Welcome to the Democratic Labor Panderthon
I’ve been steering clear of the recent raft of CPC’s (Competitive Press Conferences) amongst the candidates for their respective party’s nod for the presidential nomination mostly because the answers that the candidates are supplying are the same ones that I’ve heard since this pre-primary period began.
Tonight’s CPC hosted by the AFL-CIO in Chicago for the Democratic candidates provided nothing in the way of new ideas, but it did allow the candidates an opportunity to stoop to a new low on the pander meter. I was only half-paying attention to the event - as I preferred to listen to my family discuss their views on the questions and the candidates, but I was intrigued by the level of volume that the candidates used to emphasize their willingness to bend over and take one for big labor and America. Answers ranging from withdrawing from NAFTA and being patriotic so as John Edwards said we would “be ready in case (as George Bush never has) things go bad in Iraq.”
What a bunch of drivel.
The only thing one of the candidates needed to do tonight to win the Labor-panderthon was display a portrait of George Bush and then proceed to deficate on his image on stage. Memo to my friends in the Democratic consulting corps - work in the dump on the president photo-op into your next stump speech event it’ll generate more press than you could ever imagine.
While I’ve been a strong dissenter to this current debate process (I continue to advocate for a more substantive Cooper Union styled one-on-one format), I am curious about how well one of this panderthons would go over with the Republican candidates. The Democrats seem more than willing to preen and fawn for every special interest group that typically supports their party (AFSCME, AFL-CIO, etc.) while the GOP’s candidates are forced to debate in front of receptive yet non-red meat begging audiences.
Contrast tonight’s event with the first Republican CPC at the Reagan Library when the question was posed to the candidates on the dais - “Show of hands, who doesn’t believe in evolution?” and the caveman club folks - Brownback, Huckabee and Tancredo raised their hands. Each of the gang of three cromagnons was villified by the media the next day for such an unenlightened approach to evolutionary science. Nobody bats an eye when one of the Democratic candidates goes out of their way to pander to the crowd that’s hosting them - if the Democratic presidential hopefuls had enough time to actually do all of the things they say they’ll do in “my first day in office I’ll give you everything you want” that would be the longest day in history. But can you imagine what would happen if the Republicans allowed their next debate to be hosted by the National Association of Evangelicals - the caveman club might get a better reception.
But God forbid how the MSM would characterize that CPC…
