FACT: A not-very-well-liked Democrat, Terry McAuliffe beat an even more disliked Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccineli, 48% to 45.5%.
COWARDLY BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA: In his questionably named “concession” speech, Ken Cuccineli claimed that because he didn’t lose by a bigger margin, it means he and his anti-Obamacare campaign won (we can only hope for more such victories for the Baggers in 2014).
MORONIC SELF-INTERESTED PARROTING: News channels have reported this wholly absurd claim as fact.
In evidence, a robotic newsdrone on MSNBC today promoted Cuccineli’s ridiculous meme (which was clearly being pumped in her ear by MSNBC producers) to Democratic House Rep. Steve Israel, challenging him on how much trouble the Dems could be in when 2014 comes around thanks to this indicator that the public is turning on Democrats because of the troubled ACA rollout.
WHAT???
A terribly flawed and disliked Dem just WON the governorship of VA!!! He beat a Bagger who had been elected Attorney General and was seen as a shoo-in for Governor when he first entered the race! And the MSM takeaway from that is Dems are in trouble in 2014 because of Obamacare? Huh??? The Republican lost, the Democrat won…and the MSM instead adopts the loser’s unsubstantiated tantrum as the way things are and that the loser is actually the winner???
There is absolutely no proof that the ACA’s troubled rollout had anything to do with the race narrowing towards the end. No proof whatsoever. Which, as it’s become known in the cable news industry, is what they call “news”.
Of course, they want conflict because it increases viewership and ad revenue but this is an absolute low.
The only factual data that has been reported is that Cuccineli campaigned hard in the last days of the campaign in the reddest parts of the state. Most rational and honest people would propose that this helped increase turnout from his base and close the gap.
But…for corporate MSM greedaholics, one must always look for the leaden lining in any cloud, no matter how dishonest and unprofessional one has to be to “find” it.
In Alabama, a Tea Party challenger to an incumbent Republican lost as well last night. Chris Christie, a man who embraced Obama and voices support for bipartisanship, won the NJ Governorship by a big margin. So, it doesn’t exactly demand the deductive reasoning skills of Sherlock Holmes to arrive at the simple and factual conclusion that the Tea Party and their agendas including anti-bipartisanship and anti-Obamacare suffered a total loss last night.
However, that doesn’t help MSNBC and other news channels sell ad time for more money to oil companies for their propaganda ads so they readily latch onto any meme that helps them keep the “neck and neck” battle between Democrats and Republicans in place.
Add to this the overblown coverage of Chris Christie’s win. The MSM needs to have the Republicans viewed as having an equivalent-to-Hillary candidate so of course, the Presidential election in 2016 will be…you guessed it…neck and neck.
Christie winning in New Jersey is so idiosyncratic, so locally-based that the extrapolation of his win there to his winning in a GOP Primary for the President and being a “neck-and-neck” opponent to Hillary Clinton (assuming she runs) in 2016 is hardly supported. In the first place, until Hurricane Sandy, Christie was not so popular in NJ. It was the image he presented after Sandy, that won over NJ voters. National voters aren’t and won’t be affected by that, issues and personal history matter in national elections. His record in NJ is poor on jobs (48th out of all 50 states), education and the economy. He is openly hostile to teachers, the poor and anyone who disagrees with him. He opposes abortion rights, public schools and gay marriage. He has many skeletons in the closet, so many that Mitt Romney wouldn’t pick him as his Vice President nominee.
Once again, in assessing the national prospects of a politician, a reasonable person would not just factor in the superficiality, his attractive personality and his wide margin of victory within a state that has had unusual reasons for supporting him, they would also consider his stands on issues, his record and how he is positioned to win a party primary.
The GOP base which is mostly represented by the Tea Party, despises Christie. He represents the kind of Republican they are dedicated to snuffing out. How does Christie ever get to a general election in 2016 without first winning the GOP Primary and these voters? And after establishment GOP Presidential candidates McCain and Romney failing big time, are the GOP core voters who are Tea Partiers really going to once again let themselves be steamrollered by their adversaries in the GOP? And what kind of permanent damage will be done to Christie in a Tea Party dominated primary? How will he be savagely attacked and how will he pander to the extremists in order to try to win?
These more relevant factors rarely enter into the simplistic MSM pronouncements about how amazing and formidable Chris Christie now is because he won a virtually uncontested race (Barbara Buono, his Dem opponent is openly furious about how she had virtually no support from the Democratic Party in her campaign).
In 2016, Christie won’t be running uncontested in the GOP Presidential Primary and if he somehow won that, he won’t be running uncontested in the General Election. So the comparisons are invalid.
And if the MSM truly thinks margins mean everything, isn’t it funny how they aren’t trumpeting the nearly 50% margin Bill DeBlasio won by for mayor in biggest city in the nation, New York? That is a massive margin, it’s over double the allegedly “big” win by Christie, by the MSM’s logic, why doesn’t that represent that Democrats are hugely popular and that DeBlasio could win the Presidency? Oh, that’s right, his win is more of a local phenomenon because he’s not needed to promote their national horse race but Christie is.
Is winning the NJ Governorship a bigger deal than winning the Mayor’s seat in NYC? Let’s look at some numbers:
Population for the State of New Jersey: 8.865 million
Population for New York City: 8.337 million
Not a big difference in the number of people being governed, is it?
And yet, New York City represents a much larger, more dynamic economy with a far greater impact on the nation as a whole. So if the MSM was fair, it might be representing that DeBlasio’s win is of far more consequence to the nation than Christie’s, that DeBlasio’s job as mayor of NYC will be far more important than Christie’s admitted half-term Governorship of NJ (his upcoming Presidential campaign means great neglect of his duties as governor) and the greatest mandate in this election was for a Democrat, not a Republican.
We live in a time when there is no shared reality we can rely on, when we can all witness the same events but we accept that others will use their agendas to try and convince us that we didn’t see what we saw. Every time they win at that, we lose as a society…and we lose by a huge margin.
The old adage; believe half of what you see and none of what you read, seems to be the standard for accepting the Media. One has to have the desire to dig deeper into issues to get to the truth, and they may only find a hint. Some don’t have the wherewithal and just accept what they are told, i.e., the baggers and many of the left.
One must also remember that the Media is driven by the 1% and they only want what is good for them.
Welcome to The Planet, FJB!
So true, with the way the press has deteriorated and been co-opted and owned by big money corporations, one must always take what they see in the media with a grain of salt and seek out confirmation on their own.
I can’t remember such an ongoing stream of false information being promoted by the media, the latest example being 60 Minutes now-admitted bogus report about Benghazi.
Much as we’d like to trust our press, if we want to know what’s true, we just can’t blindly do so now.
Could I just add another welcome to the Planet, fjb? Hope to hear more from you!
About the news media and their “reliable” sources. Oops. 😳
‘60 Minutes’ apologizes for Benghazi report
CBS retracts its report on the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound, says it was misled by source..
http://wapo.st/18deApt
Kalima, when CBS wanted the Telecommunication Bill to go through under Bush, they fired Dan Rather and made massive public apologies when they reported a falsehood (Rather wasn’t even the one who worked up that report but he still got fired to please the Bush Overlords).
Yet when 60 Minutes promotes an obvious and admitted liar to attack Obama and pour gasoline on the Bagger’s fire to burn Obama, they first ignore and deflect before grudgingly admitting their broadcasting lies.
Will anyone at 60 Minutes get fired for pushing a false anti-Obama attack? Looks doubtful however…when you speak an undesirable truth to RW gun nuts, you DO get fired:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/us/guns–ammo-editor-resigns-after-gun-control-column/index.html
Even though we’ve made some progress, this country is still really messed up.
I read this story in one of my U.K. sources yesterday. These people are shameless hypocrites.
Here is a quote from E.M. Forster they should all learn to live by.
“There’s enough sorrow in the world, isn’t there, without trying to invent it”.
E. M. Forster
Dan Rather’s report was NOT false. Bush’s National guard commander wrote a document delineating Bush’s absence from service. The accusation of falsehood of that letter hinged on the use of an IBM Elite Selectric typewriter supposedly not available until AFTER the document from Bush’s commander had been typed.
This is the most horrifying lie EVER because California State University (then college) at Dominguez Hills President’s office used them the SAME YEAR that the document had been prepared – 1971. I worked in the President’s office, USED the typewriter, and I know that as FACT. We all hated them because they had proportional spacing making correct a major headache. These IBM Elite typewriters were in common use in government agencies at EXACTLY the time the National Guard letter about Bush was written.
I tried to contact Rather, CBS, IBM – and was rebuffed at every turn. I never could make contact with Rather. He did not have a false document. He had a real one.
And THAT is when I knew CBS had once again thrown a major employee under the bus. They did this with impunity during the McCarthy years, firing staffers on the say-so of Joe McCarthy’s charges – never mind the absence of any proof.
FINALLY they have been forced to admit their own lies. Do I think they were duped? Nope. I think they were co-conspirators in a story once again designed to make this president look bad.
The history reveals a pattern of CBS’s complicity with disinformation, lies, coverups for powerful people, abetting the most extreme forces in America.
I am not remotely surprised.
Kudos Ad. Very well thought out and written. You make some encouraging points. The ACA glitches will be smoothed out and the law’s popularity will grow. I have no doubt about that. I think even some middle class and poor TPers will like it, once they see it’s advantages over high priced, unreliable health insurance.
Today’s cable news outlets are shameless. The vastly different views of the same event show their unending attempts to keep the “sport,” alive. The networks have turned the basic ethic of genuine journalism on it’s ear, for advertising dollars.
I heard a funny analogy about this type of “reporting,” a while ago. One network reports that a cat was struck and killed by a speeding car today. The other networks report that, today a cat committed suicide by jumping in front of a speeding car. 😉
Thanks KT!
The MSM is all about making what’s happening in the short term appear like life or death in the long term, that’s the game to get people whipped up. If they said, “As upset as many are now, Obamacare is following in the path of Medicare, Social Security and the Prescription Drug Plan, all had bumpy launches that needed tweaking but eventually have all proven to work and become invaluable.”
But when you sell “Head Extinguishers” like the MSM, you better be in the business of whipping up people to set their hair on fire.
And BTW, heard a follow up to that cat story in the MSM, they are now suggesting that cars may be luring cats to run in front of them by hanging catnip on their front bumpers just to run them down so cat owners should be panicking that their cat could be next! And stay glued to the MSM for updates!!!
Is the catnip contained in a tea bag?
Lex Luthor would love this. I would actually like to see a presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie … the extremely competent woman beloved by the world running against the elephant-shaped republican whose own party doesn’t like him. It remains to be seen whether Christie would sacrifice his integrity to run for president the way Mitt Romney did.
jj, I really think that Christie’s popularity and chances are…well…very over-inflated. The MSM is slobbering all over and humping the leg of Christie because they so desperately want that “neck and neck” Clash of the Titans between him and Hillary but the more the public learns about Christie’s policies, the less they will like him. The more they see how vicious and heartless he can be, the less they will like him.
This reminds me so much of the MSM’s love affair with Rudy Giuliani. Just like Rudy, Christie rides on the back of a major catastrophe to validate his “greatness” and the MSM swallows that whole.
However, for those of us who don’t live in NJ, it doesn’t have the same impact.
Are Dems and indies really going to vote for an obnoxious, classless elitist to be their president? Christie shows only spite towards the poor and middle class and puts on this charade of being a good guy that the MSM and NJ citizens may eat up but it is unfounded. Think about it, what is his main accomplishment as NJ Governor, other than gutting public education, programs for the poor and giving tax cuts to the wealthy?
He kissed up to Obama to get money from the Federal government to pump billions into his bad economy and damaged state.
That’s it, that’s why he’s so “liked”. He brown nosed the President to get billions of dollars and that is the mark of a great leader? Just that?
This “legend” of Christie won’t endure through the GOP primaries and if he was to win, through a GE. He won’t be able to ride that BS forever anymore than Giuliani could chant “9/11!” to get elected. Christie will fall of his own weight (joke intended) as time goes by and I for one will be very pleased to see that.
I can see the Dem critique of Christie’s election speeches now: “Noun, verb and ‘Sandy.'”
Pretty much, you do hear him say Sandy like he has a unique NJ version of Tourette’s.
If he has any integrity to sacrifice, jj. I think Christie has a personality that is very similar to the Mayor of Toronto’s.
AdLib, Robert Reich had a similar take on the media’a post election spin:
Kes, thanks for this.
It always makes me shake my head when the Baggers call it “The Liberal Media” because such observations only underline how the media is so biased against liberalism. Reich is on target about this, DeBlasio won bigger across all demographics than Christie and by bigger margins but because his policies support the majority of Americans (who aren’t wealthy), he’s a lefty. Christie meanwhile pursues policies that hammer the majority (who aren’t wealthy) and he’s a moderate.
Huh?
So crushing the poor and handing out tax cuts to the wealthy is moderate but trying to reverse that kind of class warfare is “Left”?
We really can never forget that the wealthy own our major news outlets and from their perspective, this is the only way to see things.
This so called ‘news media’ is silly. Which is why I do not watch TV ‘news'(if it bleeds, it leads). There no ‘good old days’ in the news business ( reference that old play “The Front Page”). In a sense, people like Cronkite were the exception.
It is not political bias so much, as no news outlet is impartial. It is that there is little actual reporting going on. Actual reporting is difficult.
…and expensive. And sometimes dangerous, They don’t want to spend the time, the money or the effort to do it right.
agrippa, no question that all news outlets have slashed their budgets and staffs for real reporting. The corporate bosses looked at that and said, “Why waste money on that when we can just get our news from the web and news feeds that other people report?”
So, little investigative reporting anymore. “News” has just been “Walmarted”, using cheap sources and making garbage “special” so that bigger profits can be turned.
AdLib, you are the clearest thinker I know of in the realm of politics and the media. Once again you’ve proven your ability to cut through the BS and the corporate spin to expose the MSM’s sleazy manipulative techniques and their crass greed.
Gerrymandering and MSM misrepresentation are two of the biggest hurdles progressives have to deal with before they can effect real change in the 21st century.
With any luck, gerrymandering can be dealt with by each State’s passage of laws that designate non-political committees to re-draw district lines as needed.
And articles like this one will help with wising viewers up regarding the content — and more importantly — the misleading spin of the stuff they’re watching and listening to.
Once a scammer is unmasked, it’s that much harder for him to keep on scamming. Thanks for all the unmasking that you do!
Kes, I’m very humbled by such a kind compliment, thank you so much! It means a lot to me.
Indeed, gerrymandering and the corrupt media are two sides of the evil, anti-democratic triad we’re faced with in this country. The third is of course unregulated money in elections.
Gerrymandering is so anti-democratic, it should be federally outlawed. We’re stuck with the corporately owned, propagandizing media but a renewal of the Equal Time rule could help cut down on all networks providing one-sided coverage/BS. And publicly funded elections would cleanse our democracy overnight.
The problem of course is that Congress would have to pass such legislation and since they are currently dominated by the wealthy, it’s hard to imagine them doing so.
There are solutions, if only we could pass them as the people, like national initiatives, we could get things back on track.
Well it leaves absolutely no doubt about who is paying their wages. The same with CNN cancelling the documentary about Hillary because of ridiculous and quite public outrage from Republican weenies who can’t handle the competition. What’s going to happen once the ACA is running smoothly by 2014 if they can’t handle a documentary now about someone who has not said she will run in 2016? Their “outrage” would be better spent on the TP nuts who dragged them under in the first place. Of course that would involve logic and admitting that they f’up by siding with the nuts in 2010, and when have the GOP ever taken responsibility for anything?
If things continue the way they are going, and Dems are elected anywhere, the GOP TP enablers will have much more than a Hillary documentary to worry about. In fact they should start praying to their God early, he doesn’t seem to like them that much anymore. 🙂
Kalima, don’t forget that CNN partnered with the Tea Party on 2012 GOP Debates! They were frightened of looking partisan by airing a non-partisan documentary on Hillary…but were in bed with the Tea Party???
How utterly hypocritical and credibility-destroying can they get?
So of course they don’t express outrage at the Tea Party, they’re BFFs.
And you’re right, God has mentioned that he does not look kindly on the Tea Party…which is why he gave them Ted Cruz.
Right, I had forgotten about the TP love fest because I no longer watch CNN.
God certainly has a sense of hunour as you know very well. Fitting penance in the form of Cruz I believe.
Ad, this problem with the media is bigger than we think. The reason it is so big is because the people who listen to Fox, CNN, MSNBC or any other “news” channel think they have it right so there is no sense in voting. We all have to get out and VOTE and bring a neighbor or friend ! We just need everyone to do their civic duty and vote every time there is an election. It is a duty and those who don’t vote are helping the worst politicians get elected.
Nirek, it is completely to the corporate news industry’s benefit to make people apathetic about voting because that power can be usurped by them. I don’t know that the primary goal is that though, I do think it is keeping the public divided against each other and agitated because it’s good for business and weakens the power of the people to determine the agenda and politicians in their democracy for themselves.
Ad, not voting is a vote against your own best interest. That is the bottom line.
People may be waking up to that fact now, i expect there to be strong turnout for an off year election next year.
Agree adlib so so sick of all their false equivalency ; stories that are not stories pure bullshit comments by iignorant, information challenged congressmen and senators; the dumbing down of America or being Foxed ; all media seems to be following Foxes model of propagandizing the population.
Hey Dbos, nice to see you!
Indeed, politics today are so distorted by the corporately-owned media industry, it takes a lot of independent investigation to find out what’s really going on.
Fox News did start this but the corporations that own the other news networks are happy to play the same game.
It’s all about manipulation, both manipulating people to keep watching their channels and manipulating them into being strongly divided…which gives their and other corporations more power over our country.
Thank you for writing this AdLib! I cannot stand the poor job done by the media on everything. They reported Christie’s win as though it was some big bi-partisan event, Dems and Repubs coming together to elect the bully.
The REALITY is that ONLY 24% of eligible voters in NJ actually voted! Only 1/4 of voters went to the polls. So how is this an indication of anything for Christie’s future?
If the senate election had been held simultaneously in NJ, things would have been different. Just 2 weeks ago 48% of the voters went to the polls to vote for CORY BOOKER who won by huge margins. Christie decided to make it a separate election, costing many millions of dollars extra, to have the elections held at different times to ensure his win.
Did I hear anything about this from the commentators? No.
The press is too predictable in its lack of intelligence in analyzing most things and I rarely trust what they report.
Greta42, great point! When only 24% of voters show up, how can the results be held up as meaningful? The MSM is touting the “high percentage” of Dem, black and women voters for Christie but when dealing with such a small turnout, those numbers are totally distorted.
Not that they would let you know that.
And NJ voters should be outraged at the sham of an election this was, as you describe, wasting $24 million dollars of taxpayer money just so he could separate Booker’s election from his and claim a bigger margin of victory. All of NJ was just ripped off, Christie robbed them of $24 million to use for his own Presidential campaign! They got zero benefit from that. It should be a massive scandal but the media just yawned at it because they don’t care about our democracy, they just want a fight.
The media is biased towards their own profits, that’s what comes first over everything else, including the truth. So I’m with you, I don’t ever accept media memes (“news”) at face value.
WHICH is why I do not even watch MSNBC anymore. I watched that idjit Chris Matthews for maybe 10 minutes yesterday and was contradicting him within seconds. The only way I see Christie as a problem is with uninformed Dems and Indies. I have seen many talk about what a great guy he is because they saw him during Sandy or he signed some bill that they personally agreed was a good bill.
Can you imagine that clown as President? Anger management classes would become a daily class at the White House. George Bush would be looked back on fondly. BUT it could happen because of the uninformed Dems and Indies. I am personally not putting all my eggs in the Hillary basket just yet, I am waiting to see who will primary with her because I see others who would be good. Sherrod of Ohio, Deval Patrick of Massachussetts, Gov O’Malley of Maryland, Elizabeth Warren of MA, Hillary seems to be the favorite of most Dems and I will support her if she wins the nomination but I would also hope she would put Warren or one of these other people on the ticket.
As far as the MSM goes, they want to see controversy so they gin it up. Where, along the way, these people sold their souls, I am not sure. Even Rachel Maddow is less than honest these days. I have watched a bit of AJA and RT News and see a bit of this same thing with them but not nearly as much. RT might be a bit biased against the US in particular but they do make me think and I like that. Our media is a sham and I don’t even think when I watch anymore, I just wonder how many lies they can possibly sell in the space of an hour.
Oh I forgot, Ted Strickland, I think he is from Ohio too. I like his fiery ways.
Sue, agreed, the uninformed are always the enemies of a constructive democracy. I do think though that the preponderance of anti-Christie attacks in the GOP Primary and if he somehow was to win, in a GE would take the shine right off of Christie with most voters.
And as you say, imagine how he’ll be so prime for a blow up at being attacked (which he never is in NJ) when he’s sleep-deprived on the campaign trail. He will lose it and get nasty and that will sober up those on the fence about him.
This is all a PR manipulation, Christie isn’t as bad as Baggers like Ted Cruz but he is as bad as Mitt Romney and that will have to be made clear. He is wrong on just about every issue most Americans support, from Gay marriage to Obamacare to public education to taxing the wealthy and helping the poor, Christie’s policies are pretty much Romney’s and if he was to win the GOP Primary, Hillary or whoever the Dem nominee is would simply need to hammer him on policy AND how he would represent a green light for all the tea bagger insanity.
The bottom line for voters has to be, “What will he support and do as President?” not, “Do I like what a character he is?” When you get down to issues with him, he will be on the wrong side. He wants to repeal Obamacare (he and every Repub has to) and by next year, when it is all running pretty smoothly and millions have got insurance they didn’t have before, that will be a big losing argument that most won’t vote for.
No matter who wins the 2016 GOP primary, a Republican President would represent the reach of Baggers into the White House and that thought alone should scare off voters.
You are probably on the side of right here, I just worry too much but that is what moms do lol. I am not ready to back Hillary just yet, I want to see the field before I commit but I think you are right, without splitting their party down the middle Rethugs have no where to really go.
I speak of Hillary not as someone who thinks her positions and sensibilities are ideal for Progressives but as a matter of probability. If she runs, she would be favored to win. That said, I will be looking to other candidates too for what they bring to the table in 2016.
As for the Repubs, I see an inflamed conflict between the GOP Elite and the Tea Party as inevitable in the GOP’s 2016 primary. That will really beat up the eventual nominee and take any shine off of them (especially Christie).
Not that Dems won’t have their conflicts but there isn’t such a huge chasm between Dems as there is between Repubs and Tea Partiers. So, the hostility and wars will be bloodier for Repubs which is a good thing for Dems.