A new article from Tom Watson and Peter Daou shares the poignant struggles of average Americans who care much less about the manufactured media stink over Hillary Clinton’s emails than they care what she and other presidential candidates will do to lead this country. Here’s a quote:
“My wife lost her job with a non-profit last month when their grant funding dried up. I bust my back 40+ hours a week at a lumber yard. We’re getting by on one paycheck and we have a mortgage to pay and kids to feed. I want to hear about the ISSUES – plans to create good paying jobs with health benefits. Paid leave. Work schedules I can rely upon.
My 14 year old daughter is a great writer – clever – creative – but we have zero $$ saved for her and my son’s education. I have a bright, sweet 12 year old son who was born with developmental delays – he didn’t sit up until he was 13 months old or walk until he was 2. By the time he was 18 months old he was getting help from physical and speech therapists, and he got 3 years of special ed. preschool. There was a time when my sweet son would never have gotten a proper education. Now he’s in 7th grade and making honor roll. He’ll earn his high school diploma, maybe even go to college some day because Hillary fought to pass laws that required schools to accommodate his special needs. Thanks to Hillary, he got the early intervention that was so vital to his early development.”
So why won’t the media share the facts of Clinton’s record, instead focusing exclusively on smear and faux scandal? Author and commentator Anita Finlay argues that “As long as you have the corporate owned media parroting Republican talking points in the name of creating a horse race, you are alienating voters rather than inviting them to watch mainstream news, because they realize they’re not getting useful information.”
Media strategist Shawna Vercher countered that this is not just about the media: “This is also about the GOP, who have missed the opportunity to pivot to a bigger discussion of cyber security – are we really as safe as we thought? They can still jab at Hillary but she is ultimately a minor player in that discussion.”
And no matter how the media pretends otherwise, Clinton still holds a formidable lead after 7 months of non-stop press and Republican bashing. If she continues to talk policy, presenting herself as the adult in the room, will the smear machine fall on deaf ears? And whether the “emails” are, in fact, an issue or not, it is not the only one. What does this say about how little the press values the struggles of average Americans?
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