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Political Coverage Is going Overboard!

T

tothedj

If you are a media watcher, like myself, this post may not surprise you, but do
you feel like Political Coverage Is going "Overboard?"...
Most voters, including myself, are going to be "turned off" to cast our ballot,
primary or general election, but the time we get to early November.
I think what we should do is cut out these debates, most viewers don't care
about them, have one "national primary" day, say the first Tuesday in May,
the ones who gets the most votes, Democrat & Republican, will be their
party's nominee, eliminate the "conventions", and let the winners choose
who will be their running mates within 30 days, then from June 1 until
Labor Day, campaign across the country, move the general election to
the Tuesday after Labor Day, and then depending who is elected to the
White House, give them until New Year's Day to form their cabinet, unless
the incumbant is re-elected, if that is the case, eliminate the Inaguration,
if a new officeholder is chosen, then on January 2nd or 3rd(if the 2nd is
a Sunday)have the Inaguration.
As far as state elections, they can decide if they want to follow the pattern
of their primary on the same day as the national one, and would also apply
to the presidential election as well.
I think if this took place, and especially because it would be during the
spring and summer months, more voters would turn out, and the media
coverage would decline some.
 
I agree with your idea of a national primary, but cutting out the debates,,, no way.

They might be difficult to watch because of all the usual political BS, but it is a way for candidates to get in our face and let us know who they are. I think the idea of all these debates is what democracy is supposed to be about.

Also very dissipointed that MSNBC went to court to keep Kucinich out of last nights debate,, I expect more from them,,, its not like they are Fox Propaganda.

I think the problem is more with the reporting. So much time spent on different polls, and as we saw in New Hampshire, they don't mean squat. The only poll that matters is at the ballot box. The news organizations spend way too much time talking about poll numbers and analyzing them as if they were running the campaign. I would much rather see discussion of the issues and not the politics.

I dont' care if Obama smoked a joint or 100 years ago,, I do care what his foreign policy is, or what he is going to do about the economy,, and whats his position in the environment and our dependence on oil,,, thats whats important. HEY PRESS,, DO YOUR JOB,,, REPORT THE NEWS, DON'T CREATE IT BY OVERBLOWING STUPID SIDEBAR STORIES AND STICK TO THE ISSUES.
 
Bravo to the voters in New Hampshire for making the political pollsters and pundits have egg on their collective faces primary night.

The job of the media is to report facts,not speculate. Even as the media was still wiping egg off their faces they were making excuses that people who participated in these polls lied. Duh, yah think so? Of course they lied because it's nobody's business who you are going to vote for which is why, in some states, there are curtains in voting booths to prevent people seeing what levels you pull.

Even after the New Hampshire debacle there were still some TV anchors and reporters "speculating" on who would win Michigan. I guess some people never learn from their mistakes do they?
 
Considering that there is still no clear Republican contender (Huckabee won IA, McCain won NH, Romney won MI -- and I didn't even have to look it up ;) ), we should be lucky there was some sort of primary coverage.

Though on the record -- I get all my news in the newspaper. And don't even bother quizzing me on American Idol (I never even seen the show since it started, other than fleeting bits).
 
Politics makes people face reality, and they don't like that. They need their gossip kool-aid instead.

Bravo to the voters in New Hampshire for making the political pollsters and pundits have egg on their collective faces primary night.
Click to expand...

And same to Iowa as well. For months certain pundits have been pushing certain candidates, only see those certain candidates lose, in one candidate's case quite badly. But as Tom Brokaw said, it's best to sit back and watch rather than make baseless predictions.

As for Wyoming, no it did get any coverage at all but I might be able to tell you why Duncan Hunter made third place in their caucus...
 
If Hillary or Obama can't climb past 35% and Edwards stays in the race, we could see it go to the convention without any winner.

Same for Republicans if Guliani does well in Florida (although the Republicans stripped Florida and Michigan 1/2 their delegates for having the primary too early, and the Democrats stripped them of all their delegates), it still indicates popularity.

By Feb 5th, 1/2 the delegates will be voted on, so we'll have to wait.

I think the caucus has something to do with it. In Iowa you had to face other people when you voted. In a primary it's a secret ballot. It's hard to tell a pollster you won't vote for a woman or a black man, but when you get behind the ballot and don't have to answer to anyone, things change.

As for the National primary, the parties don't like that because then the candidates with less money can't get exposure like they do in two small states of Iowa and NH
 
I'd agree that having a national primary where only registered voters from the particular political party being allowed to vote for that party's candidates would make more sense than the scattered primary season where some states allow anyone to vote in any party, etc.

I also believe that the various political "discussions" (they really aren't debates) are one way for the voter to actually hear the candidates speak without interpretation and spin by the news media be it print or electronic. I also believe these "debates" should be made available to one of the radio networks as those who work nights may have a radio to listen at work, but probably don't have acess to a TV (many companies have fire walls on their internet setups so you can't listen to broadband).

I also believe that the Federal Campaign Finance laws should not allow any political advertising as there's way too much money wasted on it and the ads generally are not true so all they do is muddy the waters for the voter. The only political ads I'd allow are ads where the candidate speaks about what his/her positions are on the issues without mentioning their opponients. This would cut down on how much money is needed and present better information for the public.
 
tothedj said:
If you are a media watcher, like myself, this post may not surprise you, but do you feel like Political Coverage Is going "Overboard?"...Most voters, including myself, are going to be "turned off" to cast our ballot,.... and the media coverage would decline some.
Click to expand...

Gee, why bother having the NFL play games for 20 weeks before having the Super Bowl? Or playing 162 baseball games? Or 16 weeks of American Idol? Or 4 episodes of the Daily Show a week? Why can't they just have everything held on a single day so everyone isn't "turned off".

"Most" folks don't care about any of those either, yet they are hyped and promoted endlessly.

Politics has become entertainment. FoxNoise and CNN and MSNBC make $$$$ by hyping and promoting and over-hyping and over-promoting the contests. The longer they can drag it out the better. Predictions for 2012 will begin on November 5, 2008. Politics is now an ongoing storyline, with ups and downs. If the storyline is interesting, folks tune in. If not, they flock to one of the other 200+ cable channels available ("Oh, look honey, that "Charmed" rerun from 2003 is on TNT again!"

I haven't seen/heard whether ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX will be covering the 20+ state primaries/caucuses (caucii?) live on February 5. And, I think that as of 01-15-2008, ABC had alotted a whopping 3.5 hours of their entire primetime schedule for election-related coverage (3 hours debate, 30 minutes New Hampshire). There has been no primetime coverage at all on CBS/NBC/FOX outside of news programs.

Overboard? I think not.

Just last week, Fox gave the world 4 hours of American Idol coverage.

Overboard? Perhaps. :)
 
I agree that the current primary system is inane and fundamentally broken, but since the Constitution doesn’t speak to political parties, nominations and the like, it’s a waste of time to focus too much energy on trying to change it.

What I would really like to see Congress work on—though I know it will never happen—is abolishing the Electoral College. We no longer live in an age when information is heavily restricted, i.e., where the general population doesn’t have the resources to make informed decisions about who to name as President. Moreover, the all-or-nothing allocation is a clear contradiction to the one man-one vote principle. A conservative vote in New York or a liberal vote in Georgia (for example) shouldn’t be irrelevant; neither should a vote in California count more than a vote in Wyoming. We’ve moved into the modern world on so many other issues (you know, pesky little things like letting women vote, etc.), so why do we cling to the idea that the electorate can’t decide for itself who should lead us?
 
As a resident of a small sized state that has only 800,000 people in it total I'd agree with you that the Electoral College is outdated and makes my vote here in Delaware pretty much useless. The candidates rarely come here as our pultry 3 electorial votes are hardly worth spending the time to get. That's what makes the New Hampshire primary seem so rediculous as the candidates spend millions of dollars on radio/TV/newspapers ads there to get what 6 or 8 electoral votes, big deal. At least with a national primary Delaware will still get ignored, but the candidates could better make use of their campaign money to buy ad time in the larger states where it actually matters as a state like New York, Californina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Texas can actually swing the election.

So put me down for no electoral college and allowing each voters vote to count. Of course the larger states may not like that as they get more power for their votes with the status quo. My guess is WMUR in Manchester New Hampshire wouldn't like it either as they now make millions each election cycle.
 
I know, this comment could get our thread moved but I will risk it.

Mr. Delaware, you would be tossing away your state's ONLY shot at getting candidate attention with the electoral college. Delaware has been solidly blue for the past few elections and has thus been ignored. But if, like New Hampshire, it became a true "swing" state, then you would see a lot of attention from the candidates. Just as we did in NH during the general elections of 2000 and 2004 (not the primary, but the general). And, it was close each time - within 10,000 votes.

Who knows, maybe Delaware could drop into that category for this election. Hard to say at this point. But, if you dump the electoral college (which I don't see happening, by the way) then NO ONE would EVER visit places like Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Nebraska, Idaho, etc. Nor would you get any coverage, EVER. If you're a New Yorker or Californian, you'd say good riddance. But, folks in smaller states do need to have some representation. Which is why the Senate isn't proportional.

But, 2000 aside, the system tends to exaggerate the level of victory making it easier for the country to move on. Imagine the nightmare of national recounts without it. Now, I would say that it could use some tweaks. California's idea of splitting electoral votes by congressional district is a great idea! Gets this closer to the people. But, the college does have it's purpose - believe it or not. Those founding fathers were pretty sharp, you know!

By the way, I agree with you guys on this primary system. It's out of hand and should be reformed or scrapped.
 
BRNout, you make some good points. As it turns out in Delaware, there are only 3 counties with the most populated one (New Castle where the city of Wilmington is located) is the blue county with the other two (Kent and Sussex) being red.

Actually the Philly, Baltimore, and Salisbury MD TV stations would benefit most from Delaware getting more attention as this state doesn't have any commercial TV stations just two PBS stations (ch12 Wilmington, ch 64 Seaford which simulcasts ch 12's programming) which of course wouldn't make any money from political ads. However the two daily newspapers (Wilmington and Dover) and the commerical radio stations in Delaware all would benefit from the political dollars spent.
 
Electoral College: 3 votes out of 538 = 0.56%

Popular vote: 783,600 out of 281,421,906 = 0.27% (Population: 2000 US Census)

Would you care to reconsider your opinion on the Electoral College, Mike?
 
Reasonable people can disagree about the relative merits of the primary system, compared to a national primary. But my problem with the coverage is that it's so shallow. For the past couple of decades, the news media covers politics like they cover sports or show biz. It's all about the SCORES (i.e.: poll numbers), who's up or down in what inning or quarter (month of the primary season), and speculation about how the numbers will change following one or the other's remarks.

The perfect example of this is all the coverage of Hillary showing emotion and getting all verklempt after Iowa. After giving her up as dead, all the pundits switched to hours of coverage about what it meant - will it improve her scores because she showed she's human after all? Apparently, the answer was yes - still, the issues get lost in the meantime.

With this type of coverage, the issues become secondary, and the theory of a well-informed electorate is a joke.

I bet only one potential voter out of 10 could actually explain the difference between Clinton and Obama's health care plans. Sure - the show biz aspect is more interesting than all that wonk policy stuff, but it's sad that political coverage has come to this.
 
Though as we all know the total population doesn't vote, so those comparisons aren't entirely valid.

"California's" idea is indeed interesting if it were implemented nationwide. However, as something floated by the GOP only in the largest generally reliable "blue" state, the motivations are easy to discern.

The Constitution was designed so that it could be ammended to reflect unforseen changes--indeed that was part of the genuis of the founding fathers. From granting women the right to vote to lovering the voting age to 18 and so on, there were valid reasons changing the system, and a more mobile, informed, connected electorate is today's reality, not the 18th century reality.
 
dhett said:
Electoral College: 3 votes out of 538 = 0.56%

Popular vote: 783,600 out of 281,421,906 = 0.27% (Population: 2000 US Census)

Would you care to reconsider your opinion on the Electoral College, Mike?
Click to expand...

In a close election like what happened in 2000, 3 electoral votes can make all the difference in the world.
 
imhomerjay said:
Though as we all know the total population doesn't vote, so those comparisons aren't entirely valid.
Click to expand...

Assuming you're responding to the Electoral College vs. popular vote comparison:

The entire US population doesn't vote. Nor does the entire population of Delaware. But since the percentage of population that does vote is comparable for each political unit, and the fact that the relative weight of a Delaware (and other small state) vote is so much greater than that of its population, it is a valid comparison.

The very reason that the bicameral legislature (House and Senate) was created was to ensure that the voice of smaller states would not be lost among those of the larger states. Small states have a disproportionately greater voice in the Senate. Since the Electoral College is based solely on Congressional representation, that relative advantage that small states enjoy in the Senate is also carried over to the electoral process.

Challenge the actual numbers, but the fact remains that the Electoral College gives Delaware a slight advantage over a strictly popular vote.
 
Agreed that it can give an advantage to states like New Hampshire, Delaware, et al. I am fully aware of the need at the time to protect the voices of smaller states, and in regards to the business of the Congress, I tend to agree with maintaining that structure. The electoral college system, though, is another animal.

The candidates--and thus the media--pay inordinate attention to the dozen or so states--give or take, depending on the election in question--considered "in play," as if the voters in every other state are irrelevant...because, to a large degree, they are. But we live in a more mobile society than the 18th century; the Internet has opened up the ability to communicate, and to educate onself, in ways simply unimaginable two centuries ago...and yet we rely on a system that was designed with the idea that the populus should not be trusted with the final word on who should serve as the President.

The President is the President of all--liberals in Georgia, conservatives in New York and all of us in the swing states.
 
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