Spying on the Press

I took note a few days back of some conservatives who said it would be better if the Republicans lost the House, and besides, they don't really deserve to keep control. Now comes Slate Editor Jake Weisberg to frame the argument from the other side of the aisle:

"There are reasons why the Democrats might be better off denying Republicans the defeat they crave in November. For the majority in the next Congress, Democrats wouldn't be able to accomplish anything significant. The party would still lack the votes to pass health-care reform or to repeal the Bush tax cuts.

"But with control of even one chamber by one vote, the failure to act on such issues would now be their fault as well. Iraq and the fiscal mess would no longer be just Bush's problems. The Democratic Party will have a much clearer story line heading into the 2008 election if it is simply the party out of power and can call for a complete change.

"But if defeat would serve Democrats' longer-range success in this way, why aren't party leaders at least ambivalent about what happens in November? The answer is partly that the interests of individual Democratic leaders diverge from that of the party as a whole. Rahm Emanuel's political future now depends on whether he can deliver the House. Nancy Pelosi wants to be the first woman in the speaker's chair. Ranking Democrats on the committees hanker for the laurels and perquisites of chairmen. The rank and file want to throw off their chains.

"For all of them, the issues are primarily career and quality of life, not the party's presidential prospects. What's more, there is no real way, practically or psychologically, that any genuine politician can ever aim for anything other than victory. To attempt to throw the game would be a betrayal of one's colleagues, one's supporters, and one's words. It could also horribly misfire by producing a major defeat rather than a minor one."

But more than that, says Weisberg, it's avoiding the also-ran status of the Washington Wizards (who haven't won a championship since the Carter administration):

"The party has now gone 10 years without a big win. It desperately needs a victory to prove to the country that it's not a perpetual loser and to convince itself of the same thing. Democrats need traction and momentum much more than they need a simple argument to make heading into the 2008 election. Boring though it may be to say, the real winner in the November election will be the winner."

What a concept.

An interesting bit of media criticism here from Meryl Yourish :

"Can you find a news source for the rally against Ahmadinejad at the UN Wednesday? Correction: Can you find a non-Jewish media source, or a non-blogger source, for the rally?

"I can't. Except for the New York Sun.

"I checked AP. Nothing. Reuters. Nada. I checked Google News. Nothing. 1010WINS. Nothing. I checked WABC, NY1, all the New York media sites. Gridlock alerts are the only thing you can find about the march. After all, it's not newsworthy. The fact that 2,000 people marched a day earlier to protest the Iraq war? Oh, yeah, that made the news.

"35,000 people protesting against a man who wants to 'wipe Israel from the map'? Not newsworthy at all."

The cable networks did carry the Iranian president's news conference yesterday morning. I didn't see any shots of protesters.