But even with all those caveats in mind, there remains a good case for taking campaign promises seriously. And as reporters try—as they should—to discern how politicians might respond to important challenges that aren’t being discussed on the campaign trail, they should take the promises that are being made into account. If Obama wins re-election, after all, the budget endgame he seeks from the Taxmageddon standoff will be shaped by the leverage he can wield in negotiations with Congress—but also by his repeated promises not to raise taxes on middle-class households. (There will be partisan disputes about what counts as a tax for the purposes of the promise, of course, but Obama is unlikely to discard the pledge.) Limited as position papers and official statements may be, for journalists trying to get onto the “Reality Track”, they’re a good place to start.
United States Project
06:50 AM - July 9, 2012
In defense of covering position papers and official statements
Most of the time, what politicians say is what they’ll do
#Realtalk: This isn’t another ‘golden age’ for print - But it is one for media
Social media in smaller markets - How three social media managers deal with smaller markets and more local coverage.
A rally for laid-off Sun-Times photogs - A protest Thursday morning drew about 150 picketers to the newspaper’s headquarters
Reporting, or illegal hacking - Scripps reporters are accused of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Exchange Watch: California Dreaming - Low healthcare premiums on the West Coast were trumpeted as a big, good-news Obamacare story. But: “Compared to what?”
We’re the Uber of organ transplants
“Millennials need organ transplants that fit easily into their always-connected lifestyles”
‘What part of “Politico” do you not understand?’
A conversation about the dark art of driving the conversation
Julian Assange’s asylum stalemate no nearer resolution one year on
The Ecuadorean embassy’s celebrity refugee is used to living in what Assange likens to a space station as he battles extradition
The NSA story isn’t ‘journalistic malfeasance’
It’s a story that is evolving in real time
CJR’s panel discussion on coverage of gay marriage
On the eve of two related SCOTUS decisions, how should journalists be covering the issue?
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
Ida' know. Walt kind of lost me when he characterized the return of Clinton level tax rates as "Taxmegeddon". What you will see when that issue comes up is some sort of republican brinkmanship - over benefits, stimulus, treaties, whatever they get their grubby fingers on - combined with centrist democratic capitulation which leads into more tax cuts for the rich via extension of the Bush tax cuts or the adoption of some of the Ryan or Bowles Simpson plans' elements.
Then we will see more republican brinkmanship over the debt ceiling where social security is going to get strong armed, which may take place early during the lame duck session just for fun.
In which case we will see strong arming over financial regulation or something else.
And this is assuming Obama wins the election.
The debates amongst the politicians and such don't matter near as much as the priorities of their donors.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline?page=3
"This matters, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue in one of last year's most important books, Winner-Take-All Politics, because politicians don't respond to the concerns of voters, they respond to the organized muscle of institutions that represent them. With labor in decline, both parties now respond strongly to the interests of the rich—whose institutional representation is deep and energetic—and barely at all to the interests of the working and middle classes.
This has produced three decades of commercial and financial deregulation that started during the administration of a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, gained steam throughout the Reagan era, and continued under Bill Clinton. There were a lot of ways America could have responded to the twin challenges of '70s-era stagflation and the globalization of finance, but the policies we chose almost invariably ignored the stagnating wages of the middle class and instead catered to the desires of the superrich: hefty tax cuts on both high incomes and capital gains. Deregulation of S&Ls (PDF) that led to extensive looting and billions in taxpayer losses. Monetary policy focused excessively on inflation instead of employment levels. Tacit acceptance of asset bubbles as a way of maintaining high economic growth. An unwillingness to regulate financial derivatives that led to enormous Wall Street profits and contributed to the financial crisis of 2008. At nearly every turn, corporations and the financial industry used their institutional muscle to get what they wanted, while the working class sat by and watched, mostly unaware that any of this was even happening."
Democrats are supposed to be the party of the unempowered, therefore what's important in Washington politics is that Democrats lose. If the democrats are in power, they lose slowly due to obstruction translated "gridlock" and "required 60 vote super majority". If they aren't in power, they lose quickly because the republicans will steam roll them and STILL complain about how the "partisan democrats" are hurting the spirit of comity required to protect the country from terrorists.
It's important for that powerful win and the powerless lose, otherwise the system isn't working because there's too much democracy - maybe too many people voting.
This is why democrats and republicans are covered so differently and why an idiot crook "who America would like to have a beer with" was 'elected' - despite the complaints of people like Krugman and Molly Ivins that his math and records did not add up.
The press covers the scores in this game, it's a scary career move to do coverage that affects the game's outcome. The powerful are not forgiving enemies.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 9 Jul 2012 at 02:04 PM
Interesting example of the type of political coverage we normally see:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/07/07/new-york-times-editors-mangle-story-on-false-gop-medicare-claims/
Here's the thing, we often know what the republicans want to do, and we know what will likely result from it, (for example, education) but we don't want to believe that the result of our votes will be what conservative claim they will. We didn't want to believe Bush would blow the surplus on tax cuts and find a way to hit Iraq. We didn't want to believe that the appointments of Alito and Roberts to the supreme court would result in a partisan body who would end up overturning decades of law (campaign finance) to the benefit of their republicans. We didn't want to believe that electing so-called "fiscal conservative" tea party whack jobs would result in the rollback of labor and women's rights while the rich get to walk off with tax cuts and state assets.
Because if you believe, then you are forced to confront. It is better to make the whole body of political issues in America seem a complicated, muddled, 'both sides doing it', hash so that press and people can justify their disconnection from the political process without getting upset.
It's hard to say "Conservative bastards are the problem. The rich and powerful are the problem. The ignoring of inconvenient facts / science and the promotion of outright lies by a significant and militant population in the US is the problem."
But it's true.
And we have to engage it, one local government level, one primary battle at a time.
This sucks for us because - unlike the right and the centrists - nobody really pays us to fight back. Being unempowered sucks, but it's never going to get better if we use this as an excuse to avoid politics and necessary political confrontation.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 9 Jul 2012 at 02:36 PM
We don't believe republicans, which is why we don't hold their words against them:
http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/nobody-takes-conservative-wingnuttery-face-value
We must find blame for democrats, which is why we scold them for not proposing the things they have proposed:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/centrist-self-parody/
Republicans cannot be radical jerks and democrats can't be hopeful capitulators. I'd have to stand for a set of principles and pick a side if that were the case. In my utopia, politics just works when both sides get together to do their dirty business and my hands stay clean. If they are not getting together, it must be both sides fault.
My job is to report this for politico.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 9 Jul 2012 at 02:59 PM