Politics

Why political journalists should imitate Ron Brownstein

Published

2 years ago

December 16, 2022

The man who is perhaps the sharpest observer of America’s political divides lives not in Washington but Los Angeles. He has never interviewed Donald Trump. His recent book was not a tell-all about the Trump or Biden White Houses but an account of how musicians, actors and other creative types who lived in the L.A. area in the early 1970s reshaped American culture.

Ronald Brownstein, who writes separate weekly columns for the Atlantic and CNN and appears regularly on the cable news network, isn’t in the mold of other top political journalists of this era. And that’s unfortunate. News organizations need to rethink how they cover elections and government — and Brownstein is an exemplar of a better way.

What’s so great about Brownstein? First and most important, he focuses on long-term patterns instead of daily gossip, and he understands that politics isn’t just what happens in Washington.

There is more to political reporting than ever before, with publications that didn’t exist a decade ago producing numerous articles daily. But so much of that coverage is limited to two subjects: what the president and Congress are doing that day or week and the next national election.

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Brownstein writes and comments on those subjects, too. But often he homes in on other kinds of political stories: the recent rightward shift in Democratic-leaning cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, driven by residents’ frustration with rampant homelessness and a broader sense of disorder; the moves by Republican-dominated states across the South, Midwest and Great Plains to adopt similar restrictions on abortion, transgender rights and teaching about racism in public schools; the campaign by red states to fight America’s transition from fossil fuels.

And when Brownstein is covering Washington or the campaign trail, he’s not fixated on the obvious. For example, in the wake of this November’s elections, political journalists quickly coalesced around the idea that voters punished Republicans for trying to limit abortion rights. Not quite, Brownstein pointed out in a postelection piece. There was such a backlash in some blue and purple states such as Michigan. But in Florida, Texas and other states, including purplish Georgia, Republican governors signed strict abortion limits into law and still won resoundingly.

In an interview over Zoom, Brownstein described his approach as “outside-in,” as he tries to show “how the parties’ agendas and messages are intersecting with the country around them.”

“In D.C., everything is very tactical. The coin of the realm is knowledge of the tactics. … But the way in which political actors intersect with the trajectory of change in the country is more important than which ad you put on,” Brownstein told me.

Brownstein has spent most of his career in Washington, but he moved to the Los Angeles area in 2014 and says that has helped his reporting.

“I’m not only trying to learn what the party’s strategies are, I’m giving those strategies a stress test through my own understanding of how the country is changing,” he said. “It makes it less necessary to be in Washington.”

The second reason that Brownstein is a model political journalist is the depth and insight he brings to the work. Brownstein is not a data journalist, but his stories are full of polling and statistics that validate his arguments. He’s not known as a “whisperer” to any given politician, but his articles and television commentary often include references to his conversations with top officials in both parties. Many journalists are great at explaining the electoral part of politics but miss the policy part, or get the politics and policy but not the race and identity element. Brownstein captures it all.

Brownstein popularized many ideas that political observers, including myself, refer to regularly: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as part of a “blue wall” of states Democrats must carry in presidential elections; the division in Democratic primaries between “wine track” voters (those with college degrees) and the “beer track” (those without degrees); the notion that the electorate is divided into “a coalition of transformation” (people of color, college graduates and other groups who lean Democratic) versus a “coalition of restoration” (White Christians, older Americans and other groups who lean Republican).

Brownstein is prescient — strikingly so at times. In an interview in late 2018, when it wasn’t at all clear whom the Democrats would nominate to take on Trump in 2020, Brownstein predicted that a ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would be a winning one. In the run-up to this year’s elections, Brownstein didn’t rule out a potential “red wave,” but he repeatedly explained why a Republican sweep might not happen, noting the large number of people in polls who were saying that they disapproved of Biden but were leaning toward Democratic candidates.

Finally, Brownstein is frank about the radical direction that the Republican Party is headed, without being overtly ideological or partisan. He writes columns, but his work is more analysis and explanation than opinion. Brownstein does not advocate positions on issues or back particular candidates or parties, as I do. At the same time, he has not made the mistake so many other non-opinion journalists have made in the Trump era: being so eager to portray themselves as nonpartisan that they downplay Republican extremism.

“The red states are moving social policy sharply to the right within their borders on issues from abortion to LGBTQ rights and classroom censorship, while simultaneously working to hobble the ability of either the federal government or their own largest metro areas to set a different course,” he wrote earlier this year. Such language is not flattering to Republicans, but it is more descriptive than judgmental.

Brownstein isn’t perfect. He acknowledges that in the years after Barack Obama’s election as president he understated how many Americans were resistant to the increasingly multicultural nation that Obama and his supporters embodied and therefore the potential of someone like Trump to be elected president.

And in some ways, Brownstein’s approach isn’t replicable by younger journalists. Brownstein is very knowledgeable about national politics in part because he has been on the beat since 1982, with long stints at National Journal and the Los Angeles Times before joining CNN and the Atlantic. Brownstein first met Biden in 1985.

When Brownstein was starting out, editors were largely hiring White men for prestigious political-writing jobs. So he is a bit of a unicorn, both having made race, identity and demographics a big theme of his work (unlike many of his older White male peers), and having so much experience (unlike many female political journalists and those of color, like myself, who emphasize the intersection between identity and politics but are in their 40s or younger.) And Brownstein’s ability to write critically about the Republican Party without being cast as too liberal by Republicans or fellow journalists is likely enhanced by the fact that he isn’t a person of color, a woman, young or gay.

So, we can’t create carbon copies of Ronald Brownstein. But covering politics beyond the campaign trail and Capitol Hill, using data, reporting on both policy and electoral considerations, and describing the Republican Party honestly are all things that both individual political journalists and news organizations can and should embrace.

“How would Ronald Brownstein cover this story?” is a question that political journalists should have at the top of their minds. He’s doing the job the way it should be done.

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Politics

Political parties cool to idea of new federal regulations for nomination contests

Published

11 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Several federal political parties are expressing reservations about the prospect of fresh regulations to prevent foreign meddlers from tainting their candidate nomination processes.

Elections Canada has suggested possible changes to safeguard nominations, including barring non-citizens from helping choose candidates, requiring parties to publish contest rules and explicitly outlawing behaviour such as voting more than once.

However, representatives of the Bloc Québécois, Green Party and NDP have told a federal commission of inquiry into foreign interference that such changes may be unwelcome, difficult to implement or counterproductive.

The Canada Elections Act currently provides for limited regulation of federal nomination races and contestants.

For instance, only contestants who accept $1,000 in contributions or incur $1,000 in expenses have to file a financial return. In addition, the act does not include specific obligations concerning candidacy, voting, counting or results reporting other than the identity of the successful nominee.

A report released in June by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians expressed concern about how easily foreign actors can take advantage of loopholes and vulnerabilities to support preferred candidates.

Lucy Watson, national director of the NDP, told the inquiry Thursday she had concerns about the way in which new legislation would interact with the internal decision-making of the party.

“We are very proud of the fact that our members play such a significant role in shaping the internal policies and procedures and infrastructure of the party, and I would not want to see that lost,” she said.

“There are guidelines, there are best practices that we would welcome, but if we were to talk about legal requirements and legislation, that’s something I would have to take away and put further thought into, and have discussions with folks who are integral to the party’s governance.”

In an August interview with the commission of inquiry, Bloc Québécois executive director Mathieu Desquilbet said the party would be opposed to any external body monitoring nomination and leadership contest rules.

A summary tabled Thursday says Desquilbet expressed doubts about the appropriateness of requiring nomination candidates to file a full financial report with Elections Canada, saying the agency’s existing regulatory framework and the Bloc’s internal rules on the matter are sufficient.

Green Party representatives Jon Irwin and Robin Marty told the inquiry in an August interview it would not be realistic for an external body, like Elections Canada, to administer nomination or leadership contests as the resources required would exceed the federal agency’s capacity.

A summary of the interview says Irwin and Marty “also did not believe that rules violations could effectively be investigated by an external body like the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections.”

“The types of complaints that get raised during nomination contests can be highly personal, politically driven, and could overwhelm an external body.”

Marty, national campaign director for the party, told the inquiry Thursday that more reporting requirements would also place an administrative burden on volunteers and riding workers.

In addition, he said that disclosing the vote tally of a nomination contest could actually help foreign meddlers by flagging the precise number of ballots needed for a candidate to be chosen.

Irwin, interim executive director of the Greens, said the ideal tactic for a foreign country would be working to get someone in a “position of power” within a Canadian political party.

He said “the bad guys are always a step ahead” when it comes to meddling in the Canadian political process.

In May, David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service at the time, said it was very clear from the design of popular social media app TikTok that data gleaned from its users is available to the Chinese government.

A December 2022 CSIS memo tabled at the inquiry Thursday said TikTok “has the potential to be exploited” by Beijing to “bolster its influence and power overseas, including in Canada.”

Asked about the app, Marty told the inquiry the Greens would benefit from more “direction and guidance,” given the party’s lack of resources to address such things.

Representatives of the Liberal and Conservative parties are slated to appear at the inquiry Friday, while chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault is to testify at a later date.

After her party representatives appeared Thursday, Green Leader Elizabeth May told reporters it was important for all party leaders to work together to come up with acceptable rules.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Politics

New Brunswick election candidate profile: Green Party Leader David Coon

Published

14 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – A look at David Coon, leader of the Green Party of New Brunswick:

Born: Oct. 28, 1956.

Early years: Born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, he spent about three decades as an environmental advocate.

Education: A trained biologist, he graduated with a bachelor of science from McGill University in Montreal in 1978.

Family: He and his wife Janice Harvey have two daughters, Caroline and Laura.

Before politics: Worked as an environmental educator, organizer, activist and manager for 33 years, mainly with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.

Politics: Joined the Green Party of Canada in May 2006 and was elected leader of the New Brunswick Green Party in September 2012. Won a seat in the legislature in 2014 — a first for the province’s Greens.

Quote: “It was despicable. He’s clearly decided to take the low road in this campaign, to adopt some Trump-lite fearmongering.” — David Coon on Sept. 12, 2024, reacting to Blaine Higgs’s claim that the federal government had decided to send 4,600 asylum seekers to New Brunswick.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Politics

New Brunswick election profile: Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs

Published

15 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – A look at Blaine Higgs, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.

Born: March 1, 1954.

Early years: The son of a customs officer, he grew up in Forest City, N.B., near the Canada-U.S. border.

Education: Graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1977.

Family: Married his high-school sweetheart, Marcia, and settled in Saint John, N.B., where they had four daughters: Lindsey, Laura, Sarah and Rachel.

Before politics: Hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from university and was eventually promoted to director of distribution. Worked for 33 years at the company.

Politics: Elected to the legislature in 2010 and later served as finance minister under former Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward. Elected Tory leader in 2016 and has been premier since 2018.

Quote: “I’ve always felt parents should play the main role in raising children. No one is denying gender diversity is real. But we need to figure out how to manage it.” — Blaine Higgs in a year-end interview in 2023, explaining changes to school policies about gender identity.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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