No fight for the soul of the party

I didn’t watch the debate of the Democratic candidates for president last night. I’m not watching tonight. I didn’t watch the two nights of the previous round. But I have perused sites, such as Daily Kos to see if there are any big ideas that came out of the debaters or the debates.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discusses one of those big ideas. It isn’t so much what the candidates said as it was the moderators trying to get them to say. And what the moderators wanted was a “fight for the soul of the party.”

A week ago I wrote about the media’s ten rules of hate. The big media companies have found that they sell more product and earn more product if it dished out in terms of hate. This is a supremacist thing – hate, the struggle to dominate, being on constant conflict – is one side, one type of viewer, being able to feel superior to others. The second rule in the list is “These two ideas are in permanent conflict.”

In a debate where all the candidates are Democrats there aren’t Republicans to be the other side. But there are moderate Democrats who espouse catering to the nasty guy’s base as the way to win. That’s close enough.

But again, they’re all Democrats. There really isn’t a huge difference in policy proposals. There isn’t a lot of conflict among them, certainly not enough for Big Media. Most of those demanding support of a social hierarchy have already joined the GOP, which is all about supremacy. Many of those left in the Democratic Party – especially black women – are much more interested in abolishing the social ranking. So, in contrast to the GOP, there isn’t a lot of conflict.

To be sure, most, maybe all, the white guys in this group maintain an air of privilege, especially Sanders and Biden. Which is why my favorites are the women and men of color – Warren, Harris, Booker, and Castro.

Back to what the moderators were doing at last night’s debate. Since there wasn’t enough conflict (see above) the moderators tried to manufacture the conflict. They did this by turning to the lesser candidates (the lesser known white men) and asking them to explain why the front runners were wrong. As Sumner wrote:

Throughout the evening, the typical Jake Tapper question took the form of “Elizabeth Warren once said this, now Candidate No One Knew Was Running, please explain why that’s too commie to play in Sheboygan.” And if the candidate didn’t give the desired soundbite against Warren or Sanders, they were rapidly shut down, and someone else got the call. And the designated time for reply meant that Sanders or Warren rarely got to finish a sentence before Tapper was throwing the next dead fish their way.