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Friday, March 29, 2024
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Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza analyzes midterm elections at KPU event

Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza gathered with approximately 100 students and faculty in McKinley’s Forman Theater to debate midterm election issues.

Jane Hall, a journalism professor in School of Communication, moderated the American Forum event on Oct. 23 in McKinley’s Forman Theater. She frequently asked the audience for responses and encouraging students to tweet questions with the hashtag #MyMidtermFix.

Cillizza, who founded the Washington Post’s politics and elections blog The Fix in 2005, addressed the widely held assumption that young people won’t be voting this Nov. 4. Though the election turnout among young voters has increased since the 2000 election, midterm elections tend to generate less enthusiasm across the board, Cillizza said.

“Midterms are like this past weekend’s game between the Redskins and the Tennessee Titans,” Cillizza said. “No one who is not from Tennessee or roots for the Redskins or is from here is going to watch that game. It’s the biggest partisans, the biggest fans who can’t miss the game.”

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Photo: Cillizza chats with students after the event’s end. (BRYAN PARK/THE EAGLE)

Cillizza also addressed criticisms of mainstream political coverage, conceding that the industry he represents often prioritizes gaffes and punchlines over serious discussions of public policy. While Cillizza admitted his blog focuses on data-driven election coverage rather than policy coverage, he said he believes the Internet has room for both.

“The Fix is not heavily policy-oriented,” Cillizza said. “We cover the horse race, we cover the data part of politics, but we’ve got a ton of really good policy coverage too. In my opinion, it doesn’t have to be an ‘either or.’”

A lot has changed since Cillizza started covering politics in 1999. Access to politicians has dwindled, as television news and social media have made politicians even more wary of reporters and cameras, Cillizza said.

“Even during the 2008 campaign, you could go to Iowa with Mike Huckabee, and he’d just kinda let you hang out and he’d say things off the record, he’d say things on the record,” Cillizza said. “Every election since then, politicians have gotten more and more guarded.”

The increasing popularity of the Internet also required Cillizza to diversify the voices on his staff, in order to cover the political experience as comprehensively as possible.

“When I started out, I was hiring people like me,” Cillizza said after the event. “Now it’s about hiring as many different kinds of people as I can.”


Students also raised questions for Cillizza about the American public’s dissatisfaction with the current Congress, the ongoing struggle with student debt and the media coverage of the Ebola outbreak.

“Fear is a very hard thing to correct,” Cillizza said. “I think it’s hard, no matter how many facts we put out about Ebola and how hard it is to get.”


Looking ahead to the 2016 presidential race, Cillizza suggested the election may come down to aesthetics. Cillizza said he is looking at Brian Sandoval, the current governor of Nevada, as a possible underdog for the Republican candidacy and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders as a liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton.

“If Republicans nominate an older white man and Democrats nominate a woman who maybe picks a Hispanic-American like one of the Cruz brothers [as a running mate], one of the tickets will look more like the America of the next 20 years and one won’t,” Cillizza said. “Republicans are very aware of that.”

mlieberman@theeagleonline.com


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