Dorgan and Dodd Will Not Seek Re-election, Nader Ponders Entering Senate Race

Democratic Senators are dropping like flies over the last few days. Both Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) are retiring from the Senate and will not seek re-election bids in 2010. In an election year that is already said to be tight for Democrats, these announcements put a big question mark on if these Senate seats will be able to remain blue.

So who are so-called "winners" and "losers" of these decisions? Glenn Thrush of Politico has some ideas:

Winners:

1. Joe Lieberman. Let's see, we started the year with a posse of Dems looking to pants the Connecticut Independent for demeaning Barack Obama from the podium of the Republican National Convention. Then Harry Reid and Obama intervened to save his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee -- and he rewarded them by single-handedly scuttling the public option and expansion of Medicare.

Now a new gift for the independent who already has everything. Dodd's departure removes Connecticut AG Dick Blumenthal from the 2012 race, removing the gravest threat to Lieberman yet -- and explaining, perhaps, why Lieberman's Cheshire grin is especially wide these days.

3. Wall Street, Ben Bernanke and Barney Frank. Still a huge open question, but Dodd's exit throws the fast-evolving bipartisan -- yes, bipartisan -- Wall Street regulation effort into semi-disarray. It would be going too far to say that Dodd's bill will be derailed, but financial industry lobbyists and their defenders on the Hill now have an excuse to slow walk the entire process. On the other hand, voters are demanding some payback for the financial crisis and bailouts -- and want some kind of reg reform, Dodd or no Dodd.

On to the details... Dodd's bill would strip bank oversight from the Fed. Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, favors vesting that power with Fed boss Ben Bernanke, despite the Fed's poor oversight in the years leading up to the meltdown. Having Dodd on the way out might strengthen the Frank/Bernanke hand.

Losers.

3. Rob Simmons and Linda McMahon. Alas, it was too good too last. Blumenthal is as popular as any Democrat in Connecticut right now, with sky-high name recognition and a decades-long rep as a corruption fighter. The NRSC and the state party had been pulling their punches for weeks in hopes that Dodd would retain enough of a pulse to stay, wounded and ripe, in the race. That's over. While Dodd and GOP Gov. Jodi Rell tanked over the summer with below-40 percent approval ratings, Blumenthal happy number was hovering around 80 (!) percent.

That's unsustainable. But Democrats are heaving a huge sigh of relief this morning that Blumenthal is now their candidate instead of Dodd -- regardless of all the "Black Tuesday" headlines.

7. Liberals. This time next year, the Senate will have lost its two leading veteran progressives -- Ted Kennedy and Dodd. Moreover, Dodd's perceived crony relationship with Wall Street -- Angelo's List, AIG, etc. -- turned him into something of a populist crusader on credit cards and other financial regulatory matters over the last 12 months. Blumenthal has similar liberal/populist views -- even though he opposes same-sex marriage -- but he's far less connected, forceful or charismatic a liberal standard-bearer than Dodd.

The news about Chris Dodd is also interesting because the Green Party of Connecticut is strongly pushing consumer advocate and former Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader to run for a Senate seat out of Connecticut later this year. There is a Facebook Group created to this affect that has over 2,100 members that is also encouraging citizens from all over the country to call his offices and encourage him to run.

Nader has thus-far been non-committal saying that he wants to gauge the level of grassroots support before making an announcement and it is unclear how Dodd's retirement will affect Nader's decision.

2010 election buzz is heating up, so I am sure this will only get more interesting as we go along.

The Fairness Doctrine, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, and the Expansion of Public Discourse

Martha Zoller has a new column that I happened to run across today that voices its support for the "Broadcaster Freedom Act". The "Broadcaster Freedom Act" will effectively bar the FCC from making any new rules or regulations that would reinstate or re-implement standards once set in the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was established in 1949 to provide for a more balanced discourse on controversial issues that were discussed on public airwaves. The belief was that there were fewer broadcast licenses than there were people who would like to have them, therefore licensees accept certain public responsibility for the use of the airwaves. Given this acceptance of public responsibility, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to devote some of their time to discussion of issues in the public interest and to give airtime to opposing viewpoints. Broadcasters could air opposing views in many different formats (news segments, editorial spots, etc.) but were not required to air the opposing views within the same program. The Fairness Doctrine also didn't require broadcasters programming to be split down a 50/50 line, but merely provide a balance in discussion of issues in the public interest.

The Fairness Doctrine stopped being enforced in the mid-1980's when then FCC Chair Mark Fowler expressed the belief that the view of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced with the view of broadcasters as marketplace participants. In other words, Fowler advocated the position that content being broadcast on the airwaves should be left to the "free-market". Fowler would also argue, as does Martha Zoller, that the Fairness Doctrine limited free speech by giving the government control over a station's editorial content. Zoller states:

We must protect the free market everywhere it is being assaulted, and talk radio is a free speech market that should be left alone by regulation.

We must remember when discussing this issue, that the airwaves belong to the public and that broadcasters should serve the public interest. Since the end of the Fairness Doctrine we have seen continued concentration of the media into the hands of just a few companies. Though some would argue that we have more channels now with the existence of cable, I am reminded of Senator Byron Dorgan's observation that this is like many voices coming from the same ventriloquist. We have seen opinion and viewpoints become more limited on the airwaves, not expanded since things have been turned over to the "free-market". You can see this firsthand in the coverage in the lead-up to the Iraq War and in the "post-9/11 world" where dissenting opinion was suppressed. Zoller further claims in her article:

The marketplace doesn’t want liberal talk radio. There have been some shows that have done well, but the numbers are not in their favor. This year at the Talkers New Media Seminar, there were more liberal/progressive/independent hosts represented, but the bread and butter still goes to conservative talk because conservatives are so under-represented in the rest of the media market.

When we discuss topics such as the public airwaves, which are owned by the public and should serve in the interest of the public, it is not productive to speak about such topics as "products" subjected to the "marketplace". Public forums for debate, discussion, and the expansion of ideas are fundamental to democracy and speaking about different viewpoints as if we are choosing between brands of soda pop, is grossly missing the point. Simply stating that the public "doesn't want" the other view is no excuse for its suppression and in a society that benefits from debating all viewpoints, it is completely necessary to further open up the level of discourse.

Media consolidation has hurt democracy and it is not productive to think about the issue in terms of a "liberal" or a "conservative" media, but rather recognize that our media outlets are largely stenographers to power. Our media outlets produce sanitized infotainment that passes as news and keeps advertisers coming back for more. Perhaps it is more beneficial to look at this issue of "Fairness" through the eyes of a 1969 Supreme Court decision that upheld the Fairness Doctrine:

A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a...frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.

— U.S. Supreme Court, upholding the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 1969