Loss of Imus Will Hurt Dems

Although there has been an attempt in the press to proclaim Don Imus a conservative, anybody who has been paying attention knows that he was a favorite of Democrats and his endorsement of John Kerry in '04 really kills the lame attempt to blame his attitudes on conservatism. So, while the nation's aggrieved masses may be applauding the firing of Imus after his politically incorrect remarks, Dems aren't quite so happy. They've lost a sympathetic voice on the radio:

They came by the hundreds that hot August day in tiny Johnson City, Tenn., gathering on an asphalt parking lot to meet Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. It was not just that he might become the state's first black senator. More than that, even in Republican eastern Tennessee, the Democratic congressman was a celebrity — a regular guest on Don Imus' radio show.

And today, with Imus' career in tatters, the fate of the controversial shock jock is stirring quiet but heartfelt concern in an unlikely quarter: among Democratic politicians.

That's because, over the years, Democrats such as Ford came to count on Imus for the kind of sympathetic treatment that Republicans got from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.

Equally important, Imus gave Democrats a pipeline to a crucial voting bloc that was perennially hard for them to reach: politically independent white men.

With Imus' show canceled indefinitely because of his remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, some Democratic strategists are worried about how to fill the void. For a national radio audience of white men, Democrats see few if any alternatives.

"This is a real bind for Democrats," said Dan Gerstein, an advisor to one of Imus' favorite regulars, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). "Talk radio has become primarily the province of the right, and the blogosphere is largely the province of the left. If Imus loses his microphone, there aren't many other venues like it around."

There really is no liberal counterpart to the conservative radio giants like Limbaugh, Hannity, Medved, Hewitt and others. Air America has proven to be a dismal failure - after all, who wants to hear whining and ranting all day? When this is all said and done and the real damage to the Dem message is determined, Democrats may not be too happy with Al Sharpton's crusade to get Imus off the air. He may have killed off one of their own.

Why has conservative talk radio and cable TV hosts done so much better than the libs? Hugh Hewitt gives us some basic reasons in this column:

Good humor is the secret of broadcast success in 2007 and forward. It is why Franken failed so miserably, but why conservative talkers thrive and grow, and indeed why O’Reilly and Hannity run rings around their cable competitors, why Larry King is still going strong, why Anderson Cooper and Larry Kudlow are gaining and why Brit Hume and his merry “Fox news all stars all” continue to dominate: They are generally and genuinely happy people. Their teeth do not grind at night. They are not consumed with paybacks and venom venting. They would no more particularize their political agenda into the comparison of a one of the country’s greatest legal minds to a Nazi mass murderer than they would abuse the Rutgers women basketball team. Sure, they play hardball –politics ain’t beanbag, as Mr. Dooley noted. (Look it up Keith, look it up.)

That's exactly why there will be a renewed effort to enact a new Fairness Doctrine. If they can't beat conservative talk radio in the marketplace, they'll try to put it off the air with restrictive regulation.

UPDATE: Rich Lowry has a good piece on the sudden abandonment of Imus by his liberal friends.