“Any time you speak out powerfully for change, the forces of status quo attack” — Barack Obama
In a country the size of the United States there is nothing more important to the success of a Presidential campaign than television. Rupert Murdoch understands this to be true, which is why his Sky News here in the UK, and Fox News in the US, only pays lip-service to impartiality, both being dogmatically biased in favour of the conservative viewpoint.
Obama understands this too, which is why he’s flooding the Pennsylvania airwaves with paid advertisements in the run up to the primary. It’s also why televised debates are so important to the democratic process, and until this week there had been twenty such debates between the Democratic candidates, hosted by various networks, which fitted in with this tradition and drawing huge audiences.
The twenty-first debate, this time hosted by ABC, was the first for five weeks, but even before it began there were rumours that it was likely to be a very different debate. With the moderators being an ex-Clinton staffer and a Republican, word leaked on the Internet of a planned hit-job on Obama, with one question even being spoon-fed to a moderator by Fox New’s Sean Hannity (see video below).
The rumours underestimated quite how bad it really was to be though. This was the worst debate ever. Almost the whole of the first hour was devoted to trivial so-called ‘gotcha moments’, mostly aimed at undermining Obama, and at the end of the debate the studio audience booed the moderators, causing one to exclaim “the audience is turning on me!” as they cut to an ad break. After the debate, the ABC website was flooded with thousands of mostly angry and negative comments, and newspapers and other media outlets universally condemned the debate (except for Republican supporting outlets, who fear Obama).
It’s not clear what the motive was for the questioning - the jury is still out as to whether it was a deliberate attempt to damage Obama, or simply a badly judged attempt to bolster ratings by ‘going tabloid’ - but it would appear that the result is that Obama has been hit, at least according to the Gallup daily tracking poll.
Which takes us back to the importance of television to US democracy: If Obama loses the Pennsylvania primary by just a few percent (and it’s not clear from the polls whether the margin will be greater than that or not), the blame can be squarely laid at the door of ABC, its anti-Obama debate moderators, and Clinton’s largely negative campaigning there.
Obama once said that “any time you speak out powerfully for change, the forces of status quo attack,” and it would seem that it’s true, but speaking the day after the debate he had this to say:
(The brushing of the shoulders is a reference to this rap song.) [warning: explicit lyrics]