Why are the news media so servile? What does the press fail to understand about democracy? The immediate prompt for these questions is the Nebraska primary. You probably think, from reading the news or watching CNN, that West Virginia held primaries for Democrats and Republicans this week, and Nebraska held a primary just for Republicans. In fact, though, Nebraska held primaries for both parties, including for presidential nominees. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary. That leaves the current map so:
It is true that Nebraska held Democratic caucuses for the presidential nominee in March, and that Bernie Sanders won those. It is also true that only the caucuses count for convention delegates. This doesn’t seem to have been explained very carefully to Nebraskans, though. About 33,000 Nebraskans caucused on March 5. Bernie Sanders won those, 57-43%. About 78,000 Nebraskans voted in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton won the primary 53-47%. Clinton beat Sanders by more votes in the primary than he beat her by in the caucuses. She won twice as many votes in the primary as he won in the caucuses. More people voted for Sanders while losing the primary than the total number of caucusgoers. There’s only one interpretation of those results. Hillary Clinton won Nebraska. The fact that this result did not determine the delegate count wasn’t a consideration when Donald Trump won West Virginia, or Pennsylvania before that, or when any number of election-day winners of caucus states, particularly on the Republican side, were not thereby rewarded with a slate of pledged delegates; indeed, if pledged delegates are all that matters, Ted Cruz won a lot of the states that Trump was reported to win on primary day. Some reporters didn’t understand that, some did, but no outlet seemed particularly concerned to point it out. “Trump wins” was all they said, all night, every time. And from the perspective of democracy, they were right to do so. But what of Nebraska, then? This was hardly the worst case, though. In 2008, Florida and Michigan, rightly incensed that small, white, rural, and thus wholly-unrepresentative states Iowa and New Hampshire should constantly get all the attention in the primary process, moved their primaries up in the calendar. For doing so, they were placed under sanction by the national parties, stripped of their delegates, and subject to a candidate and media boycott. The move also prompted Iowa and New Hampshire to advance their own contests, which should have prompted the same reaction, but, because Iowa and New Hampshire are so feared, did not. The candidates and media continued to shower Iowa and New Hampshire with attention. As a blatant pander to Iowa and New Hampshire, Barack Obama and John Edwards had their names removed from the Michigan ballot. And they were rewarded by Iowa voters, finishing first and second in that state’s caucuses, while Clinton, who had left her name on the ballot, dropped to third. And they were rewarded further, with constant media attention to their success. By the time the bulk of states started voting on Super Tuesday (because the penalty deadline had passed), the Obama/press narrative was that he had split the early states with Clinton two apiece. The truth was that Hillary was leading four states to two, having taken the largest two states by far. But she got no favorable press for that. And Florida and Michigan would have been good states for her anyway, and she never got any press for winning them. She was, however, portrayed as a desperate, scrambling loser for trying to arrange a re-vote, while Obama played out the clock. It figures that Obama would want to pretend that the people of Florida and Michigan never voted. But they did, over two million of them, and the press was supposed to have other interests besides Obama’s. And if the counterargument to Nebraska 2016 and Florida/Michigan 2008 is that only the delegate race counts, then the press fails objectivity there, too. Most news reports show a delegate target that is a majority of all delegates (pledged and super-), but candidate totals that include only pledged delegates, which exaggerates the distance Clinton is from clinching the nomination and thus confirms the race narrative. Of course, superdelegates do count, and with Hillary basically assured of a majority of pledged delegates and a larger majority of actual voters, the superdelegates she already has commitments from will have no reason to abandon her. But just as concerning are the media’s reasons for reporting the delegate counts as they do — not just their interest in prolonging the race, but because, as some have said, the Democratic National Committee told them to. Since when do journalists take instruction from political parties? — O.T. Ford
