Democrats Boycott Fox News, Ratings Unaffected

It's no secret that Democrats and liberals think that Fox News is biased to the right. I'm neither a Democrat nor a liberal, but I do think there's something to that accusation. The kinds of people who think that Fox News is "fair and balanced" all seem to be politically to the right, and they almost all accuse other news outlets like CNN and MSNBC of being biased to the left. If it's CBS broadcast news we're talking about, then I can see some truth to that accusation, too.

So I think it's kind of a dumb move for Democrats to cave in to pressure from moveon.org to cancel a debate amongst several of the the Democratic Presidential candidates on Fox News. If this is a mostly Republican or conservative audience watching Fox News, then the debate represented a great opportunity to reach out to that segment of the electorate. Sure, Roger Ailes' joke about Barack Obama was in very poor taste. But it was obviously a joke, and it's easy enough to take exception to it in other ways.

If Democrats are ready to put forward a platform that has proposals that are good for America, the venue they do it in shouldn't matter all that much -- it's not like it won't be reported on by a hyper-competitive, starved-for-content punditocracy the instant it happens on the internet, and on nearly every competing broadcast news service within a few minutes of it happening. So left-leaning voters can get their news about the debate anyway, and yes, they can probably gird themselves to watch Fox News for a little bit before and after the debate. (And chances are it would be simulcast on PBS, too.) And, if conservatives are the primary audience on Fox News, well, aren't Democrats trying to pitch themselves to that demographic these days anyway? Democrats must know that conservatives are dissatisfied with their three main choices in the Republican primary so they're looking around -- a canny politician would call that "opportunity."

But, these are Democrats we're talking about here, after all. Bright individuals, perhaps, but generally not very visionary. Competent legislators (in some cases) but not necessarily very well-organized. Charismatic (most of them) but not necessarily able to translate personal charisma into a real platform. Hidebound by an ever-growing list of demands from the ever-diversifying multiplicity of special interest groups that make up their party's coalition of interests. United only by their smarmy insistence that they are better than the Republicans simply by virtue of not being Republicans; opposing Republican ideas for no better reason than that they are proposed by Republicans. So disappointing -- they could be so much better than they are.

In 1935, Will Rogers said "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." It's still true more than seventy years later.