Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Election Night at Annenberg
The normally quiet lobby of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism was abuzz with election night debate and discussion last Tuesday night. The Unruh Institute of Politics held a panel in the school’s east lobby to discuss the midterm election as the results trickled in via televised coverage. Although the crowd in attendance was much smaller than the one at Annenberg’s coverage of the 2008 elections, heated partisan debate and support was still palpable in the atmosphere.
The panel discussion was led by Dan Schnur of the Unruh Institute of Politics and Roberto Surrow and included alternating student panelists for the Democratic and Republican Party.
The debate covered a nationwide scope, such as the fact that Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives and yet the Democrats retained control of the Senate majority. The debate also focused on the California elections. It was agreed upon by both student panelists and the moderators that the campaigning had sunk to low blows between opponents. In addition to this, the panel agreed that candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown had painted eachother into very unfavorable light what with the revelation of Whitman’s former illegal house maid and the word “whore” being used to describe Whitman by someone on Brown’s campaign staff.
The student panelists, when prompted by Schnur to give an opinion, agreed that after moving towards the left during the Bush years, Americans are now moving back towards the right during the current Obama Administration. However, while the Republican student on the panel at the time of this discussion asserted that the GOP wants more bipartisanship in the current government, the student representing the Democratic side stated that Democrats and Obama had wanted it as well but that after these elections it may not be possible. More was elaborated on this and it was found that the reasoning for it was that Obama would need to swing much more to the left now that trying to achieve bipartisanship has lost him democratic votes and has rendered the left’s control of the government weak, possibly even the President’s bid for reelection.
The possible facts as to why the House was won by the right were also addressed during the discussion and debate panel. An issue that was agreed upon by the panel overall was that the youth vote was severely lacking these midterm elections, a vote that had been very much involved in the 2008 election. Another factor taken into consideration at the panel was the fact that whichever party is out of power is always more determined in its actions to acquire power and that the party like this at the moment is the Republican Party. Although the Democratic side of the panel expressed wishes that the party would continue to pursue bi-partisan solutions to the many issues facing the nation, the consensus was that it would be strategically unwise to so with the party’s weakened state in the government.
Such was the feeling from students who came to view the event in support of their organizations. The USC College Democrats came in a larger presence than their counterparts for the event, wearing paper crowns on their heads as they sat and listened to the interview, putting their two cents into the conversation with a few questions toward the faculty moderators and cheers for when a democrat would gain or retain control of a seat in either the House or the Senate.
In addition to a few campus political groups, there were also several individual students who came of their own accord. Most of the attendees were not even Annenberg students, they simply wanted to view the action of election night from the various screens covering it in the Annenberg lobby; many also stated they came because they wanted to be part of an event that night. While several students snacked on pizza provided by the school as well as buffalo wings nicknamed “Republican right wings” and “Democrat left wings” during an intermission of the discussion panel, several were able to give interviews regarding the topics discussed by the panel and how election night was being covered by Annenberg.
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