Prometheus 6

The Divisive Frauds in the Media
by eriposte

I am glad that Steve appended this to my post on the Nevada results - where I mentioned how the results are being used by the media to sow the seeds of division amongst Democrats:

...And yet all the media wants to spin is that a Clinton nomination will split the party and that African Americans will stay home at the disappointment of Obama not getting the top spot...

...Andrea Mitchell is still at it. She calls the Nevada outcome, based on their exit polls showing African Americans going for Barack in a big way while women and "Latinos" going for Hillary, as a "historic divide" within the party, and "not something that any Democrat would want to see." That's right - it's nothing but doom and gloom from Mrs. Alan Greenspan at the sight that women and Hispanics go for Hillary while African Americans go for Obama.

Can I just say how much I deeply detest the frauds on TV, the ones like Andrea Mitchell - among many others?

First of all, if Sen. Obama is the great uniter that he claims to be, isn't it more than reasonable to think that he would unite behind the eventual Democratic nominee (if Sen. Clinton wins the nomination) and get his supporters to do the same? Does anyone seriously believe that a charismatic Democrat who says he can unite Republicans and Independents with Democrats cannot unite Democrats with other Democrats?

Secondly, what is more important here is the fact that the "stars" in the media - those who get paid undeservedly princely sums to pontificate ignorantly and spread lies and division - routinely keep people uninformed. I wrote earlier that despite the Rev. Jesse Jackson having gotten historic primary wins in the 1984 and 1988 Presidential campaigns - a generation earlier - many in the media have repeatedly ignored that to create the false impression that Sen. Obama's campaign was uniquely historic. Now, bloviators in the media, like Andrea Mitchell, are spreading another canard - a highly divisive one - in the hope that voters won't notice. Let's go back to this 1984 article in the New York Times by Ronald Smothers to see what I mean (emphasis mine, throughout this post):

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has won as much as 79 percent of the black vote in the Democratic Presidential primaries so far, but three of his biggest tests lie ahead.

As the primaries move into New York today, Pennsylvania next Tuesday and Ohio on May 8, his showing among black voters in three major cities, New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland, will be watched closely.

The Jackson candidacy has the potential of broad effects in the black community. It appears to have generated a growing sense of political involvement among blacks, but it also has divided black leaders between Mr. Jackson and Walter F. Mondale, with potential for repercussions for some leaders' own political future.

In the race for the party's nomination, polls have shown that Mr. Jackson's popularity among blacks has appeared to be most harmful to Mr, Mondale, who is the second Presidential choice among most blacks. Senator Gary Hart's support among blacks has been minimal.

[...]

The Rev. William Jones, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Brooklyn who is a Jackson delegate in the primary today, told an audience at his church Sunday that the Jackson candidacy represented ''something unparalleled in our time or perhaps in our century'' for blacks.

A 'Groundswell' for Jackson

''There is a Jesse Jackson groundswell, and it is becoming everyone's black, patriotic duty to support him,'' said Lawrence Briskar, dean of students at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.

''I had no interest in politics, but when Jesse said he was running, I said I was running, too,'' said 25-year-old Davida Jacobe, running as a Jackson delegate in Philadelphia. ''At first people seemed to think it was radical to vote for a black candidate, but they don't say that any more.''

What percentage of the African-American vote did Walter Mondale get in the 1984 general election? Here are some statistics from the book "Racial and Cultural Minorities: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination" by George Eaton Simpson and John Milton Yinger, page 234:

In November 1984, exit polls showed that nationwide 88 percent of Blacks voted for Mr. Mondale; 65 percent of Whites voted for Mr. Reagan. In the South, Mr. Reagan got 71 percent of the white vote; 90 percent of Blacks voted for Mr. Mondale. Approximately 9 percent fewer White southerners voted for the Democratic ticket in 1984 than in 1980. Blacks provided more than half of the Mondale vote in the South. Some observers believe that increases in black registration and turnout in 1984 were at least offset by a movement of Whites into the Republican column...

In other words, despite:

• Jesse Jackson's overwhelming lead among African-Americans in the initial primaries in 1984 and
• The American media's concern-trolling about the divisions in the Black community over Jackson and Mondale and the harmful impact on Mondale due to the overwhelming African-American support for Jackson

...there was actually an increase in Black voter registration and Blacks voted at extremely high levels for Mondale in the 1984 general election. Of course, part of this was because Reagan ran a racist campaign based on the Southern Strategy. That said, there's no reason to think the Republican nominee this year would not use some semblance of the Southern strategy and no reason to think that if Sen. Clinton is the eventual Democratic nominee that she wouldn't go all out to woo African-Americans everywhere.

Let me say this again. The Republicans and the media are trying to divide the Democratic party by stenographically advancing false charges of racism and sowing the seeds of division by keeping voters mis-informed. We need to be aggressive in fighting this venomous nonsense every day.