The nation's top Democrats are suddenly rushing to appear on the Fox News
Channel, which they once had shunned as enemy territory as the nemesis of
liberal bloggers.
The détente with Fox has provoked a backlash from progressive bloggers,
who
contend the party's leaders are turning their backs on the base - and
lending credibility and legitimacy to the network liberals love to hate -
in
a quest for a few swing votes.
In a span of eight days, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton (D-NY.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean are
all taking their seats with the network that calls itself "fair and
balanced" but is widely viewed as skewing conservative.
With the party's presidential contest reduced to hand-to-hand combat,
Democrats are turning to the ratings leader among cable news channels in a
clear rebuff to the liberal activists known as the Netroots.
Markos Moulitsas, founder of the leading liberal site Daily Kos, told
Politico's Michael Calderone: "Democrats are being idiotic by going on
that
network."
Ari Melber, the Net movement correspondent for The Nation, told Politico
by
phone that progressive activists and the Netroots are "not happy about
it."
"I don't think that it is tenable to completely neglect or ignore what
your
base wants," Melber said.
The Democratic leaders' new openness to Fox reflects the liberal left's
diminishing power, at least at this point in the political cycle. Once
feared by the Democratic candidates, these activists are now viewed at
least
in part as an impediment to winning the broad swatch of support needed to
clinch the nomination.
Goaded in part by a taunting "Obama Watch" clock displayed by Fox News
Sunday host Chris Wallace, Obama appeared last Sunday after resisting the
show's entreaties throughout the campaign.
Clinton had a civil interview on Wednesday night with prime-time host Bill
O'Reilly,
who has often mocked her husband.
And Dean will appear this weekend on "Fox News Sunday."
Early in this presidential race, John Edwards led the Democratic
candidates
in what amounted to a Fox boycott. Edwards appeared on Fox 33 times
between
August 2000 and January 2007, the month after he announced his campaign,
and
has never been back.
Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, took the boycott in stride,
commenting that more Democrats watch Fox than watch CNN or MSNBC, the
channel's cable news competitors.
Recognizing that Obama's appearance risked incurring blog wrath, a "senior
Obama adviser" vowed to Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo before the
interview that the senator would "take Fox on" during the broadcast.
But the interview turned out to be a civil give and take, with no pushback
against Fox. Afterward, Sargent wrote that the pledge had turned out to be
merely "a bunch of tough talk."
"This will likely further dismay liberal bloggers who had worked very hard
to get Dems to boycott Fox as a way of delegitimizing the network and who
already criticized Obama for agreeing to appear in the first place,"
Sargent
wrote.
Network records show that since the campaign began in January 2007,
Clinton
has given 13 interviews to Fox News anchors and correspondents, and Obama
has given 10.
--
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for
war;
liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare
indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.
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