In a Foxhole
March 13, 2007; Page A22
So the Democratic Party of Nevada has decided to kill its planned debate among Presidential hopefuls on Fox News, and the left-wing bloggers who precipitated the coup are whooping like Howard Dean in triumph. We wonder if Democrats have really thought through the implications of this capitulation.
The MoveOn.org and DailyKos crowds had no doubts about their motive for seeking to bar Democrats from debating on Fox News. The left blogosphere thinks the most popular cable-news network leans too far right, and so Democrats should not legitimate it by appearing. The bloggers got their way last Friday, when Nevadan and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled his state party out of the debate.
The pretext was a joke told by Fox News chief Roger Ailes at an award dinner last week. To our ear, the jest came mostly at President Bush's expense, but we'll report and you can decide. In a series of fake news items, Mr. Ailes included the following: "It is true that Barack Obama is on the move. It is not true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy?'"
Mr. Obama has since said he wasn't offended, but Mr. Reid claimed the joke somehow "went too far." More likely, Mr. Reid was looking for some excuse to drop the Fox debate and get the MoveOn hordes off his back. This is the same Mr. Reid who claims he had agreed to the Fox debate partnership because "we strongly believe that a Democrat will not win Nevada unless we find new ways to talk to new people." Well, so much for that.
Now a move is afoot to broaden the boycott to any appearance on the Fox News channel. One of those leading that charge is John Edwards, the former Senator and Presidential candidate who has himself appeared on Fox News 33 times over the years, most recently on "Hannity & Colmes" in January. Mr. Edwards now seems to think he can only win the nomination by running to the left, which means never saying no to MoveOn.org. Earlier this year, he declined to fire two campaign workers who had written anti-Catholic screeds on their lefty Web sites.
This may be a good strategy for the blogosphere, where the echo-chamber is often the message. But we doubt it's the way to win the Presidency. Whatever one thinks of Fox's news coverage, its research shows that about half its viewers age 18-54 are either Democrats or Independents. And since Fox News has about twice the audience as CNN, refusing to appear on the channel means missing a big potential voter pool. The Congressional Black Caucus was smart enough to figure this out in 2004, when it co-sponsored two Democratic debates with Fox News. (We have our own weekend show on Fox News, and Mr. Reid is welcome to come on any time.)
The larger issue is the message this episode sends about who is running the Democratic Party -- its candidates or the bloggers with pitchforks. We still recall the famous boast from the "MoveOn PAC team" in 2004 that "Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."
We've since watched the attempted purge of Joe Lieberman from the Senate, the demand to cut off funding for the Iraq war, and the frenzy to punish Hillary Rodham Clinton because she voted for the war. The Washington Post recently carried a story about the left blogosphere's assault on California Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher because, among other high crimes, she chairs the centrist New Democrat Coalition.
The last election showed voters are open to listening to Democrats again, and they've got a chance to take control of the entire government next year. But Democrats won't succeed if they kowtow to every demand from the maximalist left -- whether on policy issues or which journalists they are allowed to take questions from.
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