Undecided Voters
The race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination got a little more interesting this week when it was revealed on several blogs that questioners in the audience at a debate broadcast by CNN were not ‘undecided voters’ as they were passed off on TV. Ordinarily this is a rookie play by partisans at all sorts of local debates. I was at one during Canada’s last federal election where the NDP stacked the debate so every question started with ‘Hi, I’m president of _____(insert Union___, local __(number)__ and I’m very concerned about…’.
Frankly, while that’s a perversion of the intent of a public debate, there’s not really anything wrong with it. However, when CNN (”The Most Trusted Name in News”), has organized the debate, vetted the people asking the questions, and is actively passing them off to the public as ‘undecided voters’, when this is not the case, this should be a scandal. One of the questioners was the Arkansas Democrats’ director of political affairs in 2003. Say, wasn’t Clinton from Arkansas? Maybe she worked under Bill at some point?
Another ‘random undecided voter’ had previously appeared on CNN in his role as the head of the Islamic Society of Nevada. It has also been revealed that he has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates. Of course, it follows naturally that his question was about how many times he’d been ethnically profiled. How does CNN (”The Most Trusted Name in News”), forget that this ‘undecided voter’ had been on their network before in a partisan piece?
It doesn’t end there either. There’s the ‘undecided university student’ who happened to have worked as an intern (no, not that way), for rabidly anti-war Senator Harry Reid (D). In case that’s not abundantly clear, the (D) stands for ‘Democrat’. How someone who has worked for a Senator can be listed as ‘undecided’ is beyond me, but her question is even worse: Which did Hillary prefer ‘diamonds or pearls’?
Another question was from a President of Mecha. Canadian readers will be excused for mistaking this organization for some kind of engineering society, it is, in reality a Mexican FLQ, dedicated to the re-appropriation of large swaths of the US to Mexico, which they call ‘Azatlan’. Only to CNN can a radical mexican separatist be considered ‘undecided’. He’s also previously worked on democrat GOTV campaigns.
If this had been Republicans doing this sort of hanky-panky on FoxNews there would already be a Special prosecutor appointed. Republican and Democrat scandals are so dramatically different. Why is it that every scandal republicans are alleged to be involved in requires flow charts and vast conspiracies, while democrats walk away scot-free after having sex with interns in the oval office, getting caught red-handed with a quarter million in the freezer worth of bribes, being caught stuffing TOP SECRET documents in their pants, driving drunk off a bridge and leaving a girl to die, or passing off democratic party faithful as ‘undecided voters’? Just once, I’d like to see Democrats punished for their scandals. Its as if CNN (new motto: ‘You Can’t Spell Clinton without CNN!’) actually went out of their way to find as many democratic operatives as they could and stuffed them in a room.
The only thing this bunch was ‘undecided’ about was Marx or Lenin. Its such a tough choice! (94 Million dead people can’t be wrong!)
I see the longest undefended border in the world stop media bias.
—rationsOops, that should read doesn’t stop … sorry.
—rationsI don’t have cable television (too many programmes that are vulgar or diss parents so we got rid of it), but I loved your comments on CNN and the double standard in dealing with Democratic vs. Republicans scandals.
Of course in Canada we are agog about the $300,000 Conservative mote as opposed to the millions of dollars of beam in the Liberals’ eyes.
—Nicola Timmerman