necessarily illegitimate. But maybe the Post could clue its readers in on how it views the relevant distinctions, so they could make up their own minds as to how to view these articles?

Another category of listees is problematic, too, but maybe a little less so, since Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Mathews host talk shows on a cable network (MSNBC) that doesn’t try very hard to hide its partisanship. (Similar criticisms of course can be leveled at many of their counterparts on Fox News.)  

Major problems, however, surround the inclusion of news show hosts and anchors who do style themselves as objective journalists. For reasons, I described yesterday, no one should be surprised that ABC News Sunday talk show host George Stephanopoulos is viewed as a Clinton surrogate. But his CBS counterpart John Dickerson? Wolf Blitzer of CNN? Charlie Rose, who does double duty at CBS and PBS?

And scariest of all is the number of listed journalists who present themselves as completely objective beat reporters, like Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Jon King and Jeff Zeleny of CNN, Mara Liasson of NPR, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post. Moreover, in another memo, the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman was described as an especially “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” the Clinton team with her performance after their promptings.

Since this material dates from spring, 2015, it’s of course nothing more than speculation (however plausible) to venture that Clinton’s operatives have viewed these same journalists as trusted allies in the campaign against her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. (He didn’t declare his candidacy until June.) But the timing is revealing nonetheless because by April, Clinton’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, had thrown his hat into the ring, and it was clear by then that many voters in the party’s left wing were recoiling at the prospect of Clinton as liberalism’s standard-bearer.

As a result, these memos add to the case that much of the national press corps has seen its real mission not as reporting events as objectively as possible, or even as fronting for Democrats, but as defending a center-left status quo against populist challengers of all stripes. Certainly Sanders and many of his backers count themselves as victims.

Fortunately, the only silver lining in this picture is a bright one: Americans’ trust in the mass media to give them the straight news dope is at an all-time low, at least according to Gallup. Undoubtedly that’s a big reason why the establishment media’s finances show signs of weakening across the board. If money really does talk in the ranks of these profit-seeking enterprises, mounting business pressures could push them back to their more responsible roots. Or the Mainstream Media’s owners could arrogantly decide to go down with their ships – in which case the big question will be whether investors more devoted to quality journalism will recognize the vacuum they’ve left.

Im-Politic: The Biggest Media Clinton Cover-Up?

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2016 election, Bill Clinton, chattering class, democracy, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Gennifer Flowers, George Stephanopoulos, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, journalism, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Mainstream Media, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, sexual assault, videotape, women

What does George Stephanopoulos know and why isn’t he talking? Those to me are two of the most important and clearly the most inexcusably neglected, questions that have been raised in the last 36 hours of the Donald Trump video firestorm. I say inexcusable because the answers could produce major evidence that the establishment media are becoming ever less capable of playing their historic and indispensable role of American democracy’s watchdog.

As must be obvious to anyone following this latest twist of the 2016 American election cycle, one of the leading issues being raised is whether the Republican presidential nominee is being held to a standard fundamentally different from that applied to his Democratic rival’s husband, Bill Clinton, both throughout his presidential years and, reportedly, for decades before.

“Reportedly” is of course the key here. The most disturbing parts of the Trump video clearly are those passages in which he suggests he committed sexual assault. If true, that would of course eliminate the “locker room banter” defense put up by his surrogates and other backers. Indeed, it’s entirely conceivable and understandable that a critical mass of American voters will view even that possibility as a disqualification for any public office. 

I wrote yesterday, there’s no shortage of hypocrisy over the Trump-Clinton comparison on either side. But so far, the Clinton supporters would seem to have the advantage because, as I understand their position, the only Bill Clinton offense that’s been proven has been the former president’s affair during his administration with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky – and that this affair was consensual.

That’s true enough. But for many years, serious charges of far worse behavior by Bill Clinton have been circulating. In connection with one of those instances, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones was settled, with Clinton paying her $850,000. (He admitted no wrongdoing.) At least one other woman, Juanita Broaddrick, has accused the former president of raping her. At least one other woman, Kathleen Willey, has charged him with sexual assault. Neither woman took her claims to legal authorities at the time – which is a common feature of such episodes.

My purpose here isn’t to litigate or even debate the merits of these real and alleged scandals. Instead, it’s to point out that one of America’s most prominent journalists is and has been throughout the campaign in a position to shed considerable light both on Bill Clinton’s behavior and on Hillary Clinton’s treatment of the women claiming to be his victims. That’s George Stephanopoulos. He was a top adviser to the former president’s first election campaign, and then served as his White House press secretary for Clinton’s entire first term.

As a result, it’s inconceivable that Stephanopoulos didn’t participate in high-level meetings with both Bill and Hillary Clinton on handling these controversies both during the campaign and during the first term. (Jones filed her complaint in 1994, and an imbroglio involving an alleged Clinton affair with Gennifer Flowers roiled the 1992 White House race.) That is, he surely has first-hand knowledge that bears directly on the most sensational issue before the nation today – about the veracity of the various sexual misconduct-related charges against both Clintons.

But on Stephanopoulos’ own Sunday morning talk show, on the very day of a potentially monumental presidential debate in which these questions are sure to come up, the host said nothing even hinting at his former employment by the Clintons. None of the other journalists or political figures on the show’s panel of commentators did either. Nor can I find any instance of an establishment journalist asking Stephanopoulos about his nearly unmatched access to the Clintons in those years.

Could the reason be that Stephanopoulos is thinking about passing through an increasingly busy revolving door yet again and returning to government from his media perch? Or is he still simply a Clinton partisan? And what of the rest of the Mainstream Media and political chattering class members that owe so much of their public profile, and therefore incomes, to shows like Stephanopoulos’? Are some of them having the same thoughts, or holding the same views? Are they worried about getting blackballed from “This Week” – and possibly from the rest of the broadcast and cable networks if they put one the industry’s leading lights on the hot seat? Or are they above all concerned that they’ll be informally ostracized from one of America’s most glamorous social sets for displaying bad form?

Until these questions start getting asked, Americans will have more and more reason to suspect that their country’s news industry can’t be trusted to hold their public figures accountable not simply because of political bias, but because the industry keeps steadily merging with those it’s supposed to be covering. How a democracy can retain its fundamental health under those circumstances isn’t easy to see at all.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why the Big Media Really Don’t Get It

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elites, Establishment Media, income inequality, media, Sarah Kendzior, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Just when you think that the Establishment Media is almost totally hopeless when it comes to reporting on the economy, someone new (at least to me) comes along to restore at least some faith in Big Journalism.

The reporter in question is Sarah Kendzior, and one of her latest pieces stunningly explains one of the biggest frustrations experienced by so many Americans when they read its coverage of economic issues: why major new organizations keep talking up an economy that has failed so much of the nation’s population.

Kendzior’s work has documented and quantified an explanation that many of us have long suspected but couldn’t demonstrate conclusively: “For one thing, pundits and politicians are unlikely to work in the regions where most Americans live.” More specifically, journalists are found in those relatively few big American cities that have, on the whole, enjoyed surging prosperity even as most of the rest of the country has experienced sagging fortunes at best.  And their isolation from Main Street America keeps growing.  As Kendzior has found:

“In 2004, one out of eight journalism jobs was based in New York, Washington DC, or Los Angeles—a high number even for that era. By 2014, that number had changed one of every four, even as the cost of rent in those cities rose astronomically, and the number of unpaid and low-paid positions exploded. This has led to journalism increasingly becoming an occupation of elites, with the reporters of the rest of the country underrepresented and the concerns of their communities underreported.”

This piece by Kendzior makes another economic argument that deserves a lot more attention: The geography of prosperity looks set to become even more highly concentrated going forward. Why? Because the yawning and expanding gap between living standards outside these islands of affluence and living costs inside them is preventing talented American from moving to cities and utilizing their abilities to the fullest. To quote Kendzior again:

“[T]he talent of the heartland is wasted as job-seekers from these regions remained trapped. For millennials, many of whom are saddled with massive college debt and are expected to complete unpaid internships, the situation is particularly dire. Moving to the city where their field is located can prove impossible without family wealth. Careers are ending before they have the chance to begin.”

Kendzior’s analysis makes clear that this disheartening trend will be generally neglected by this elite media, too. But her own work encouragingly indicates that such developments won’t be ignored quite so completely, and I’m looking forward to more of it.

Im-Politic: The Latest Anti-Trump Smear is Anything but a New Low

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2016 election, Colbert King, David Duke, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Foreign Affairs, Hobart Rowen, Im-Politic, Immigration, Japan, Japan-bashing, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, racism, Richard Holbrooke, The New York Times, Trade, Washington Post, xenophobia

I was tempted to say that Colbert King’s Washington Post column today – which tarred as race-baiting Donald Trump’s attacks on not only current U.S. immigration policy but trade policy as well – marked a new low in Establishment Media elitism and plutocracy coddling. Then I remembered that both the mainstream press and the broader Beltway political class have been using these underhanded tactics literally for decades.

According to King, when it comes to trade and immigration, in this year’s presidential campaign, Trump is using the formula employed by former Ku Klux Klan member, racist, and anti-Semite David Duke when he ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 – wooing “economically discontented and politically alienated white voters by playing to their fears and resentments.”

King rightly reminds that Duke – who has endorsed Trump’s presidential candidacy – is an unapologetic bigot. But he pointedly included in his attack on Duke’s success in appealing to voters who were “frustrated, insecure, angry and ready to blame someone” popular concerns over predatory Japanese trade policies and “massive immigration.” And he just as pointedly observed that these themes “echo today” in the rhetoric of the current Republican front-runner.

Sadly, he’s just the latest in a long line of U.S. leaders and Beltway scolds who have made lucrative careers working to ostracize any reservations about globalist trade and immigration policies that have enriched and empowered one percent-ers at the expense of the nation’s working and middle classes.

I first encountered these tactics in the early 1990s, while working at the Economic Strategy Institute. This think tank sought to challenge the free trade absolutism that then reigned virtually unchallenged in American policy circles. In the process, it tried to focus particular attention on Japanese economic successes that strongly indicated that a brand of capitalism differing significantly from the U.S. version could achieve impressive results and create major problems for American industries, their workers, and the country’s overall economic vitality.

An all-too-common response from the establishment pundits of the day, along with prominent think tanks created expressly to uphold conventional wisdom, was to brand the Institute as a “Japan-basher,” whose arguments were fueled by prejudice. Nor were the perpetrators shy about leveling these charges.

According to the late prominent American diplomat Richard Holbrooke – writing in no less than foreign policy establishment house organ Foreign Affairs in an effort to lower then-elevated U.S.-Japan tensions – “there may still be an underlying racism, not always conscious, in the attitudes of some Americans toward Japanese.” And the late Washington Post economics Hobart Rowen had no compunction in making this point to Members of Congress critical of Japan’s protectionism.  (Both these points are made in this Rowen column.)   

Immigration-boosting zealots in establishment ranks have committed the same intellectual crimes – and years before Donald Trump became a leading political figure. For example, when the Senate passed an immigration bill containing a path to legalization, The New York Times moaned, “It is hard to understand what — besides election-year pandering and xenophobic hostility — motivates [the House of Representative’s] unwillingness” to approve the measure. That was in 2006.

Commenting on the immigration policy environment, a junior Senator from Illinois charged, “A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.” That was Barack Obama, and the year was 2008.

House [Democratic] Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has stated, “I think race has something to do with them not bringing up the immigration bill. I’ve heard them say to the Irish, ‘If it was just you, it would be easy.’” That remark came in 2014. And if you Google the right search terms, you’ll see that these examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s no doubt that there’s entirely too much anger in American politics today, and that Trump is responsible for much of it. But many of his opponents are in no position to single out Trump’s contribution. As King’s column make clear, their ranks include smear merchants, too. And their paper trail long predates the current campaign.

Im-Politic: Trump-ism on the Brink

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2016 election, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, David Duke, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Im-Politic, John Kasich, Ku Kux Klan, Marco Rubio, racism, Republicans, Ted Cruz

On the eve of the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, which could make Republican front-runner Donald Trump that party’s presumptive nominee, Trump-fever is peaking throughout the country. At least until Wednesday morning. Whether he takes the crown, or the fall election, or not, no one should underestimate this development’s revolutionary impact and importance, given Trump’s apolitical background, out-there personality, and rule-smashing campaign. In fact, this Washington Post article from yesterday helpfully reminds us how long the (incestuous) national political and media establishments refused to take the Trump phenomenon seriously.

At the same time, it’s also crucial to keep in mind how little effect the Trump surge has had in two crucial respects.

First – and arguably foremost due to the rising odds of his ultimate success – Trump’s recent and impending triumphs haven’t seemed to have changed Trump much at all. Not that there’s been no progress at all since he declared his candidacy back in June. Most encouragingly, he’s steadily, if unevenly, been blaming foreign culprits like Mexico and China less for America’s problems, and fingering domestic special interests more.

Trump has also made more explicit the promise that previously was only implicit in his campaign of realigning U.S. politics ideologically. Early in his presidential run, he generally ignored or soft-pedaled both the social issues (like abortion) that have long strongly animated the Republican party’s social conservatives, and the tax, spending, and regulation issues that have excited GOP free market enthusiasts. Now, he’s openly praising pro-life movement villain Planned Parenthood, and making clear his belief that all Americans deserve decent health care, whether its government provided or not.

Yet Trump’s style generally remains as stupidly – largely because it is so unnecessary – abrasive as ever. Some examples cited over the weekend have now been exposed as off-target, and pathetically ignorant, examples of gotcha journalism. Read this Bloomberg column for a devastating tear-down of the “Mussolini” controversy propagated by no less than The New York Times, the BBC, and TIME – for starters.

But other charges are more valid. I think Trump has a point in this remark on the Today Show that “I disavowed [former Ku Kux Klan leader] David Duke all weekend long, on Facebook, on Twitter, and obviously, it is never enough.” He could have added that he had disavowed Duke at his Friday press conference unveiling Republican New Jersey governor and former presidential rival Chris Christie as a new supporter – not exactly a low-profile event.

But Trump’s disavowal was perfunctory at best. And his claims of ignorance about Duke – in the face of previous evidence – hardly inspire confidence, especially since Trump has no problems denouncing opponents and others who attract his ire. In fact, these claims raise major questions about his judgment and temperament precisely because it would have been so easy for him to respond by agreeing that Duke is a long-time racist and anti-Semite and then mocking him as an almost equally long-time nothing-burger politically. Further, if reporters and others kept bringing Duke up, Trump simply could have kept repeating this point. So although I think it’s nonsensical (at best) to portray Trump as a white supremacist, it’s far from nonsensical to insist that these kinds of political tests be passed much more effectively – the more so since he’s been at this presidential candidate thing for months now.

Similarly, it’s high time for Trump to give the nation some idea of his policy team. He’s promised for months to release a list of advisers on national security and foreign policy, but still hasn’t come through. (Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has been slow in this regard, too. But at least he’s a long-time Member of the House and Senate.) Maybe Trump is worried about revealing how few well-known specialists are willing to help him out? Possibly. There’s no shortage, however, of less well-known specialists – who have the decided advantage of distance from the bipartisan policy failures of recent decades. Trump might be on the verge of taking the first of the two big steps he needs to take to become president. He needs to get on the stick. And this goes for domestic advisers as well.

The second feature of the political landscape that hasn’t changed significantly since Trump threw his hat in the ring – that intertwined political and media establishment is still overwhelmingly responding to Trump not by seriously addressing the legitimate economic grievances of his growing legions of supporters, but by doubling down on demon-ization. I’ve written extensively on the press’ dreadful performance – because it’s supposed to be reasonably objective, not flagrantly partisan and/or self-interested like politicians in an election fight.

But even a cynic with the lowest expectations of politicians should be dumbfounded by the failure of Trump’s major Republican rivals to budge much from their long-time records on his core immigration and trade issues – at least not credibly. Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz are both running as immigration hard-liners. But the former was an original sponsor of the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill, and though the latter voted against it, he also attempted to attach a legalization amendment to it (which he has since called a “poison pill” gambit designed to kill the legislation.) During this campaign, Cruz has become a critic of the H-1B visa program that technology companies in particular have used as a means of lowering wages in their industry. But previously, he backed not only increasing their numbers but quintupling them. Rubio’s pre-2016 H1B position has been comparably bad .

As for Ohio Governor John Kasich, his main immigration strategy has been (Jeb Bush-like) depicting Trump as a “divider” and belittling the complaints of American workers who have lost either jobs or wages to legal and illegal immigrants.

When it comes to trade, both Cruz and Rubio voted in the Senate for the fast-track authority successfully sought by President Obama last year to grease the Congressional skids for a Pacific Rim trade deal (TPP) based on the current, offshoring-friendly model. (Cruz then switched his vote once it became clear that the legislation was a done deal.) In 2013, the Texas Republican opposed a measure that would have expanded use of the federal government’s Buy American regulations and increased Washington’s mandated purchases of U.S.-made products.

Rubio’s votes have been more numerous and worse, including approval of the disastrous, deficit-boosting U.S.-Korea free trade agreement, and opposition to sanctioning China for predatory currency policies along with that Buy American expansion. Reports that the Florida Republican is now backing away from his TPP enthusiasm merit the skepticism warranted by death-bed conversions in general.

Although Kasich has vaguely complained about predatory trade practices by America’s competitors, he’s on board with TPP, too. The Ohio Republican hasn’t served in Congress since 2000, but his overall mixed trade vote record got steadily more supportive of offshoring-friendly trade policies – including a vote in favor of the crucial decision to admit China into the World Trade Organization in his final year.

(Yes, I’m omitting Dr. Ben Carson’s views because his campaign has been driven so deep into long-shot territory.)

So seven months after Trump debuted so rancorously on the American presidential stage, the nation’s politics keep getting ever angrier, and the heat clearly is being generated on both sides of the elite-electorate divide.

Im-Politic: Glimmers of Media Sanity on Trump

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2016 election, amnesty, Charles Hugh Smith, Donald Trump, E.J. Dionne, Establishment Media, Fox News, globalization, Im-Politic, Immigration, National Journal, Open Borders, Ron Fournier, Steve Tobak, The Atlantic, Trade, Washington Post

Yesterday, I slammed America’s Big Media for the slobbering love affair many of its leading lights just revealed over failed Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. The brazen gushing over this champion of job- and wage-killing mass immigration and offshoring-friendly trade policies once more exposed establishment journalists in general as virtual spokespeople for plutocrat interests – and active participants in the increasingly desperate effort to squash the presidential run of maverick businessman Donald Trump.

And yet, to every rule, there are exceptions, and sometimes important ones. So in the interests of fair and balanced blogging, here are some recent examples of major pundits who appear genuinely interested in understanding Trump’s growing support – and who, by extension, are (unknowingly, of course!) following my longstanding advice to Trump opponents: If you really want to put an end to Trump-ism in American politics, start responding seriously to the legitimate concerns of his supporters.

Just this morning, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that “If Trump’s campaign leaves behind one useful legacy, it will be a heightened awareness of the deep hurt among the Americans[who] have been brutally battered by globalization and technological change. So far, Trump’s Republican rivals have had little to say to these voters.”

I’d quibble with Dionne’s choice of words. As I’ve repeatedly written, the main international commerce problem is not some impersonal historical force called “globalization,” but a series of trade policies that have shortsightedly encouraged the offshoring or outright destruction by predatory foreign rivals of too much of the productive, industrial heart of the U.S. economy. In the process, these man-made measures not have not only battered working- and middle-class Americans. They’ve helped dangerously hook the entire economy on debt-led growth – or stagnation, as increasingly seems the case. Similarly, pro-amnesty immigration policies, for all the humanitarian arguments made on their behalf, can only have the effect of driving down the wages of native-born workers – that is, unless the laws of supply and demand have been repealed.

But at least Dionne is acknowledging the real and crucially important reasons behind the flow of such voters to Trump’s camp. And his approach contrasts strikingly with the anti-Trump screed just published by his paper’s editorial board – which not coincidentally keeps pounding the table for new trade deals based on failed models, and pays the flimsiest lip service to the idea of secure national borders.

Another national media mainstay deserving of praise in Ron Fournier of National Journal and The Atlantic. In an essay for the latter intriguingly titled “My Love-Hate Relationship with Donald Trump,” Fournier comes down hard on the GOP front-runner for exploiting people’s fears instead of appealing to their aspirations, their better angels. I hate how he gives people license to say hateful things. I understand why Trump’s backers are angry, and I don’t subscribe to the theory that most of them are bigots. But they are condoning bigotry.”

He continues (in a somewhat Dionne-ian vein), “I love his fist to the face of the establishment. In the last 10 years, Americans have weathered historic economic change, the biggest technological surge since the industrial revolution, a demographic makeover, and two major wars. Through it all, the nation’s institutions and their leaders have failed to adapt. Trump is the public’s middle finger wagging in the face of elites.”

And he confesses in conclusion, “I’m having trouble expressing my disdain for Trump without appearing to cast aspersions upon his supporters, or to be a defender of the establishment. So let me be clear. I loathe him. I respect his supporters. And I hope that after Trump is finished grinding the gears of the political machine in 2016 Americans find a better vehicle for change.”

The final mainstream media example of dealing responsibly with Trump comes from prominent management consultant Steve Tobak, who’s not exactly a pillar of the national media establishment, but who writes regularly for FoxNews.com. Tobak is no fan of Trump the person, either. The candidate’s penchant for bombast and sometimes flat-out self-contradiction, he writes,

“leaves us to wonder if the man with an increasingly decent chance of becoming the next resident of the White House just shoots off his mouth and asks questions later, or maybe he really is the type of leader who’s prone to Ready, Fire, Aim, in that order. If it’s the latter, is it not risky to have his finger on the proverbial button?”

Yet Tobak pointedly adds that the Trump movement – along with its Democratic party counterpart, the Bernie Sanders insurrection – reveals a new public “appetite for risk” that shows “just how done the electorate is with the status quo in Washington. This is what people do when you’ve pushed them too far for too long. If this isn’t a wake-up call to the permanent political class – that we’re willing to try almost anything rather than sit back and watch you muck up our country – then maybe it is time to throw the bums out and start over.”

Voices like this remain very much a tiny media minority. I’m hoping, however, that they demonstrate that the Big Media has not completely lost touch with Main Street America, or entirely forgotten its potential to call out a bipartisan political and policy establishment that is rapidly, and deservedly, losing its claim to legitimacy.

By the way, blogger Charles Hugh Smith definitely isn’t a member of the Mainstream Media, either. But his new post on “What the Pundits Don’t Get About Trump” should be must-reading in their ranks – and for you.

Im-Politic: A Slobbering Media Love Affair…with Jeb

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2016 election, Donald Trump, elites, Establishment Media, Gawker.com, Im-Politic, Immigration, J.K. Trotter, Jeb Bush, media bias, NBC News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Trade, Washington Post

A major theme of RealityChek since its launch has been that, if America’s Big Media ever took seriously their one-time mandate to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” those days are long gone. Instead, establishment journalists collectively have clearly decided that their priority instead is coddling the nation’s political and business elites and protecting their privileged perches from the great unwashed. That’s when they aren’t crossing back and forth among those worlds.

So you can just imagine how (ruefully) pleased I’ve been these last few days to read through various media post-mortems of former Jeb Bush’s historically disastrous presidential campaign. In an ordinary campaign year, media types surely would have roasted the former odds-on Republican favorite as a monument to nepotism whose respectable turn as Florida governor was massively offset by his family connection with his widely reviled brother, the former president, by his reliance on George W. Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy advisors, and by the oceans of special interest money that were funding his White House run.

But of course, this isn’t an ordinary political year, and although Jeb Bush was not exactly adored by the mainstream press, he was often flatteringly contrasted with Donald Trump. This media anti-Christ’s capitol offense has been daring to blast away at the two of American elites’ most sacred cows – the job- and wage-killing mass immigration and offshoring-friendly trade policies that simultaneously enabled the establishment to claim cosmopolitan, noblesse oblige ideals even as it’s pocketed nearly all of the lavish benefits.

Now that Bush is toast politically (and both Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and establishment darling Marco Rubio, Republican Senator from Florida, are still running reasonably strong), the media has been freed to let its pro-Bush – and thinly disguised anti-Trump – biases hang out.

We should all be indebted to Gawker.com’s J.K. Trotter for compiling some of the most cringe-inducing. All are worth reading, but in case you’re pressed for time, here are a few lowlights, as well as examples I’ve found:

>From The New York Times‘ Ashley Parker: “[A]t the core, what made Jeb compelling to cover was that he was deeply, impossibly human.

“In a cycle where so many other candidates were able to toggle effortlessly between soaring speeches and masterful debate performances, between well-rehearsed outrage and manufactured indignation, Jeb almost seemed to think aloud in real time, and we got to watch him muddle and bumble through, just like any real person….

“Jeb was a flawed candidate, who ran a wildly imperfect campaign. But he struggled mightily and did it on his own terms, trying to talk about big, serious things. And for that, perhaps, he deserves a round of applause.”

>From the Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza: At January’s South Carolina Republican debate, Bush “made serious and nuanced points about immigration and foreign policy, and he demonstrated deep knowledge on almost every issue. …as he has throughout the campaign, Bush painted a picture of a complex world — from the Middle East to here at home. His answers to questions were larded with detail and complexity. On Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the country, for example, he was measured and thoughtful; ‘every time we send signals like this, we send a signal of weakness, not strength,’ Bush said.

“Jeb knows the world is complex. He knows that problems aren’t solved simply because you say so. He knows the work of governance is hard. ”

>From The Wall Street Journal‘s Beth Reinhard and Rebecca Ballhaus: “Mr. Bush’s departure also reflects the fading of a brand of Republican politics as a harder-edged conservatism comes into focus. His father advocated a ‘kinder, gentler nation,’ his brother described himself as a ‘compassionate conservative’ while Mr. Bush called for ‘the right to rise.’

“It was conservatism laced with the Bush family’s sense of noblesse oblige and old-fashioned patriotism, manifested in a focus on education policy, a desire to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows and a strong military presence on the world stage.

“But Mr. Bush faced a GOP electorate angry at all things Washington, making ties to the establishment a vulnerability rather than a strength.”

>From TIME’s Philip Elliott and Zeke J. Miller: “At a time when experience was a vulnerability rather than a resume line, Bush insisted on running a policy-centric campaign. It was a year that saw bluster overtake substance, and Bush refused to shift. ‘In this campaign, I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds,’ he said before leaving the stage, tears visible in his eyes. His insistence on running his campaign his way proved his undoing. While rivals mastered clipped sound bites, he held forth on policy. When reporters tried to goad him into questions about politics, he defaulted to wonkdom. If a voter took the time to attend his town halls, he owed it to them to give a thoughtful answer.”

>From NBC News: “Bush ran for all the right reasons, according to NBC News. He told voters he had a ‘servant’s heart’ and, in private and public, his campaign always appeared motivated by duty rather than personal ambition right up to his final speech.”

It’s important to note that all these strongly opinionated views have come not from pundits – who are supposed to be opinionated in their work. They come from beat reporters and political analysts – who are not. The media’s increasingly open biases can only be signaling ever mounting levels of contempt for Main Street, and warning everyday Americans that trusting all the news they watch and read can be hazardous for their political and economic health.

Im-Politic: The Establishment Starts Sliming All of Trump-Nation

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2016 elections, chattering class, David Rothkopf, Donald Trump, elitism, Establishment Media, foreign policy, Im-Politic, middle class, working class

Silly me. I thought that a January Marketwatch.com column blaming working- and middle-class supporters of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy for their economic plight would mark the high-water mark of the establishment media’s brazen elitism during this political annus mirabilis. It turns out that the Marketwatch columnist, Tim Mullaney, can’t hold a candle to David Rothkopf. According to Rothkopf, Editor of FOREIGN POLICY magazine, bigots, outright racists, proto-fascists and the like aren’t simply found on the fringes of the Trump constituency. They make up the majority.

Some truth in advertising first: I spent four great years working at FOREIGN POLICY in the 1980s, when it was a very different publication, and I’m no great fan of its metamorphosis since then. So maybe that’s giving this criticism an unusual edge. And even by journalism’s increasingly debased standards, Rothkopf is anything but a typical scribe, having crossed over from the world of offshoring-focused government and business activity. All the same, as a result, he’s increasingly representative of a hybrid national political/chattering class that’s ever more dependent on plutocrats’ funding, and therefore ever more determined to protect their interests. And he looks increasingly typical of this privileged class’ desperation to stop Trump.

If Rothkopf is the bellwether I think he is, America’s oligarchs have grown so terrified of a Trump triumph that they’ve decided to stop even shedding crocodile tears about the stagnating living standards and related social stresses undermining Main Street USA. Indeed, they’ll go beyond simply blaming the victims and start demonizing them.  

Thus, Rothkopf doesn’t even pay lip service to the idea that Trump supporters have any valid reason to be angry at America’s recent and current leaders. The author allows that

“things seem worse [for them] now as we live at the tipping point when by a a few decades’ time minority populations will outnumber the former majority and where economic growth no longer seems to be creating the kind of jobs that once were the bread and butter of the middle class — notably those in our atrophying manufacturing sector — and the richest keep getting richer and leaving everyone else farther and farther behind.”

But he insists that

“The world was never a particularly kind place to these alienated working and middle class voters or their forebears, even if they were white and male. They are nostalgic for a time that didn’t really exist. Because class issues always left their antecedents feeling disenfranchised, out of the club, angry at the establishment. ”

More important, to hear Rothkopf tell it, Trump supporters are not only delusional, they’re positively dangerous to all who love freedom, democracy, and the American Way.  And although other analysts have noted “authoritarian tendencies” in the Trump camp, they have at least linked them to genuine concerns, like fears of foreign and domestic terrorism.  Not Rothkopf.  As he sees it, Trump voters  

“will be a force in American politics for years as the changing demographics and economic models of this country and the likelihood of continuing dysfunction in Washington will continue to feed the anxiety that triggers their bitterness, irrationality, and irresponsibility.” [Emphasis added.] 

Indeed, because they “evolve from feelings of disaffection and alienation like those in Europe today and in the past” they “are capable of horrors as they have so often proven.” Therefore, acknowledging their views will invite “the rise of forces that are a greater threat to our country — and its values — than any of the terrorists or foreign bogeymen that have dominated the conversations in our presidential debates to date.”

Given this alarmism, you’d think that Rothkopf would be full of advice as to what American leaders should do to fend off this threat, or at least full of recommendations as to which presidential candidates look like the most effective anti-Trump champions. But you’d be wrong. In other words, although Rothkopf heaps scorn on those who justify their support for Trump by claiming that “anything else” is better than “the corruption and dysfunction of Washington,” his position seems to be the equally empty (but intrinsically pro-status quo “anyone is better than Trump.”

When Trump’s jaw-dropping campaign began, I wrote that Trump-haters who aren’t simply in favor of Ruling Class positions or actively fronting for them should focus less on hurling invective and more on seriously addressing the legitimate economic grievances of Trump’s supporters. Well, the plutocrats and their henchmen are obviously stepping up their game. What are the other Trump critics waiting for?

Im-Politic: The Establishment Media is Becoming a Self-Parody

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2016 election, Alan Greenspan, Amy Cook, Andrea Mitchell, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Im-Politic, Matt Bai, Meet the Press, NBC

Take it from me – if you want an unvarnished look at how viciously defensive but simultaneously clueless to the point of self-parody America’s bipartisan political establishment has become in this Season of Trump, nothing provides it better than the Sunday morning news talk shows and their panels of media and campaign experts. And no single episode of any of these programs has revealed this toxic combination better than the final 2015 installment of Meet the Press.

The subject of course was Donald Trump’s still-rising support according to all major national polls and his continuing strength in surveys taken in early primary states. Who better to get the conversation in question off on a slanderous note than the substitute host, NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell – who in a just world would be identified with an on-screen caption reading something like, “My husband is Alan Greenspan and we still get invited to all the A-list Washington parties even though he nearly destroyed the world economy as Fed chairman.”

Within a few moments, Mitchell channeled this Washington media roundtable segment toward what’s obviously the participants’ prime concern: Trump’s animosity toward journalists. After New York Times Pentagon reporter Helene Cooper upbraided all the candidates for thoughtless foreign policy positions, Mitchell jumped in by cracking, “And of course we are so disliked, we the media, collectively, are so disliked–” The desired effect was achieved – all the panelists chortled.

After playing a clip of journalist-baiting by the Republican front-runner, Mitchell queried the panel, “Have you ever seen Donald Trump and the Drunk Uncle on Saturday Night Live Weekend Update together? That was a pretty good imitation. But Michael Gerson, to the serious point of the level of invective, I haven’t seen this, frankly, since the George Wallace campaign where attacks on the media at rallies really were one of the signature effects.”

Some predictable anti-Trump invective followed from Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush rewarded by the Washington Post with a choice columnist slot – no doubt because that administration had excelled on both foreign and domestic fronts, and because Bush himself gave such memorable orations.

But then Mitchell turned to Yahoo News politics columnist Matt Bai in what initially and astonishingly seemed like a moment of contrition: “But of course it is working and, Matt Bai, you wrote memorably this week why. That we are somewhat to blame. In fact you wrote, ‘It’s clear now that Trump’s enduring popularity is in no small part a reflection of an acid disdain for us. This is a simmering reaction to smugness and shallowness in the media, a parade of glib punditry unmoored to any sense of history or personal experience. It’s about our love of gaffes and scandals, real or imagined, and our rigid enforcement of the politically correct.’ Discuss.”

Yet more chortling followed. Including from Bai himself. Who then returned to Earnest Mode and wound up claiming that the greatest sin committed by his own sophomoric, out-of-touch profession was in fact creating much of the Trump phenomenon itself. As Bai explained (after advertising what an act of political courage he has committed):

“We literally treat our candidates as contestants on a game show to be voted off or vote on. And I think there’s a cost for that and the cost is that you set up a platform where someone like a Donald Trump can come and exploit it very handily, because he is the perfect reality show candidate. And I think at this point there is this symbiosis with the media and Trump. I think at this point he has to be covered to the extent that he is because he is clearly leading, late in the campaign in the polls. But there’s a long period in this campaign where I think we exaggerated his support because it brought ratings and it brought clicks and it was the great shiny story of the campaign.”

Concluded Bai. “And I think we did a great disservice to the country.”

But don’t think that even this penultimate wea culpa produced even a flicker of remorse or even reflection in the studio. The cameras in fact revealingly cut to another panelist, Amy Walter, who edits a prominent (insiders’) political newsletter. And who was of course in full smirk. Whereupon Mitchell, facing a commercial break, announced, “Let’s leave that here for a moment.” And never returned.