CT Blue

Recently I added Eric Boehlert’s Press Run to my RSS feed. I can highly recommend it, though one might argue that he simply makes the same points as Driftglass, but less colorfully. Still, these are issues that must be raised, though as I’ll get to later, they don’t seem to make a dent in Establishment Democratic thinking. The latest makes what should be an obvious point about both the press and Trump’s recent shenanigans:

Trump’s election sabotage campaign is running out of time, but the damage he’s inflicting will have long lasting consequences. Covering this unprecedented attack on American election integrity, the press is still not being honest about Trump’s ruinous final chapter.

The Daily Beast last week reported on Trump’s “quixotic and potentially destructive effort” to steal a victory. “Quixotic” and “possibly destructive”? He’s the first president in 240 years who has not accepted the election results, after losing by six million votes. Worse, he’s been on a three-month crusade to denigrate free and fair elections in America, and he’s making it impossible for there to be a smooth transition of power.

This is so far beyond “quixotic.” Of course it’s destructive to our democracy — does anyone think the Republican Party will soon return to the days of rationally accepting ballot results? The GOP has blown a permanent hole in our election process.

A hallmark failure of the press for four years has been that it refuses to use the proper language to describe the truly lawless nature of Trump and today’s GOP.

You can’t argue with him. The only possible quibble is that he’s pointing something out that is painfully obvious. I have yet to see an article in which it is clearly stated that Trump is trying to steal the election, yet by any, even the most kind measures, that’s precisely what he’s trying to do. We are just lucky that he’s so incompetent, because a competent Trump, backed by the current corrupt Republican Party, could probably have pulled it off.

This post isn’t about the press, though, it’s about the Democrats.

The press responds to pressure. The Republicans accused them of being liberal, so they stocked the Sunday shows with Republicans and adopted both siderism, which on the surface preaches that both sides are responsible for our current situation, while at the same time expecting and accepting Republican corruption and obstruction while holding Democrats to a higher standard. They would not have done this had they not been relentlessly beaten with the “liberal media” claim by Republicans.

Once again, we don’t see that from the Democrats, and that’s one reason the press treats the issue the way it does. It shouldn’t be up to Biden to make these claims, it should be Schumer, Pelosi, and all the rest, up and down the line. The press is not going to cover this as Boehlert rightfully claims they should until the Democrats start pushing them.

Trump’s attempt to steal the election and our democracy once again illustrates the Democrat’s inability or refusal to even attempt to control the narrative coming from the media. Were the situation reversed, the Republicans would be beating the drums in a coordinated fashion claiming that the Democrats were trying to steal the election; that they were trying to destroy our democracy, and that the press was refusing to call it what it is. And if the situation were reversed, they’d be right.

Notice: Not that many are likely to care, but comments are not working on this blog at the moment. I’ll be putting this notice on posts until I get the problem cleared up. That will involve attempting to contact someone at my web hosting service, which is both time consuming and aggravating in the extreme, so I’ve been putting it off until I have a few hours I can spend on hold waiting for someone to talk to me.