At last night's Iowa Brown & Black Forum there were very few surprises, with all the players doing exactly what we expected them to do. And yet, if you watched the forum, there were still opportunities to learn quite a bit about both the Democratic presidential field and the media (as did our very own Curtis Houck - his impressions and thorough analyses can be found here and here).
Here's your quick recap.
As predicted, Hillary Clinton denounced the DHS raids. It was close to two weeks ago when I first told you that Clinton would do this. Much of our political discourse revolves around optics and theatrics, and the identity politics of the left are no exception. Here's how I called it back then:
Term-limited Obama has now created an opportunity for the Democratic field to separate from him and his failed immigration promises. Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have denounced the deportations, and I expect that Hillary Clinton will soon follow suit.
Clinton was ready for Jorge Ramos when he raised the deportation issue, immediately denouncing the raids as "divisive" and sowing "discord and fear." Failure to do so would have just sharpened Ramos' later "Latino problem" question. I was tempted to bill this segment as a master class in the evasion of yes/no questions, but in fairness, Jorge Ramos made that possible by meekly allowing Clinton to run through her set pieces unabated - inexplicable (and yet entirely predictable) for a man whose whole schtick is predicated on being The Guy That Asks Questions.
The non-questions were predictably non-asked... Dishonorable mentions here goes to Rembert Browne, who managed to conflate legitimate ISIS concerns into a question about white terrorism (!), which Hillary Clinton used to transition into her set piece on gun control; and to Jorge Ramos, who only asked an email question of Clinton in the lightning round: "How many email accounts do you have?" Hard-hitting stuff right there.
...but the questions that DID make it in were pretty wild. As Scott whitlock points out, the networks passed on covering the actual content of the questions posed at the forum. There were questions about reparations, white privilege, and funding for a full gamut of progressive wish list items.
And finally:
We saw Isaac Lee's unfiltered vision. Fusion's moderation of the event was eye-poppingly instructive as an opportunity for our English-speaking audience to have an unfettered view into an Isaac Lee-run media outlet, and its take on the news.
Lee, of course, is the CEO of Fusion and President of Univision News, and he is of the view that news coverage does not merit the presentation of both sides. Here, we got an unvarnished taste of the side of news and policy that Lee deems fit to air - the hard left side.
