Why Don't You Listen?

Contra seemingly everyone, I thought Martha Raddatz was mediocre, at best, last night. She framed every question from the point of view of Beltway conventional wisdom, which is is just a long way of saying that she got her facts wrong. The two most egregious:

• In asking about unemployment, she cited an administration statement that, with the ARRA, the rate would fall below 6%. The administration, of course, made that statement before the scale of the recession was known--unemployment is after all, a trailing measure. Once the full impact of the recession was known, the administration revised the number. So, basically she misled everyone watching the debate, forced Biden to respond to something inaccurate, and framed an issue in a way favorable to Ryan.
• She actually asked about SocialSecurityandMedicare. They're not the same thing, and their financial issues are completely different. As has been well documented basically everywhere, Social Security is funded for another 20 years and could be funded indefinitely with a minor increase in the tax that funds the program. Increasing the eligibility age, cutting benefits, etc. isn't necessary. It's just a way of punishing working people and denying them the benefits that they paid for. Equally well documented is that Medicare's problem is the increasing cost of medical care. That's all that needs to be fixed. Every proposed reform is also a means of punishing working people. And confidential to Marth: neither can go bankrupt; Social Security in particular can't because of the formula for calculating benefits.

And one more thing: why was the only question about abortion framed as an issue of what religions and men will permit? It's frankly dispiriting that even a female moderator can't make women the subject of a question about ESTABLISHED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS and the kind of autonomy over medical decisions that men take for granted.

Another great victory for the American press corps!