April 07, 2006
An Insurgent Campaign?
Hey, it's worked before.
In the Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan does her best to blow up the conventional view of Democrats as headless chickens:
When reporters do write about Democratic victories, they often omit the protagonists from the story completely, leaving readers to wonder why Republicans would change course out of the blue. A Washington Post article about the Ethics Committee rule change simply noted that “House Republicans overwhelmingly agreed to rescind rule changes,” in the face, apparently, of phantom opposition. Or journalists give credit to maverick Republicans rather than acknowledge the success of a unified Democratic effort: The Associated Press covered Bush's reversal on Davis-Bacon by writing, “The White House promised to restore the 74-year-old Davis-Bacon prevailing wage protection on Nov. 8, following a meeting between chief of staff Andrew Card and a caucus of pro-labor Republicans.” Or Bush is blamed for his own defeats, without any mention of an opposition effort, as with Social Security privatization.Nor are reporters paying attention to Democratic policy proposals, as the party tries to develop a national agenda to run on. Congressional press secretaries say that reporters won't write about their efforts unless or until Democratic legislation comes up for serious consideration. “A lot of reporters tell me, 'Yeah, I'll write about that when it's on the floor,'” complained the Democratic communications director for a Senate committee. “So then some columnist writes that Democrats have no ideas and everybody in America says, 'You're right—I haven't read about any.'"
(via Matthew Yglesias) Read the whole thing - it's great, and not terribly long. I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced by the narrative; blaming the media only explains political failure so much. After a certain point, it's more properly called failure to properly use the media. Ultimately you have to stop just whining about media unfairness (however correct you may be) and go out and do something about it.
Still, if Sullivan's right that Democrats are in much better shape than I think, then maybe they'll be able to do something like that this year. I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies, I do, I do, I do...
Posted by ben at April 7, 2006 02:19 PM