The Morning Tide

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for January 7th, 2010


Observations:


1) What a striking line from Ed Schulze: “the Democrats are going to have to focus on pre-existing conditions and sell that as the entire reform of health care”. It’s striking for being two or more things at once. Is it the first hedge of candidate Schulze? Is it the last haymaker from the Dean-aligned antagonist? What was a questionable booking in the first place, because he was only there to screen test, not to make the waves that got him consideration, that makes two screen tests just this week, counting Harold Ford.


But the bigger issue is what is the net effect for the American people? Do we gain more from having a progressive with notoriety “Al Franken” North Dakota? Do we lose more when a guy we have grown to trust starts selling us a bill of goods?


These are the things Ed Schulze is currently battling. And it’s creeping out of every pore, as I thought he was gonna put Mike Barnicle in his trunk when Mike tried to project nerd status on him.


2) What everyone else in the media is talking about is this: why all the coverage of the 2 Senatorial retirements on the left when the score is 5-2 with the Republicans on top? How is that analysis missed with the cast, Chuck, Savannah, Mike Allen, and every other pundit known to man trying to get 10 minutes of face time on this show? When it’s 5 hours of coverage next week, will all 5 hours be allotted to not bringing up relativity?


When this kind of issue comes up, it becomes the latest drinking game. How many times can Joe Scarborough say “the Democrats are in trouble”. To make that statement whole, one would think that there would be the counter balancing “but no one is in love with their Republican option either”. Why is that missing? Relativity is not attacking bias, while being the bias.


True to the MJR scoreboard test, eh.


3) And lets finish with this: what do Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Eric Bates, James Fallows and Donald Sutherland all have in common? It’s not football that’s fixed. It’s our government. It is by designed equipped a safety valve where competing agendas demonize each other and its not a scorched earth they leave behind, it’s their own debilitation, leaving corporate interests to retain control of government.


Joe Scarborough did a respectably amazing job of defining that 85% of the country would be better equipped to govern if they weren’t being led to demonization by the 15% on the fringe. I think those numbers are very optimistic, but it doesn’t matter. Even it its 60% or even 51% in the middle, neither of the two 24.5% opposing forces would have purpose other than to attempt to sway the middle with hate and altruism.


The problem is that the first paragraph and the second paragraph have more in common than anyone wants to admit. The middle is significantly bigger than 51%. But the bicameral system we have adopted is designed to defeat not either side but the middle. Other countries are effectively bicameral, but not with the same distorting factors of paid television campaigns and cloture. What those two megafactors and a catacomb of unearthed smaller loopholes and distortions accomplish is disempowering of the group that should in fact be leading this country, the middle class.


Whether it’s Eric Bates explanation of the oil and coal lobbies being the most powerful force in opposing global warming, James Fallows coming from other countries and seeing America in political disarray without any apparent point, the right is teaching their children hate at pro-life protests, the left is teaching there children hate by it’s portrayal of the right as intellectually inferior, and their combined goal seems to be if we can just amass 51% of the vote, special interest to our extreme side included, we can at least keep the demons at bay for 2 more years. Is that a goal, or a guideline to attrition?


The show gets a passing grade on both the MJR connect the dots test and the lucidity test, even if by accident, but for making this disturbing trend one step closer to our everyday dialogue, where it can eventually be reversed.


That’s all today, see you tomorrow.