One of the many problems with conservative Democratic Party frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, is the dynastic trend in American politics. In a recent Action Alert, Media Matters attacks political analyst Larry Sabato for expressing a perfectly legitimate concern about the erosion of US democracy. (bolding by Media Matters)
Media matters attacks a 6/21/07 column in which Sabato makes the following statement:
A much more reasonable criticism is directly related to the dominating presence of Hillary Clinton in this election cycle. The population of the United States now exceeds 300 million, and the talent pool of the world's only superpower is deep and rich. How is it that the country is on the verge of filling its highest office for the sixth consecutive term from one of two families? That every President from 1989 to 2017 may be a Bush or a Clinton is a national disgrace. What has happened to the American Republic? How does it differ from a banana republic -- where a couple of dominant families often run everything for generations? Have we driven the vast majority of the potentially best Presidents out of the contest because of the high personal and professional costs of running for office? Are we the voters responsible because we are too lazy to go beyond the simplistic attractions of familiarity and high name identification? Or, most disturbing of all, has our political system become ossified, so that we are too fearful of change to seek out the most outstanding leaders among us for the toughest job in the world?
Media Matters then launches a hysterical attack against Sabato for saying this.
This alert is bizarre. Sabato's point of view is perfectly reasonable and gets far too little play in a corporate media that wants our choices to be limited to a dynasty of conservative Democrats, the Clintons, and a dynasty of far right Republicans, the Bushes.
The efforts to the media to gloss over the undemocratic aspect of the presidency being exchanged back and forth from ruling families is disgraceful. It is critical that people who oppose this attack on our democracy and nation's values get access to the public.
One has to wonder if Media Matters is genuinely concerned about right-wing media bias or is it simply a front-group for the Clinton campaign.
MM have done themselves no good with this, it was a good point and they have reacted in a somewhat hysterical way akin to the people they so despise, as if politics were team sports. They do some good work, but this plays into the hands of their unsrupulous opponents, they should not be the Clinton campaign quick response team.
Reminds me of MoveOn's shenanigans.
BTW, good blog, I found GLH linked from Ten Percent.
Cheers.