Ya know, one of the slams against Biden back in the primaries, and again when he was the candidate was that he was a gaffe machine, and that was going to get him, and any administration he ran into deep kimchi. True, he’s had a few gaffes, but more often than not, in the long run it turns out that the GOP and the lazy media jumped his shit when he knew exactly what he was talking about.
A couple of days ago, I wrote an article on why the Biden administration, and Biden himself weren’t getting the praise they deserved for the almost miraculous turnaround he has wrought in less than 2 years. The economy is strong, it has recovered almost all of the jobs lost to Covid, and life is turning to a post Covid normal.
I wrote that one of the problems was that the GOP kept setting false narratives, which an innocently lazy mainstream just picked up and ran with, without bothering to do any fact checking or due diligence. The Democrats needed to start pushing back against both the GOP and the media to get the real story out there.
Well, this morning President Biden gave a master class in exactly what I was talking about. He was walking across the lawn to Marine 1 to pootle off to do something Presidential I’m sure, when he heard a question from the rope line, and turned back to the reporters. The question was about the images coming out of the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. Biden’s response brought a tear of joy to my eye. It went something like this;
Not that long ago, I took a whole lot of heat from you guys, along with a lot of other people for calling Putin a war criminal. You all said that I was “getting out over my skis.” and jumping to conclusions. And now, as Ukraine starts liberating these towns and villages, we have the graphic evidence. So I’ll say it again. Putin is a war criminal. He’s brutal.
Now, dat’s what I’m talking about! It’s obvious that Biden has been doing a slow burn about the media response to his war criminal statement, and today he took them out behind the woodshed for a spanking. I just wonder how many of the reporters present were looking around for a fork to eat the humble pie he just served up. And it was perfect.
For years the Democratic base has been screaming for the party to stop just letting the GOP throw out disinformation, misinformation, and flat out bullshit without a strong public rebuttal. But from where I’m sitting, since Biden got elected, the same has been true, likely unintentionally by the mainstream media. They just take what the GOP says, and since the Democrats don’t squeal, they just run with it. And that has to stop, or 2022 is toast for the Democrats.
Today Biden gave the Democrats their own version of The Green Bay Sweep. To once again quote my patron saint, Jon of Stewart, If you smell bullshit, then call bullshit. And Biden just showed them how. Every time the GOP starts spewing lame bullshit, Democrats have to run for every camera they can find, and hammer back at. Not just the bullshit, but hammer at the GOPasaur who spouted it in the first place. Hold them personally responsible for their words. It won’t matter to Trump’s base, but it might have the desired effect on moderates and independents. At this point, what do we have to lose?
The only thing you said I disagree with is the media’s antics being mostly unintentional. Sorry, but there are two things that make me say you’re wrong on that point. The first is that long ago when the big bosses decided to turn their News Divisions into profit centers “horserace” coverage and “shiny object” or “SQUIRREL!” has been their modus operandi because it generates more ad revenue Also, regarding “horserace” news if an election doesn’t appear to be close then by god the media will do whatever it takes to turn a race into a close one – including as we saw in 2016 making goddamned sure the race between Clinton and Trump was close as voting day approached. And the country and the world have suffered for it ever since and will continue to suffer, possibly for generations.
There’s another factor at play however and it doesn’t just matter to the folks in the Executive Suites but also to almost all of the TV “Talent” (I wish I had the means of expressing the contempt with which I use that word) and even major print writers. They are beneficiaries of all three of the “Supply Side” tax cuts that have redistributed so much wealth into the hands of so few in the last forty years. They are fabulously and filthy rich thanks to all that and THEY WANT TO KEEP THEIR GODDAMNED TAX CUTS! Democrats not only retaining majorities in both chambers of Congress and a President like Biden who is still (I think) willing to be bold would mean these poor little babies would (sob!) have to pay more in taxes. And their collective attitude is FUCK THAT SHIT!
So I for one don’t think it’s unintentional at all.
This goes back to everything said in the liberal blogosphere for 20 years: people like a fighter. The Republicans win a good portion of their votes because they at least look like they’re fighting. The sooner mainstream Dems put teeth into their words the Republicans will lose.
Bullshit. EVERY SINGLE TIME that a Democrat has DARED to “fight back,” the GOP has screamed and whined about the Democrat’s “bullying.” And the media buys the GOP line, no matter how obviously wrong it is.
Plus, the GOP has dozens (if not hundreds) of front groups that love to go out and take any little thing COMPLETELY out of context. It takes maybe 20 seconds for the GOP or one of their front groups to manufacture a lie and 2 minutes for the Democrats to counter with a factual response. Remember Obama’s famous “You didn’t build that” line? He NEVER said that–that line was part of a much longer speech. But the GOP jumped on it and got all these small business owners (and some not-so-small business owners) to prove they “did” build their businesses. But Obama’s point (that was lost–thanks to the “liberal” media) was that all those businesses relied on other companies and relied on public transportation and relied on government permits and licenses, etc, etc. But it took much longer to say all that whereas the GOP had their “gotcha” line from roughly 5 little seconds.
Now. You wanna tell us how the Democrats are supposed to “put teeth into their words” when the GOP will just take those words and reframe the argument? Al Gore NEVER said that HE “invented the internet” but that was the line that got spread to the public (and widely believed by many of them). No one wanted to hear what Gore had actually said since it was considerably longer than “Gore says he invented the internet” and might bore people to the point that they’d change the channel or skip to the next page.
That time is over, Joseph. Once, you could argue the benefit of the doubt on the GQP’s behalf. They have done everything they can in the last six years to negate that doubt. Ergo, no more grace. To quote Ms. Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper, “I tried to be nice…” Now comes the inevitable payback.
There has been this consistent narrative across all media in Texas that Democrats lost the 2020 elections in Texas. Democrats made an effort to pick up new seats in congress and in the Texas house and basically ran even from 2018. In 2018 Democrats picked up two seats in congress and a couple in the Texas house. So playing even in 2020 was sort of a victory for Democrats, but this was played as a huge loss.
At the same time the republicans realized they had made major losses in the 2020 census so instead of drawing districts to pick up seats which the narrative would suggest they instead retrenched to protect what seats they had.
The narrative still is that Democrats will be losing seats in Texas by the media. At the same time polls are showing statewide Beto is within a point or two of abbott and abbott is underwater on approval.
Despite the gerrymander, despite the voter suppression, republicans are running scared in Texas. Paxton is a deadweight on the entire party and abbotts cruelty is not going to sit well with moderates.
So media narratives are leading until they are wrong.
Let’s not forget who owns most of the major media outlets. Their stake in this is profits and tax cuts. Democracy be damned.