| ||||||||||||||
MEDIA CRITICISM:Pundits Tell Kerry: "Move Right"
Time magazine's Joe Klein wrote (4/12/04) that Kerry needs to be bold: "The ideal step would be to make [Republican Senator] John McCain his choice for vice president and announce a government of national reconciliation composed of moderate Democrats and Republicans." Klein recommended making a "radical move to the middle, a campaign that looks and sounds different from the usual partisan claptrap."
Over at Newsweek (4/12/04), political reporter Howard Fineman had the same advice. In a column based on what anonymous "wise guys" are saying, Fineman says Kerry needs to craft "a coherent, centrist vision." As Fineman puts it, "There's room in the middle, wise guys insist." To Fineman and his unnamed experts, "Kerry can't occupy the center if he's defined as a mere liberal. He has the most liberal voting record in the Senate. What to do?" Fineman has the cure: Kerry should "run ads in battleground states reminding voters that he was a prosecutor and that he voted for welfare reform in 1996, a brave (for Massachusetts) stand that drew picketers to his home." (Incidentally, the claim that Kerry has "the most liberal voting record in the Senate" is dubious. National Journal--2/27/04--ranked him as having the most liberal record in 2003--a finding based on candidate Kerry's votes on only 25 out of the 62 votes that the publication ranked as either liberal or conservative. In a more comprehensive, less subjective ordering of senators by voting--voteview.uh.edu--Kerry was the 25th most liberal voter, right in the center of the Democratic Party.) And New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote on March 27 about his political dreams: "I want to wake up and read that John Kerry just asked John McCain to be his vice president." Friedman explained that's the only way to tackle the country's problems, "with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team." The notion that the Democrats' problem is that they are too far left has been conventional wisdom for so long (Extra!, 9/92) that it's worth noting that this is not the only possible diagnosis. Many elections are won by the party most able to energize its base, which is why the Republicans have several times won the presidency with candidates who quite consciously moved away from the center, toward their party's ideological pole. Candidates who alienate their base--for example, a Democrat who picked an anti-abortion running mate, or ran by touting support for limits on welfare--are not guaranteed to pick up enough support from the center to make up for diminished support from their own side. Both Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 took the pundits' move-to-the-right advice-- with little notable success. "Democrats' Platform Shows a Shift From Liberal Positions of 1976 and 1980" was a New York Times headline in 1984 (7/22/84). The selection of conservative Sen. Lloyd Bentsen as Dukakis' running mate, wrote David Broder at the time (Washington Post, 7/14/88), "sent an unmistakable message to the activist constituencies of the Democratic Party that the days of litmus-test liberalism are over." Of course, after both Mondale and Dukakis were defeated in landslides, the conventional wisdom was that they hadn't moved to the right far enough. For more information about FAIR, visit: fair.org. Write FAIR at fair@fair.org Copyright © 2004 The Baltimore Chronicle.
All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on April 9, 2004. |
Local News & Opinion
Travel
Books, Arts & Education
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters: 08.16 Out Damn Blot: A Letter to Colin Powell Health & Environment
08.14 The End of Cheap Oil: The Future is Now Media Watching
09.06 McCain-Palin: 'Phonies Squared' 08.31 Lady and the Gramp: The Sinister Diversion of the Palin Selection 08.28 Media Cheer Biden Choice 08.27 War With Russia Is On The Agenda 08.26 Appalling "New Look" for The Sun Signals Abdication of Journalistic Standards 08.21 Mixed Truth of the Russia-Georgia War 08.16 John McCain's Party of Hate 08.15 Corporate Media Bashes New Chavez Enabling Law Decrees 08.15 Georgia/Russia Conflict Forced Into Cold War Frame 08.13 WPost and the Great Disconnect 08.12 WPost Admits Bungling Obama Quote US Politics, Policy & Culture
09.06 Palin's 'Trooper-gate' Cover-up 09.06 Surge Protectors: Obama Embraces Bush-McCain Spin on Iraq 09.05 The Things They Left Behind (or Didn’t Remind You About) 09.05 Going on an Imperial Bender 09.05 Meet the Truth-Challenged GOP Vice Presidential Candidate: Sure A. Pallin' 09.04 The Anti-Obama Hate-Fest 09.04 Palin's 'Reformer' Myth 09.03 Did Palin Family Feud Affect Troopers? 09.02 Palin's Trouble with the Police 09.01 Minnesota Monster Mash: Police-State Zombies in a Dead Republic 08.31 Of All the Reasons McCain’s Palin Pick is Awful, Evidence of Her Abuse of Power is the Worst 08.30 McCain VP Pick Has History of Clashes 08.29 Great Speech, Big Questions, and a Curve Ball from McCain 08.28 Tongue of Flame: A Speech Presaging Endless War 08.28 Biden, Obama and The Blood-Dimmed Tide 08.28 Foreign Policy and National Security Are Not the Same Thing 08.27 Judge Rebuffs White House Immunity 08.27 What a McCain Victory Would Mean 08.22 Maybe We Should Just Hope the Republicans Win This Thing... 08.22 Loserville - Obama moves right 08.21 McCain's Ties to Neocon Hard Lines 08.21 Peace Mom v. Guardian of Power 08.20 Are You Ready For Nuclear War? 08.19 A Book Written to Defeat Obama 08.19 McCain's 'Cone of Silence' Caper 08.14 Is Perpetual War Our Future? 08.12 5 Years After Blackout, Power Grid Still in 'Dire Straits' 08.12 Olympic Shame 08.12 Thinking About Intermissions 08.11 ‘Medaling’ With Free Speech at the Olympics 08.11 Targeting Immigrants - The Largest Ever US ICE Raid US High Crimes & Misdemeanors
09.05 The real ‘Wrecking Crew’ -- not “conservatives,” but neoconservatives 09.05 Work of Evil: Beyond the Worst-Case Scenario in Somalia 09.04 Rebel Yell: Resistance and Renaissance in the Age of Terror 09.04 Katrina Redux 08.25 The Smash of Civilizations 08.22 Priming the Pump With Missile Defense: Empty Gestures Full of Blood 08.20 Musharraf, Not Bush, Follows Nixon 08.18 Fear, Procurement, Profit: Permanent War and the American Way 08.17 This Time, the World Is Not Buying It 08.15 'Imminent' Threats Should Be a Belli Laugh Economics & Business
International
09.03 Putin's Ruthless Gambit 09.01 Stoking Tensions, Risking Confrontation: A High Stakes US Gamble with Russia 08.28 Bush Escalates Tensions with Russia 08.28 Torture As Official Israeli Policy 08.25 Thinking About Cement 08.25 Reinventing the Evil Empire 08.18 Blockades: Acts of War 08.17 Rice’s Recipe for Duck Soup 08.14 The Lawless Roads: Bluster in Georgia, Rank Tyranny at Home 08.14 Marching Through Georgia V: U.S. Forces Moving Into Putin's Powderkeg 08.14 Marching Through Georgia IV: The Butt Thumper and the Bear 08.13 Using Georgia to Target Russia 08.12 From Stupid to Moronic to Evil 08.11 Marching Through Georgia III: Reality's Rout and Cheney's Viagra 08.11 Marching Through Georgia II: The Kremlin Surge We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
|
| ||||||||||||