Incumbent Democrats took a hit in last night’s election. While leaders like Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Barney Frank held onto their respective seats, stalwarts like Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Ike Skelton were ousted in a Republican wave. Though Democrats may be distressed, they shouldn’t lose hope: there’s always the news media.
Politics no longer unfolds in House and Senate chambers. It’s piped into our home via cable news, with various characters, be they pundits or politicos, pulling the policy strings.
Mike Huckabee’s doomed 2008 presidential campaign had only been dead three months when he announced a contract with Fox News in June of that year, thus opening the floodgates for more GOP leaders, like Karl Rove and Sarah Palin, to join the network and fill the airwaves with their party’s ideology. Newt Gingrich has also made it his mission to appear on the News Corp-owned station.
Meanwhile, a non-elected official, CNBC’s Rick Santelli, sparked the Tea Party with a televised rant. Glenn Beck, meanwhile, used his Fox News platform to start another, though related, political movement, and the Comedy Central tag team, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, used the miracle of cable to lead their own quietly progressive protest, The Rally to Restore Sanity, last weekend. The Democrats could very well do the same, thus rewriting last night’s narrative.
Democrats are going to have a hell of a time getting their policies passed on Capitol Hill. Republican statesmen like John Boehner claim the GOP wants to cooperate with its colleagues across the aisle, but such an alliance will no doubt crumble as Tea Party adherents, like Rand Paul or Michele Bachmann, take on “Obamacare” and other Democratic initiatives.
If the President’s party wants to sway debate and have a hand in shaping the nation’s policy for the next two years, and help foment grassroots action ahead of 2012, they’d be wise to turn to the television and start their new careers as talking heads.
C’mon, can’t you just see progressives Reps. Mary Jo Kilroy and Alan Grayson fitting in quite nicely on MSNBC, right next to Republican Joe Scarborough, who, like Grayson, was a Congressman from Florida?
Image via CraigOppy’s Flickr.
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