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What Liberals Mean By “Swing Voter”
As much as I try to avoid this kind of thing — “liberal MSM!” — this just can’t go unremarked. On Face the Nation, National Journal‘s Ron Fournier — who is, by my lights anyway, a pretty good reporter — showed that he has a problem understanding what “independent” means:
JOHN DICKERSON, FACE THE NATION: Ron, you’ve covered the Clintons since the mid-’80s.What’s your take on it?
RON FOURNIER, NATIONAL JOURNAL: I don’t — I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but it’s not the only issue. Covering politics isn’t just about who’s winning and losing and who’s going to win or lose. The same bigger issues involved [sic].
Look, I’m a swing voter, an Independent voter. I’ve known and respected her for a long time. A year ago, if you had asked me, hey, would you consider working for Secretary Clinton, I’d say, yes, I’d think about it. Six months ago, if you had said, hey, would you vote for her, I’d say, yes, I’m likely going to vote for her.
Um, okay, that’s not a “swing” voter, or an independent or an undecided or anything. That’s a Democrat. If a year ago, before any Republicans were in the race, you’d have seriously thought about quitting your job to work for a specific Democratic candidate, that’s what being a Democrat means. If six months ago you would have voted for her — before any Republican had jumped in — that’s not what an independent would do.
Nothing wrong with it. But I wish reporters like Fournier would stop lying to themselves and face facts: They’re Democrats.
Later, he adds this:
I don’t know if I can trust Hillary Clinton anymore and it doesn’t make me happy to say that.
But we all know what this means. It means he’ll vote for her anyway. Or for another Democrat.
Because he’s a Democrat.
Published in Elections, General, Politics
The point being that Fournier, because he’s a Democrat, wasn’t actively looking for reasons to dislike Hillary (as a Republican would be inclined to do) and has been dragged kicking and screaming to his conclusion that she’s a crook by the ineluctable force of the evidence. That’s a more powerful statement than “I don’t like her because she has thick ankles, is post-menopausal, is a Democrat and oh, by the way, Benghazi…”
I’ve seen Fournier many times on the All Star Panel on Bret Baier’s Fox show. He is clearly a Democrat, and I’d place him politically at the moderate left (i.e. left of center/left, right of hard left).
Fournier is somewhat unusual, for a left-wing Democrat, in his willingness to criticize Democrats. This may explain his self-description an an “independent.” Not that he supports Republicans, but that he’s substantially less likely than most Democrats to toe the party line.
This is just another example of odd-year journalism. Many journalists are finding an occasion to criticize Democrats this year.
Next year they will all revert to even-year journalism during which they will all feel free to re-join the never-ending campaign of the progressive movement.
Odd-year journalism is just the season to burnish up a fig leaf to be pulled out when a journalist is accused of bias during the election year.
Journalists are the enemy.
The GOP must figure out how to fight a two-front war.
You’re exactly right Rob. Anyone who started following the Clintons in Arkansas during the 1980s as the local AP political reporter and has “respected Hillary for a long time” is not an independent observer. Ron Fournier is a weathervane who has discussed Hillary’s current problems with influential Democrats. Hence his occasional negative views of Hillary’s present campaign. In 2016, he’ll either vote for her or her replacement. Calling himself an “Independent” allows him to pass himself off to the audience as other than the Democrat hack he is.
I think we need to fully examine leftist philosophy and then Ron’s statements make plenty of sense. If we remember our Communist Manifesto then we remember the false dichotomy of society being really only 2 different classes, proletariat and bourgeois. Of course this is a fallacy (as I already mentioned) and this explains to a degree why Marx’s prophecies have failed. But this goes to an important facet of leftism and that is seeing all things as a false dichotomy, objective vs nonobjective, minorities vs whites, progress vs regression, rich vs poor. This a result of the narrow vision of the left and their goals which they presume to be perfect and righteous (making all that oppose it wrong and evil).
They assume themselves to be the objective and neutral ones (a priori). This is why they call themselves moderates, independents, and progressives all the time and us on the right ignorant reactionaries. They have, essentially, attempted to do what Marx said would happen (proletariat assimilating or destroying all individuals). They have to a degree assimilated certain labels and groups into the left like moderates and middle class (you see this all the time with their dull class warfare talk of the middle class struggling).
The left in America has attempted and somewhat succeeded in making political choices a fork in the road with their rhetoric. It is either their “objective, all concerning, and fair” left or the “racist, rich serving, and ignorant” right.
This is why Fournier thinks that he is objective and an independent. Those terms have bee apppriated by his side and so he self identifies with it and he likewise saw Hillary as being on the same objective and righteous side but now that reality has mugged him with the email scandal then Hillary has become tainted, at least for the time being.