More On The Media Narrative Of The Election

There will be a great deal of uncertainly, flux and bloviating in the media, especially on air, as the election results sink in. There's air time to fill. There's conflict to gin up (the media loves conflict, which is why the cable news networks are interviewing so many immigration opponents this weekend - comity and bipartisanship doesn't sell). And there's a fundamental misunderstanding of who the Democrats are, which we've been better about explaining than they have.

One reasonably on-the-mark article appears today in the Financial Times, via MSNBC (more accessible). The idea of populist politics (fair trade vs. free trade, for example) is not lost on the authors.

Defeated Republicans have found solace in the fact that many of their victorious Democratic opponents are "social conservatives". They point to James Webb, who surprised everyone by winning the bitter and close Senate race in Virginia on Thursday, giving his party a majority of one in the upper house tom complement its decisive victory in the House of Representatives.

However, neither Mr Webb nor the majority of the Democratic freshmen who won elections this week can so easily be fitted into that category. Punching the air and holding up the dusty boots of his son who is serving in Iraq, Mr Webb told cheering supporters in Arlington that his election was as much a vote for economic fairness as it was for a change of course in Iraq.

Many of us have noted the media discussion about how "conservative" the new crop is. Compared to who? Che? Mao? Hugo Chavez?

One or two of his colleagues, including Bob Casey, the new senator for Pennsylvania, and Heath Shuler, a Democratic representative for North Carolina, are "pro-life" but the large majority of new Democrat lawmakers support the woman's right to choose.

More significantly a majority of the intake, including Mr Webb, are economic populists who are deeply suspicious of free trade and quick to blame China and other developing countries for the loss of US jobs. Some, such as Sherrod Brown, the new Democratic senator for the key Midwest state of Ohio, which has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since Mr Bush came to power, won the election virtually on that issue alone.

"We will focus on economic fairness in a country divided too much by class in an age of the internationalisation of American corporations," said Mr Webb in a victory rally speech that devoted more to the economy than all other themes combined. "At a time when profits are at a record high and wages are at a low, we will focus on bridging the class divide."

Iraq was the dominant issue in this election, but along with corruption, the economy is very much on the minds of Americans. Unfettered free trade is as dead as John Bolton's nomination. Immigration reform becomes more possible now, but how necessary it is has not been explored as much as how passionate it is. What matters to voters is what kind of a job you can find, whether you're newly arrived or back home from Iraq.

As the media turns to 2008 to try to gin up even more conflict as early as possible, expect them to ignore issues that matter much more to Americans than whether McCain will be helped by this election and whether Hillary will run. This election was a huge win for Americans, despite the uphill odds of winning both houses. Unfortunately, the election is less likely to change the media than the Congress. Thankfully, there are blogs.

Comments

[Crab Nebula]

It is to our advantage if the beltway CW continues to have outdated and false ideas about Democrats and why D's won, and that they continue to work their old playbook.

Webb is a really interesting guy. With his bio, if f he could learn to relax and project some warmth, he could go even higher. But I think he and Sherrod Brown may become important senators.

[Mimikatz]

Kevin Drum has had some interesting posts about the exit polls. Turns out that if you compare the 2004 House exit polls with the 2006 ones, the Dems gained more than 1-2% above their overall gain (about 5%) with only one group--Hispanics. Based on our experience in California after the GOP immigrant bashing in 1992, the change will be pretty permanent, barring a star like Schwarzenegger who creates his own atmosphere. So I expect that this is the issue the Bushies want to move on first next year, and the defeats of JD Hayworth and Randy Graf in AZ can't be overstated in its impact on the GOPers in the House.

The Dems actually scored less than their overall gains among regular church-goers and the youth vote was actually a smaller proportion of the Dem vote than in 2004 because (as in 2004) even though more youth turned out for the Dems, their gains among other groups were even higher, and more of everyone else turned out too. I still think the youth vote is Dem if they can deliver on the "broadening opportunity" agenda and keep us out of another war.

The media just can't make up its mind. On the one hand it professes to love bipartisanship and is ecstatic at the love-fest going on now. On the other, it loves conflict. Maybe their love of conflict can be directed to stories about the GOP civil war and the Dems can actually get something done. I can always hope.

And on the new Dems being conservative. Thinking is just so hard. The WSJ isn't fooled, however. They see the populist agenda coming, especially on worker rights and the demise of the love affair with "free trade."

[janinsanfran]

Let's see -- when the media get tired of the "newly elected Dems are all conservative anyway" meme, maybe they'll breathlessly discover the "Dems are dangerous economic populists" meme. Panicky herd animals.

Yes -- in California we've seen the post-1994 (Prop. 187) shift of Latinos to the Dem column and it is sticking. Let's hope the national party can emerge from the immigration debate as the "path to legalization" party -- we'll win for decades.

[ab initio]

Atrios channels a newly elected Dem Senator's Conservative Agenda

[vwcat]

I think the media loves to simplify. too much.
There was more than iraq at the polls. More than corruption. It was no bid contracts that went to Haliburton and billions missing and stolen, ect. the list is long.
people are pissed. Especially with the rich getting fat while the middle class is starving.
The media also doesn't know what to do without the repubs in power. To them if you are a dem you are a liberal. period. They know nothing of the populist streak that runs deep in our party. Nothing of our glory years of FDR, Truman and Kennedy when we were the populist party in favor of the middle and working class.
All they know is cartoons. The cartoons painted by repubs. They forget we were the ones who brought victoy in WWI and II. No they think we are soft. They believe we are the party of the 70s.
so, we bring back our populist roots and suddenly the media can only think Conservative.
MSM desparately needs to be educated. And to get out more in the real world.