CONSENSUS: The first three callers all agreed!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2024

The fourth cited Campaign 2000: The first three callers to Sunday's Washington Journal formed a type of consensus.

All agreed on a basic point. This year's presidential campaign is the most important ever.

In the past two daysIn the past two days, we've shown you the full text of what the program's third caller said. This is the specific question to which callers were asked to respond:

IS CAMPAIGN 2024 THE "MOST IMPORTANT IN HISTORY?"

That was the official question. For the record, here's the text of the full response from the first caller this past Sunday morning:

MODERATOR (6/9/24): So what do you think? Is 2024 the most important election in our history, or in our lifetimes? 

Jim in Washington State, Democrat. What do you think?

JIM FROM WASHINGTON STATE: It definitely is. Why do so many Republicans support a convicted rapist, a convicted fraud, a convicted felon with no shame? I mean, what's wrong with the Republican Party? And that's terrible. Yeah. What—yeah.

The first caller said it was the most important election, at least within our lifetimes. 

(For the record, Trump isn't "a convicted rapist," but he is "a convicted felon.")

That's what the first caller said. The second caller said this:

MODERATOR (continuing directly): Danny is in Louisville, Kentucky, Republican.  Danny, is this the most important election in history?

DANNY FROM KENTUCKY: Yes. I tell you, I don't know how anybody can't see this has got to be the most important, because if things keep going the way they're going, we ain't gonna have a republic.

You know, just like the other guy said, you know, he's wondering what's wrong with the Republicans. I'm wondering what's wrong with Democrats. I used to be a Democrat and I switched over. And you know—I'm blind and I can see so much going on, I'm just so glad I can't really physically see what's going on, but I'll go to church this morning and I'll be praying for all the Democrats.

MODERATOR: Danny, have you thought that in the past, about past elections, that it was the most important?

DANNY FROM KENTUCKY: No, not more so—more so now than ever before.

The second caller agreed with the first—this election is the most important. As we've noted in the past two days, the third caller said the same thing.

In this somewhat peculiar way, a type of consensus formed.

Throughout the hour, callers said it was the most important election—and they agreed on one other point.

They agreed that we could lose our republic (or perhaps our democracy) in the aftermath of this year's election. They agreed what we could lose our way of life after this election. They greed that this could happen if the other party's candidate won.

Thar represented a type of consensus. The callers disagreed on that one point:

Some said that Candidate Trump presented this existential danger. As with Callers Two and Three, others said it was President Biden who could bring our republic down.

Throughout the hour on this C-Span program, callers from the two Americas presented those dueling viewpoints. Under current arrangements, the peculiar type of consensus is formed, at least in part, by the organizational structure of our "cable news:"

Citizens of Red America—those who watch the Fox News Channel—are constantly offered the one point of view.  Citizens who watch MSNBC are routinely exposed to the other. 

It's hard to find a discussion on cable news in which proponents of the one point of view are asked to defend their claims against proponents of the other. As a general matter, panelists all agree with each other on Fox News Channel programs. 

On MSNBC, it's extremely rare to see a guest who diverges from that channel's standard point of view.

In such ways, we the people are being helped to create a pair of dueling Americas. In Blue America, we're told that the election of Candidate Trump might bring an end to our democracy-and that could always be true. 

In Red America, viewers are told that the re-election of President Biden might bring the republic down. On Sunday morning, Callers Two and Three to Washington Journal stated that point of view. 

Sunday morning's fourth caller took a somewhat different tack. As we noted yesterday, his statement started like this:

MODERATOR (continuing directly from above): That's Dennis in Hudson, Indiana. And this is Gregory, Sherman Oaks, California, Democrat. 

Gregory, good morning to you.

GREGORY IN SHERMAN OAKS: And good morning to you. And this is the most important election, at least in six elections...

Say what? This caller agreed that this was the most important election—but only, it suddenly seemed, in the past five or six!

As he continued, his fuller statement returned us to Campaign 2000—to an election concerning which we've done a lot of work, including at this companion site.

According to the day's fourth caller, that election was "the most important" too. He continued along as shown:

GREGORY IN SHERMAN OAKS: And good morning to you. And this is the most important election, at least in six elections. 

I've heard a bunch of Republicans talk about how we're going to lose our republic, or our Second Amendment rights, or jobs or some other stuff.  What we're going to lose is our planet. If we don't get behind doing something serious about climate destruction and global heating, all the other issues are going to be dying out, on a planet that is dying out...

So said the caller at the start of his statement.  Eventually, he specifically referred to the aftermath of the 2000 White House campaign.

In our view, we denizens of Blue America still could learn a great deal from the workings of that campaign. Tomorrow, we'll look at the full statement by Sunday morning's fourth caller—and at his reasons for listing that election as "the most important [possibly] ever."

The caller said a great deal of damage resulted from the outcome of that campaign. For the record, he didn't offer any thoughts about the way that campaign was covered by the upper-end mainstream press.

We Blues! In our view, we can learn a lot about the coverage of the current campaign when we think back to the coverage of that earlier race. It's too late for any of this to make a major difference this year. But whoever wins in November this year, a challenging road lies ahead. 

Tomorrow, we'll post the full statement by the fourth caller, and we'll proceed from there.

Tomorrow: "We wasted the first decide of this new century on a president who gave us climate betrayal, two stupid wars and a financial meltdown, among many other failures."

Blue Americans, tell us again! If we believe that some such statement is true, do we understand yet how we got there?