Not so much 2011. Even though it's touted a lot on DU. Lol

Seems like there was a similar divide in cooperation in 1995. Wonder why?

Trying to remember what the contentious issues were, back in '95.


Clearly the mitosis was becoming pronounced with Clinton tho, and permanently set with the rise of Shrub and his evil henchmen.

Newt

it clearly begins to get worse in the early 90's. most political disasters from clinton on are symptoms of the left allowing 1000 think tank coordinated radio stations a free speech free ride.

reagan killed the fairness doctrine in 1987 and they began to create the modern rw radio monopoly that is used to control who is and isn't acceptable to run and win in the republican party, and then to keep those sycophants in lock step.

it also closely parallels the success of ALEC.

anyone who doubts the significance of rw radio is in denial. it's amazing that the ONLY organized opposition to the rw radio PSYOPS is stoprush.

that ignore-ance of rw radio by the left and the dem party continues to be the biggest political mistake in history

does anyone have an alternative explanation? one that isn't actually a symptom of rw radio?

without piggybacking our 'liberal' universities.

90 major unis, most publicly funded, broadcast sports on 270 limbaugh stations, bring them community cred and ad dollars. in exchange for a few thousand dollars a year those colleges let those stations get to use their sports mascots to sell their racism, sexism, and anti-american lies all day.

many of those stations are the loudest in the country.

that may be the only thing those stations/the GOP/ALEC ever paid to be able to blast the country with their fascist republican propaganda from that 1000 coordinated stations messaging juggernaut.

and getting those unis out of talk radio will end that rw radio monopoly.

The Rs went full on extreme partisan with the republican/gingrich revolution in 93, which brought in a class full of fire breathing partisan warriors - like Kyle, Inhoff, Santorum in the senate, Hayworth, Scarboro, Brownback, Coburn, Graham in the House ...

It was clearly heading toward everyone playing in the own sandbox, but this group took it to an extreme and engaged in partisanship on steroids.

The class of 2010 was the next wave - only worse.

The above, while aggressive, mean spirited partisans, many were in fact intelligent and were a political generation that worked hard to put SOME intellectual veneer to their corporate whoring. The started to believe their bullshit over time.

The modern republican grew up getting fed their bullshit and actually BELIEVE it.

They are dumber than door knobs, entitled and even meaner spirited.

those are some of many symptoms of the left giving 1000 think tank coordinated radio stations a free speech free ride.

in 1987 reagan killed the fairness doctrine and the right began to subsidize the limbaugh led talk radio monopoly.

it really got going in the early 90s and still is. and the left still ignores it.

I read your other response, too.

I have read about the laws changed in the 80s that opened up the AM radio to the right, you laid some things out that I didn't know. Particularly the connection with the universities, which would help to explain the integration of right wing stupidity in such virulent ways to a lot of fan bases for the major public universities.

I don't know how it gets undone now.

The democrats are worthless, republicans meaner and tougher, the media their willing ally.

We got a REPUBLICAN health care reform passed on the backs of democrats WO any republican votes, and democrats pounded in the next election for voting for it by republicans.

We are THAT far gone in this country.

We are a long way from unpacking something that is as nuanced as this.

by renting their sports logos to them would destroy rw radio and the left could finally say it is 'getting democrats backs'.

just a few schools pushed to taking their mission statements seriously and looking for apolitical alternatives would shame others into following. those stations would lose the local advertisers they need to keep going and they'd have to look for alternative programming or go broke.

pols and media would no longer be able to use rw radio to enable them and they'd have to be much more careful of repeating the bullshit as if was true. democrats could move left and would make huge gains in the next elections, allowing real media and other reform.

all it would take is communities no longer condoning the rental of their publicly funded schools sports logos to those KKK stations to help them sell global warming denial, deregulation, wars, racism, and misogyny like that.

'95 was the first year with the young American Crazies in power.

...or, rather, promote the mythology...that this partisanship is the fault of both parties equally.

The reality is that it is primarily Republicans who have jumped off the deep end and become totally uncooperative, unyielding and uncompromising. There has got to be a way to graphically illustrate this as elegantly as the partisan divide is illustrated, above.

Of course, a lot of those $s won't be reported anywhere, not to the FEC, not to Congress, not to IRS. But they are marked down in some large donors' accounting books - who they own and who they need to lean on.

I'd also like to see the IQ level plotted over these years. Anybody want to bet that that group on the right is scoring 10-30 points lower? Or maybe not, maybe they are clever like the foxes.

that there is really no clear cut way to do it.

Anyone paying attention, not a republican and willing to say it will call it for what it is.

But, end of the day the right will blame the left and the mushy middle/media whores will average it out.

The red blob is centered in the same place it always was.

You expected something else, maybe?

In terms of any political sciencey notion of political power, there is no Left left.

The MSM knows the score well enough, and they are afraid. The only real locus of power in this country IS the Far Right and its corporate sponsors. MSM fears the Far Right.

didn't enforce the Fairness Doctrine any more.

....not just the FD, but other changes (ownership regulations, etc.), for the format to become as pervasive as it has.

with the partisanship

did the evil deed..

The right wingers who vote these people in tend to be "low info" voters.. These are older people who are set in their ways, and younger ones who stopped learning anything real right after they hit puberty..

The smarter right wingers know how to play these folks, and how to get them all riled up about nonsensical things that never really affect their lives, but they are being deprived of something..

Aggrieved people act..even the the grievance is not real.. they only have to THINK it;s real..

to mean democrats and the left......

reagan killed the fairness doctrine in 1987 and they started their talk radio PSYOPS after that. it really got going in the 90s, and predates (and made possible) further media consolidation clinton signed.

that's a great illustration of the 'success' of 1000 think tank coordinated radio stations blasting the country 24/7.

it also jives with the success of ALEC, which had been around before the 90's

They live in a propaganda bubble. When I talk to right-wing relatives from Missouri, they rant about all the same completely made-up bullshit, using the same dumb phrases and arguments, as my right-wing relatives from California.

image? (I kid, I kid) But that is what it reminded me off

Thanks for finding this.

Looks like it really went off the rails in the early 80's.

Dysfunctional government indeed.

It would be no surprise that the disappearance of the political center follows the shrinking of the the economic center, i.e., the shrinking of the middle class.

nm

of the rw radio monopoly formed after reagan killed the fairness doctrine in 1987

One of their first acts was to make Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of congress.

the red represents less than one percent of the people.

the other 45% that vote red are drastically uninformed people, there should be one tiny little speck of red and the rest blue

republican radio is likely a major cause- it clearly begins to get worse in the early 90's

reagan killed the fairness doctrine in 1987 and they began to create the modern rw radio monopoly that is used to control who is and isn't acceptable to run and win in the republican party, and then to keep those sycophants in lock step.

it also closely parallels the success of ALEC.

anyone who doubts the significance of rw radio is in denial. it's amazing that the ONLY organized opposition to the rw radio PSYOPS is stoprush. that ignore-ance of rw radio by the left and the dem party continues to be the biggest political mistake in history

does anyone have an alternative explanation? one that isn't actually a symptom of rw radio?

I'm old enough to remember when cool lefty DJs were still on the air in local markets.

the fairness doctrine died - altho some like to blame our media problems on the tel com act the partisanship explosion shows the power of rw radio happening before the tel com act. they used rw radio to sell it nationally like they're trying to sell net neutrality- it will lower costs and reduce govt control of media!

i'd say media consolidation/deregulation probably would not have happened if the left had nipped the rw radio monopoly in the bud- with protests at stations and at the universities that rent their sports logos to them.

the massive concentration in the media that we see today.

Never forget that. BILL CLINTON.

still kicks internet ass now was going well before that and if it wasn't used to push him into it it sure enabled him.

there will be no media reform anytime soon unless the left stops ignoring rw radio.

and the gutting of FCC provisions was part of that. I have seen instances where radio stations which were Arbitron leaders in their market being sold to the likes of Clear Channel and its RW shout show artists, and have their share plunge to the bottom and stay there for years. I know this is heresy to the Church of Economic Determinism, but ratings & profits were/are secondary: Control and Eastern Bloc style homogeneity were the order of the day. And it worked.

But what could have been done to prevent this monopoly when the Democratic Party was already bearing its throat to corporate power, and there was no longer any institutional power to coalesce and advance a philosophy anywhere near progressive? You had the 24-7, 365 pounding of the Far Right, and silence from the other side. Put another way, had there been a 100k watt station in every major market -- free of charge -- what could liberals and progressives done with them? Who would they have been? Where are they now?

intimidate politicians and media

if the left hadn't ignored it it would have been clear to pols and media on both sides that a lot of what looked like a shift to the right was actually created out of lies and volume.

If the Democratic Party doesn't want us, then ipso facto we don't exist in the eyes of MSM or any other institution.

many cases the perception of it, way to the right by creating that national rightward buzz at will.

if the 'left' really wants to push dems left and win big in the next elections it could do that by protesting at those radio stations and the universities that keep a lot of them in business.

structure with a clear message and the popular following to frankly take over. The Party has no intention of attacking the Right; it has nothing to show and the GOP knows it.

Frankly, if there was a concerted push to gain power, I.e. takeover the Party, hardly a soul would object, and the corporate centrists on DU would scatter in the dark. But we aren't gonna regulate or legislate our way out of this. When we have enough presence with a clear, concrete, short message, I'm ready for the streets!

attacking liberalism and any expression of it. the dem party needs liberals to fill it's ranks but attacking the dem party is just doing the right's work for it- which it has been very good at doing for the last 25 years- because the left, in the biggest political mistake in history, ignores it.

go after rw radio and the whole country goes left, not just the dem party.

It turned from liberalism because it was already cowed by the Right long before the Iron Curtain radio propaganda model was in place. In fact, the Party is hostile to any sign of leftist politics; it has worked assiduously to distance itself from the quite effective labeling it has received by the GOP. It will not allow all that good work to go down the tubes, but instead hopes that the FR's 24-7, 365 will eventually not apply to them. But the GOP has burned that "weak & soft liberal" brand into its smoking ass.

The Party can neither confirm nor deny its liberalism, even when it isn't. That is perfection for the Far Right.

argument suggests it's a function of liberalness but it's really a function of a complete underestimation of rw radio and its invisibility to those it attacks- it's the perfect weapon. almost every liberal i've talked to the last 25 years about it thinks rw radio is a nothingburger.

99% on the left or the dem party have totally underestimated the right's best weapon and we're paying for it.

and the dem party has moved right because the left allows rw radio to push everything right with that nationally coordinated buzz.

the left ignores rw radio as much as the dems party. i think it's up to the 'left' and it's orgs to do something about it- they/we have more to lose than moderate dems. they're wasting our donations and volunteerism- i won't donate anymore because of it- it's wasted.

the dem party is stupid not to monitor what they're saying, especially at the local level because they lose so many elections thanks to unchallenged ignored rw radio, but there is nothing that gets the right wing screaming louder about "free speech!" than when a prominent dem mentions the fairness doctrine- and then even many on the left do the same, even repeating the rw talking points/lies about the fairness doctrine. there will be no legislation to fix this problem until the problem is fixed and dems get supermajorities.

if the 'left' did something about those 90 universities that rw radio depends on they could destroy it and get supermajorities in both houses and a lot of state houses - then a new fairness doctrine might be possible. the media and corp dems would no longer have rw radio's enabling buzz and the dem party would go way left.

The RW messaging machine was very active before it bought up swaths of radio stations. Conversely, the Democratic Party was already junking political philosophy-based goals; I.e., what would the Dems have said if they had 1,000 stations, free-of-charge? The expression is "dead air." This is compounded when the few times a lefty broadcaster gets on and advocates views he/she cannot be assured are held by the Party, and often are not! Their credibility suffers, and the broadcast ends.

I don't doubt the RW made hay with its network of radios. Anytime you can call your opponent _______, _________, __________, and there is no answer back, you win twice: The labels are reinforced, and your opponent is shown to be deceptive, weak, scared and silent. As to rule changing at the FCC, this has gone on through a number of administrations, and the Democratic hierarchy seemed content with the resulting situation. Perhaps it thought the shout-show artists would go off, howling into the night at an enemy the Democratic Party no longer represented. Fanciful on its part, but I think very plausible. And that's the problem: If you don't define yourself, someone else will. The GOP and some very savvy corp. players saw this early on, and got their network in order to beef up what they have been preaching all along.

One thing I note is by the 90s, buying and flipping major market radio stations, esp. FM, was not the hot commodity it once was, with the communication culture clocking over from mass media to highly individuated social contacts. The radio audiences were older and more conservative to begin with. I believe the Democratic Party really didn't want to reach out to these audiences, preferring to piece together constituencies in select states. Hell, I'm not at all sure how many folks on DU want to reach out, what with all the hateful regionalism, dumb white guy, Florida Man crap I see here. I wouldn't want some DUers at a radio mic. Radio now plays to the passionate loud mouth with a message. The Democratic Party at this juncture is Not passionate, Not loud, and has little message.

I also note that concerted efforts are being made to threaten boycotts of Rush sponsors, with telling effect. My brother, who must engineer these kind of broadcasts, has seen the phenomenon where small stations broadcast highschool games and beat the hustings for local sponsors, just to make ends meet. And the bigger blowhards' organizations offer ever smaller take-it-or-leave-it package deals. Times are hard for these stations.

This has been a good discussion. It's really about What is the future of radio, and What is the future of the Democratic Party.

for one thing it's hard to blame the lack of liberal talkers on anything other than the overwhelmingly dominant, subsidized, and well protected rw monopoly of all the major talk stations.

the notion that 95% of americans who would listen to talk radio would prefer the condescending ignorance and lies of the limbaughs and hannitys and their wannabes is basically an insult to americans but is acceptable to many on the left because the right has been allowed to sell this market-based rationalization to people who ignore rw radio with a passion.

liberal talkers have shown they can beat the liars in head to head competition (hartmann, schultz, rhodes, and others), which is why the right makes sure it can't happen much.

also, i have no problem blaming democrats and the left for ignoring this massively successful PSYOPS, but it's not because they like what it does to them and how often it beats them, it's because i know they have no clue that's what's kicking their ass. i've talked with them in all sorts of positions of activism and politics and they nearly all dismiss or greatly underestimate rw radio, and that's generally because they don't want to listen to it and they can't read it or analysis of it- it's invisible- the perfect weapon.

convinces me they're either complicit or terminally stupid.

'get it'. 99% of dems underestimate the right's best weapon while it's been kicking our ass for 25 years. dems realize the problems of media consolidation but they don't know the most important cog in propagandizing the country is rw radio- a complete advantage fo rthe right.

dems can't 'message' or frame anything for one reason- republican radio can disrupt distort and shout over distract until the right has it their way. no one in the dem liberal political realm listens to talk radio and there is no written version to study so it's invisible. that's the fault of the dem voters for ignoring rw radio and not getting attention to it.

clearly if it's not important to 99% of dems it won't get attention from their reps. obama has mentioned rw radio a few times and dems always just go to making fun of limbaugh and drop the ball. if dem reps mention talk radio it goes to the fairness doctrine and then even the left screams stupidly about "free speech".

if dems and liberals started protesting those stations and the universities that support them dem politicians AND media would start to pay attention.

going thru recent history.... explaining exactly this. he is going ot love the visual. excellent.

You can see shit really hit the fan when Newt took over in 1995, and somehow things have gotten much much worse.