During the campaign I often lamented that media outlets seemed to feature so many Trump surrogates, many of them women, while there were very few Clinton surrogates. I did not study this and keep statistics; the observation didn’t seem to need verification. Kellyanne Conway was a nearly constant presence, whereas I don’t think I could identify Robby Mook in a line-up. In fact, I’m not even sure that the person pictured above is Mook—but if Google Images said it’s him, I’ll take its word for it.
What’s even more disconcerting is that the disparity of voices persists after the campaign and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Conway is now a fixture, and she’s shedding her earlier affability. After her friendly, smiling, “Hi [broadcaster’s first name],” she dodges every question by resorting to some fairly rancorous distortions about the Clinton camp or President Obma, as if the campaign were still ongoing. And when media hosts attempt to steer her back to the topic, she bristles and accuses them of distorting the issue for not accepting her criticism of the Democrats.
The GOP has hustled the media for a longtime now. The Sunday morning political shows have been dominated by Republicans. When this first started, the lineups were office-holders, but that seems to have morphed into campaign operatives and other non-elected figures. For example, Reince Priebus has regularly been featured on Sunday morning, including this past Sunday. Does anyone recall when the chief of staff for a Democratic administration appeared on one of these broadcasts? And the ubiquitous Conway was on two of the Sunday programs yesterday.
Isn’t it about time that Democratic spokespeople start to push for more airtime. And once they have that airtime, it would be encouraging to see them take the gloves off. Right now, its crucial that they publicly oppose the current willingness to ignore corruption. The idea that a cabinet would be sworn in without proper background checks should be at the forefront of current discussion. This would be the case in any event, but given that the intelligence community has revealed foreign interference in the election, now’s the time to make sure that anyone appointed to serve is free of conflicts or other interferences. IT would have been instructive to have an Obama cabinet member—Penny Pritzker or Eric Holder, say—explain how she or he complied with the vetting.
While they’re at it, Democratic office holders could shine a little light on Obamacare repeal, which bodes not only devastating life and death consequences for people who need coverage continuity due to severe health conditions, but also dire calculations about a 9-trillion dollar deficit impact over ten years. Sherrod Brown or Kristen Gillibrand could make important contributions to the discussion.
No doubt, the GOP’s presence in the media is abetted by friendly media corporations, but Democrats need to push for their own presence. And if they’re not granted a seat at the media table, that needs some publicity as well. It’s now widely recognized that Trump’s election was effected by the amount of media coverage that he received. If Democrats are to come back from the wilderness, they will have to have visibility.