CT Blue

The internet, particularly the twittersphere, is agog over this tweet from ABC News:

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats put the blame for the shutdown on Trump. But it takes two to tango. Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The Democrats refusal to approve the money is another. https://t.co/9IWnqUgl2d

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) January 9, 2019

It arguably raises the both siderism argument to a new extreme, but then again, maybe it’s just par for the course. But it got me thinking.

Back in the days of the Clinton administration, the beltway punditocracy couldn’t wrap it’s collective head around the fact that while most people disapproved of what Clinton had done, they didn’t consider it sufficient reason to remove him from office. In the case of the Clinton impeachment, it seemed that they just couldn’t bring themselves to believe that the electorate as a whole was sophisticated enough not to think in black and white terms about the issue. The prevailing, if unspoken opinion, was that Americans just weren’t sophisticated enough to be a bit nuanced. So far as they were concerned, everyone outside the beltway was a fundamentalist whacko, so the fact that people actually opposed impeachment threw them for a loop.

I think there’s something similar going on here, except this time it’s completely different. (Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself). Anyway, in this case, the pundits operate under the delusion that both siderism is the one true road to truth, and that this should be obvious to anyone. After all, it’s been their religion for years, so they’ve become blinded to the fact that it doesn’t describe the political world in which we live. It turns out, though the media will take a while to figure this out, that regular people are more inclined to blame only one sidewhen something like this happens, particularly when one side pre-announced that it was to blame for the situation and that one side is, in fact, responsible for the situation. The fact is, that given our present political reality, the state of affairs in this country can properly be put at the doorstep of one side, since it’s only one sidethat promotes racism, opposes science, promotes gun violence, attempts to impose their “religious” beliefs on the nation, and covers for a president intent on subverting the constitution and using his office to line his own pockets, and who has, besides the foregoing, also conspired with foreign powers. The list could go on. The only area in which both siderism might make some sense is in the shoving money to the rich arena (to which the pundits don’t object-most of them are rich), where some Democrats are complicit, but in which Republicans still are far and away the major sinners.

ABC doesn’t feel the Democrats are as much at fault as Trump because, whereas he wants to build a racist wall, they do not. The fault, as ABC sees it, lies in the failure of the Democrats to meet Trump in the middle, an area always defined as that which Republicans want. No side can every be wholly wrong. The truth always lies in the middle, a middle that drifts to the right at the speed of light. At least so far as the above tweet goes, they’re learning that real Americans don’t see it that way.