Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Oct. 30 rally will ruin the election for Democrats? Hilarious.

[Ian David]

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Oct. 30 rally will ruin the election for Democrats? Hilarious.

By David WeigelPosted Monday, Sept. 20, 2010, at 7:03 PM ET

The Facebook page for Jon Stewart's Oct. 30 Rally to Restore Sanity was on its way to 100,000 attendees when liberals rediscovered that most familiar of emotions: panic.

Why would there be panic about the first fun or galvanizing event that Barack Obama's liberal base had to look forward to since their limited edition Shepard Fairey prints came in the mail? It's simple. Democrats look at the electoral map and see that they're doomed. Their hope rests on the resilience of liberal activists and union members, who will be spending the final 72 hours of the campaign pulling voters to the polls. And all of a sudden here come Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, turning a joke into a mega-rally and plucking liberals right out of their get-out-the-vote operations during their most crucial weekend.

"A lot of people on campus are going," says William Vogt, a Georgetown University junior and spokesmen for the campus's College Democrats. "I'm planning to attend it, too. Right now I don't think we're worried about an effect on GOTV. The rally is Saturday; Halloween is Sunday. We're still going to vote on Tuesday."
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This is high-grade Democratic nightmare fuel. In 2008, college kids from Washington, D.C., campuses regularly boarded buses to campaign for Obama-Biden in Virginia. In Iowa, twentysomething Obama volunteers erased bad memories of Howard Dean's messy campaign by getting to know locals and mastering caucus politics. Both of these activities seemed more useful than an attention-getting rally that, like so many rallies, will just reinforce what the activists think. And what they think when they watch Stewart and Colbert is: "Aren't these right-wingers a bunch of rubes?"

Democrats don't think this is helpful, and a few of them poured their hearts out to Politico's Ben Smith. "To the extent that some people who will attend his rally would otherwise be involved in GOTV efforts," wrote party strategist Steve Rosenthal, "this is not helpful."

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"I don't think it's going to be a big deal among union voters," says Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO. "If you've got a steelworker in Pennsylvania who's door-knocking that day, he's not going to say, 'Oh, shit! I need to see Jon Stewart!' "

More:
http://www.slate.com/id/2267987/

[Ian David]

1. Stephen Colbert-Jon Stewart Rally: Might TV Duo Affect Election 2010?

If the Jon Stewart rally set for Oct. 30 on the National Mall -"opposed" by Stephen Colbert's rally - sticks with comedy, young voters might perk up for Election 2010, political scientists say.

Los Angeles - In a nifty two-for-one parry, fans of Comedy Central’s late night “fake news” block now have both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert headed to Washington - on Halloween weekend, no less.

Colbert Nation enthusiasts had been pushing for their “leader” to host a “Restoring Truthiness” rally as a satirical counterweight to the Aug. 28 Glenn Beck rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But, in a move that political culturalist Jeffrey Jones calls very smart indeed, the duo has opted instead to headline dueling Saturday rallies on the National Mall, Stewart's to “restore sanity,” and Colbert’s dubbed a “March to Keep Fear Alive.”

In the spirit of the spooky season, the two may be donning the cloak of fun and games, but as Stewart says, he has a grown-up goal: to revive the moderate center of our civic discourse.

The decision to join forces speaks volumes about their underlying motivations, says Mr. Jones, author of “Entertaining Politics: Satiric Television and Political Engagement.” “This rally is about the serious side of satire.“

What they are doing is much bigger than a single election cycle, he adds. The two comics “are involved in an entirely different enterprise than Beck's, Hannity's, Maddow's, et al,” he says. While Stewart is famous for protesting that his show is nothing but “fake news,” he has also said that he represents the "disenfranchised center" or "distracted center." If mainstream journalism no longer occupies a neutral middle ground, and satirists feel like they are two of the last public figures who might remind us of Roosevelt's dictum that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," then, says Jones, "that says a lot about what our political culture, and the media that help shape it, have become.”

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/stephen-colbert-jon-stewart-rally-might-tv-duo-affect-election-201063399?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[Ian David]

2. Glenn Beck Calls Stewart/Colbert Rally a Progressive Plot

On his radio show today Glenn Beck took aim at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s October 30th rally, by labeling at progressive plot to win the election. Beck said of the Stewart/Colbert rally, “They are going to activate the youth to try to get them to vote with the labor unions apparently.”

Here is the audio courtesy of Media Matters: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201009200024

Beck claimed that the Christine O’Donnell witchcraft flap was designed to suppress the vote, and that the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies are designed to get young people to go vote with the labor unions. Beck said, “They are going to do everything they can to suppress the vote, and then Jon Stewart has shown his colors along with Comedy Central and Stephen Colbert. They are going to activate the youth to try to get them to vote with the labor unions apparently. I guess. I don’t know. That’s why it’s been scheduled the weekend before. Not to suppress that vote, they’ll suppress it all the way up, and then Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert will go and activate the youth to try to get the youth to go out and vote.”

Notice how Beck is trying to motivate his audience of blue hairs to go out and vote Republican by using a bogus fear campaign built around the Stewart/Colbert rally. The problem is that the calls for a rally came from the ground up. Stephen Colbert’s fans were calling for him to hold a Restore Truthiness rally in early September. Comedy Central got the idea from their fans, which by the way are way more likely to actually show up at the October 30th rally than the senior citizen brigade who didn’t bother to show for Beck’s Restoring Honor rally last month. The idea for a Colbert rally is not some Democratic plot to steal the 2010 elections. The whole movement began as a post on Reddit.

Unlike the Astroturf of the Beck and Fox News crowd, the Colbert/Stewart rally is completely organic. You won’t find any Freedom Works buses in the Mall on October 30th. Contrary to what Glenn Beck is trying to sell, this is not some progressive plot by media secret agents Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. In fact, Beck doesn’t seem to understand that 27% of Stewart’s audience are Libertarians.

More:
http://www.politicususa.com/en/beck-colbert-stewart

Hat-tip to: http://twitter.com/TLW3/status/25126037176

[madmom]

6. beck says this....

"Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies are designed to get young people to go vote with the labor unions."

like it's a bad thing?

I suppose their rallies to get people to vote for the teabaggers are totally different and are good then right?......right?:banghead:

[Javaman]

7. Oh glenn, jealousy is so unattractive. nt

[vi5]

3. "Democratic nightmare fuel"

Jesus fucking Christ is there anything that is NOT Democratic nightmare fuel? Is there anything that doesn't scare elected democrats?

What a bunch of pants wetting cowards they are.

[Bitwit1234]

4. And peefaced Beck and Palin's rally was supposed to help

republicans. I guess again we have two different sets of rules...republicans, republicans wonderful in every thing they do. But oh no Democrats they are just fooling themselves. gee whiz the problem is the Democrats make me sick for buying into republican MSM crap.

[Winterblues]

5. Every Democrat should push their state HARD to establish Vote by Mail

We would never have a GOTV problem again..

[tavalon]

8. How's that?

You still have to remind voters to pick up that piece of mail gathering dust on their front table, fill it out and mail it in.

[Hannah Bell]

9. never thought i'd say this, but fuck stewart & colbert.

[TexasObserver]

10. The right wing says whatever they think will help get the result they want.

They will use several memes to attack the Stewart-Colbert rally, and this is just one of them.

[Tx4obama]

11. The majority of the 'union' folks will be going to the Oct 2nd ONE NATION rally/march

I think the Stewart/Colbert rally will be more of a mix of folks.
It won't hurt the GOTV. It will probably be GOOD for us dems because the TV will be covering the event and I'm sure the speakers at the event will be saying: BE SURE TO VOTE!