Early voting began in Texas Monday, October 20, and both candidates began their first Get Out The Vote appearances in the Houston area. Houston is in Harris County, the most populous county in the state and the third most populous county in the country.
I attended Greg Abbott's kickoff at a barbecue joint in Conroe, Texas, a very red town northeast of Houston. Abbott wheeled himself into the joint and immediately started his stump speech. One would think he was running either against President Obama or to be the evangelical pastor of the state. The following skit is the impression any thinking liberal would have left with.
I did not want to be conspicuous, so I did not record the actual interviews he had with the local news reporters. Suffice it to say, they threw Abbott several softball questions. He was not asked about issues the Wendy Davis campaign brought up during the campaign. He was not asked about issues the media should have brought up years ago.
The local media failed to ask him about women and minorities being paid less for comparable positions in his attorney general's office. They failed to ask him about the crony dealings with the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). They coddled him in questioning him on his refusal to answer whether he would have defended Texas' ban on interracial marriages as he is refusing to defend Texas' ban on marriage equality.
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Read more about the media failure below the fold.
Local reporters failed to ask Abbott to justify the statement that Obamacare is not working even as a plethora of new data proves otherwise. They failed to ask him about the pain and financial insecurity he is causing over 1 million Texans for the state's refusal to accept the Medicaid expansion to Obamacare. They failed to question his fiscal irresponsibility for allowing over $100 billion of Texas taxpayer dollars to be sent elsewhere for his refusal to accept the Medicaid expansion to Obamacare. They failed to ask him to justify why Texans should die because he is ideologically opposed to Obamacare.
Interestingly, the tone of the local TV media was rather condescending with state Sen. Wendy Davis. One station asked her why she was spending so much time in Harris County, when the answer is obvious: Harris County, along with Dallas County, Tarrant County, Travis County, Behar County, and counties in the valley are where Democratic votes are. The Republican votes are in the rural rest of the state. They did not ask Abbott why he only campaigns in tea party strongholds. The raw Wendy Davis interview is below:
One of the reporters questioned her about bringing up the interracial marriage ban issue as if it were Davis who actually started the topic, when in fact Abbott was asked the question by the San Antonio Express specifically because of his forceful objection and defense of Texas' ban on marriage equality. These are congruent issues. The TV media attempted to put Davis on the defensive for bringing up a legitimate flaw in Abbott’s reasoning as they gave him a pass.
The most outrageous probing, however, came from Houston Chronicle reporter Theodore Schleifer: "Senator Davis, I just spoke with a supporter who said that the black community would be more supportive of you if you embraced President Obama more." Davis handled the question well by pointing out that the issues President Obama stands for, that the community stands for are, the same issues she has been articulating throughout her campaign.
After the interview, I tracked down the Houston Chronicle reporter specifically because from experience, one could infer that it was a made up question to fit a narrative. I asked him if he really spoke to a black person who told him that. He fumbled and said he did not know if the person was black.
I informed him that the black community is a very sophisticated voting community, and are not merely a bloc; however, black voters are smart enough to know that Davis must do an amount of distancing that any other politician would as well. It is almost a requirement in order to get the vote of a certain sector of white Democrats and Republicans who have a problem with President Obama. Black people have for centuries in America coddled many with preconceived notions to soothe their fears and insecurities with a smile and a knowledge of context.
When the Houston Chronicle reporter wrote the article for the paper, he ensured that my words were sufficiently ambiguous to hit the president:
Egberto Willies, a local Democratic activist, disagreed with that position.
"Black folk in Houston are sufficiently smart to understand what she has to do to win some of the disaffected white vote," Willies said of Davis. "Why would she, or any politician, embrace Obama?"
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It may seem obvious, but it needs to be stated: The role of the media is to report. Unfortunately, as occurs throughout the country, many times reporters set a narrative influenced by the nebulous powers with the expectation that it will have the effect of complete control of the body politic.
Lewis Powell must be smiling from his grave.