Posted on 01/05/2003 1:14:16 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
NEW YORK -- Influential Democrats, worried that their party has been outgunned in the political propaganda wars by conservative radio and television personalities, are scouring the nation for a liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh and the many others on the deep bench of Republican friends.
For years, Democrats have groused about their inability to balance what they see as the increasing influence over the electorate by advocates of Republican policies.
But they say their concerns have taken on a new urgency because of the rise to the top of the cable news ratings by the Fox News Channel, considered by liberals to have a conservative slant, and the loss of the Senate to the Republicans in November. Some Democrats say the election outcome enhanced the influence of Fox News and personalities like Limbaugh.
The efforts among influential Democrats, particularly liberals, range from a grass-roots talent search for progressive radio hosts to the creation of think tanks to provide a Democratic spin for the news media, to nascent discussions by wealthy supporters about starting a cable network with a liberal bent.
People working on these projects acknowledged they were venturing into territory where liberals have failed and failed again, most notably with the short-lived radio programs of Mario Cuomo and Texan Jim Hightower, not to mention Phil Donahue's struggling, liberal talk show on MSNBC.
However, they said, the recent Republican gains have perhaps set the backdrop for the emergence of an angry liberal who could claim the same outsider status that worked so well for Limbaugh in the early 1990s.
The hurried efforts by Democrats to find more powerful media voices comes after years of carping but little action.
"If you start from the premise that the message was right, which we do, then the problem was that it wasn't getting out to the people," said one official of the Democratic Party who spoke on condition that his name not be used.
With that sentiment, there is a sense within the leadership ranks that the party erred in not building a media support system after the 2000 presidential election, when it lost the media coordination of the Clinton White House.
"Across the board, we need to muscle up," said John Podesta, the former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton and now a law professor at Georgetown University. "That means from the congressional operations to the party committees to the think tank world to, most significantly, beefing up our capacity to communicate with the public in all forms of media, not just through obscure Internet Web sites but on television and radio."
For his part, Podesta is discussing with Internet entrepreneur Steven T. Kirsch and others the creation of a liberal version of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative research group that, along with others of its kind, is credited with helping start the modern conservative movement.
The foundation is part of a circuit of influential conservative groups that are credited with helping to hone a singular conservative message, bolstered each Wednesday at back-to-back meetings held by Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, and the conservative activist Paul Weyrich. Those meetings are monitored and at times attended by some conservative commentators, columnists and Internet writers.
Democrats have long claimed that the circuit has corralled conservative thinkers, and more importantly, conservative media, into a disciplined message of the week that gets repeated attention from Web sites like The Drudge Report, Limbaugh's radio show, Fox News' prime-time talk shows and the editorial pages of The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Kirsch, chief executive of the Propel Internet service and a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, said the foundation he and Podesta envision would do the same for liberals.
"During the last 10 years the opposition has become more organized and the liberals haven't adapted to counter it," he said. "We will have components that will include messaging, message delivery and coordination of progressive groups so progressives will speak with more of a unified voice."
But if history is any guide, the soil may not be fertile. Liberal radio programs have not worked very well in the past. Liberals and conservatives said they believed this was in part because the most prominent liberal hosts have tended to present policy issues in all of their dry complexity while refraining from baring fangs against their conservative opponents.
"Most liberal talk shows are so, you know, milquetoast, who would want to listen to them?" said Harry Thomason, the Hollywood producer who is close to Clinton. "Conservatives are all fire and brimstone."
I'll bet Rush has a good time with it tomorrow.
Ultimately they are on the wrong side of every issue of substance. They are still coasting on the momentum of black civil rights movement of the 1960s but they have begun to lose speed. Their constant vilification of conservative blacks whose achievements and access to power have eclipsed anything that liberal blacks can point to is proof that they beginning to panic.
Good point.
Yet, they will always tells us that the stench is really new ideas that will solve our problems and promote growth.
noun, alt. spelling of coinkydink
Okay, so Joe wasn't a very good liar but he would certainly be believed by anybody who would vote for the scumbags anyway, so why not?
That's kidding, right? That cow Molly Ivens doesn't really have a radio show, right?
I just got a vision of that slob sitting behind a microphone, and the microphone is shaped like a ham. Uck!
Liars, liars, pants on fire.
There are several problems with this:
1. Clinton will make the show about him -- he can't help it. Many Democrats want to move away from Clinton as the face of the party.
2. Callers (if he allows an ideological diversity like Limbaugh does) will make the show about Clinton. They will challenge him on his past policy decisions. Clinton will either spin or get angry at being confronted repeatedly, or deny opposition viewpoints from appearing on the show altogether. The contrast to Limbaugh's style of engaging those with opposing views would be apparent, and if not, then it would be made apparent by Limbaugh and other conservative hosts to mock the liberal attempt to duplicate them.
3. Non-political commentators don't bring the baggage of past policy decisions to the microphone the way Clinton would. Clinton will be dragged back to his administration policies repeatedly and may not be able to stay on message as consistently as a non-political host would.
Just some thoughts...
-PJ
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