Historic Election Creates Historic Political Involvement

Media pundits continue to argue the Democratic Party is in a self-destructing spiral as their candidates for the presidential nomination fight their way to the August convention, but no one can argue this election has not created more interest in politics in a generation.

A main reason for this interest, of course, is the antithesis of political inclusion, Imperial President George Bush, perhaps the most unpopular and despised president in American history. Polls show Democrats, independents and a growing number of Republicans are united in their belief that Bush’s reign of ineptitude should be followed by major change in foreign and domestic policies.

But mainstream media outlets and pundits from The New York Times to CNN, from FOX to MSNBC, from Maureen Dowd to Robert Novak, seem to miss this big picture and instead continue to focus on manufactured media narratives like Barack Obama’s use of the words “bitter” and “cling,” or what Bill Clinton said to this reporter or that reporter. If this election has taught and reminded us anything about the mainstream media, it is this: The media is about itself. It is self-reflexive. It manufactures “news” for profits and deceptively reports it as if it exists outside itself. Everyone who works for the corporate media is complicit in this deception unless they speak out and actively work against it.

There is no mistaking the fact that the interest in this election on the Democratic side is of historic proportions. Democrat voters are registering in record numbers, crowds swell around Obama and Hillary Clinton throughout the country, and the momentum only increases as the convention draws near. This is certainly not a boring election. Who could have imagine ten years ago, people would be gathered around television sets on an April night to watch primary election results trickle in from Pennsylvania of all places in a presidential race between a woman candidate and an African-American candidate? (Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary yesterday.) People know Obama’s and Clinton’s stump speeches by heart, and the adoring crowds keep coming for more and more. True, this narrative lacks the conflict needed by media pundits to qualify their existence and so they construct petty issues to feed their own warped narcissism, their own narrow views of reality, but that does not make the big story of this election less important.

This, then, is the real news about the election, and it needs repeating over and over. It is not Dowd’s relentless snarky attacks on Clinton or Novak’s “Wise and Serious” right-wing pronouncements about “Wise and Serious” political strategy. It is not CNN’s electronic maps or Wolf Blitzer. Dowd, Novak, Blitzer, for all their self-importance, miss the point and bitterly cling (yes, the word choice is intentional) to their roosts in hopes they will not be discovered for the frauds they have become. If the mainstream media can make this election about itself as “media,” about the way it covers its manufactured narratives, then maybe, just maybe, the pundits and stars can continue to get paid for their distortions, for their lies, for just being consistently wrong about everything all the time. If not, if Obama or Clinton wins in November, then everything might change.

And this is why there is so much media love for Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain. McCain reflects and honors the understated rules of the media club, the status quo, the ideology of elitism, the we-know-best crowd, the people who sneer at you or ignore you because you are from Kansas City or Pittsburgh or Cleveland. McCain is a symbol of both a broken political system—his platform is to continue Bush’s war and implement more tax cuts for the wealthy—and a corrupt media system, which is tied inextricably to the diminishing of democracy values under the regime of the Imperial Bush and his courtiers

The Democratic Party has given us Social Security, Medicare, the 40-hour work week, the civil rights movement and much more. The party has created the best and enduring institutions and principles in this country. The Democrats, for all their flaws as a political party, are leading the way once again in this country with two major candidates who represent historic firsts and historic change. Now, more than ever, is a great time to be a Democrat. The unfolding Obama/Clinton race, no matter who you support, is the most significant political event in decades in this country.

There will be plenty of time to rally together and defeat McCain and his media sycophants. So let the Obama and Clinton race continue. If we must, then let us have a brokered convention. But, as we go on this historic journey, do not forget the real story of this election.