18 Oct Kamala’s Rather Special World
In the aftermath of the 2016 election – what they would undoubtedly call “the 2016 election debacle” – members of the mainstream did something they don’t usually do. They engaged in a little bit of self-reflection and concluded that maybe they were part of the problem:
How did big media miss the Donald Trump swell? News organizations old and new, large and small, print and online, broadcast and cable assigned phalanxes of reporters armed with the most sophisticated polling data and analysis to cover the presidential campaign. The overwhelming assumption was that the race was Hillary Clinton’s for the taking, and the real question wasn’t how sweeping her November victory would be, but how far out to sea her wave would send political parvenu Trump. Today, it’s Trump who occupies the White House and Clinton who’s drifting out to sea—an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers….
The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties. And you’ve got company: If you’re a typical reader of Politico, chances are you’re a citizen of bubbleville, too.
The “media bubble” trope might feel overused by critics of journalism who want to sneer at reporters who live in Brooklyn or California and don’t get the “real America” of southern Ohio or rural Kansas. But these numbers suggest it’s no exaggeration: Not only is the bubble real, but it’s more extreme than you might realize.
Although this bout of self-reflection was both interesting and much welcomed, it didn’t change much. It proved, in the long run, to be like the Dairy Queen baseball helmet ice cream bowls of my youth, “for entertainment purposes only.”
In part, the problem was that this “little bit of self-reflection” was, indeed, a very little bit. Some mainstream journalists engaged in it, but most did not. And even those who did engage didn’t really absorb the lessons they should have. They identified the issue. They lamented the issue. And then they moved on with their lives, basically forgetting the issue was ever relevant.
In larger part, however, the problem was that the media’s bias-created bubble isn’t actually what matters. Any sentient being could tell you that the folks in the mainstream media are biased and that their biases profoundly affect how they cover elections and what they expect from them. Having this acknowledged and verified by the biased individuals themselves may be gratifying or cathartic, but it doesn’t mean much beyond that. It doesn’t explain why the bubble is significant.
As is often the case, the members of the media mistakenly think this story is about them. It’s not. They play a role in it, obviously. They are the proximate cause of the real issue. But it’s not all about them. Rather, it’s about how they enable Democratic politicians to deny reality to the point of disconnecting themselves from it.
It is no coincidence that the media’s concern about this “bubble” manifested itself in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump. That was its highpoint, the pinnacle of its destructiveness – or at least it was until now. The media bubble convinced Hillary that she was going to win in a walk. It convinced her and her advisers that she had nothing to worry about, that it wouldn’t even be close, that she didn’t need to bother to go to Wisconsin or a handful of other toss-up states because they weren’t really toss-ups after all. Because she and everyone around her read The New York Times and The Washington Post and Politico and Axios and all the other smart news sources for smart people, they all thought the election was all wrapped up, that Donald Trump would have a tough time beating Donald Duck, much less the most impressive woman in the history of ever. They even convinced her that calling half the country “deplorables” wouldn’t hurt because Trump voters don’t know what that word means anyway.
And then she lost – because the media bubble was her bubble too.
The media bubble effect didn’t matter in 2020, largely because Joe Biden won. He may have been affected by his reliance on and mistaken opinion of the mainstream media, but not enough to cost him the election. He won and everyone continued along happily as if there had never been a problem. The 2016 media bubble? That was soooooo four years ago!
And then came Kamala.
After watching the Democratic nominee over the past week or so, I am more convinced than ever that the biases of the mainstream media and the bubble they create hurt Democratic candidates – or at least, some Democratic candidates – far more than almost anyone has imagined.
Pauline Kael, the renowned film critic, became famous in popular political lore as well – for something she didn’t say: “I don’t know how Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” What she actually said was more profound and more revealing: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
Kael admitted that she had a glaring blind spot. She understood the bubble effect but also understood that it didn’t reflect reality. When she deigned to mingle with the masses, she could feel that reality was quite different from what she experienced on a day-to-day basis.
Kamala Harris and her henchmenpeople aren’t quite so perceptive. They too live in a rather special world, but they never mingle with the canaille. They never feel anything other than what is normal in their lives. Their reality is never challenged.
Early this week, Harris appeared on Fox News to be interviewed by Bret Baier. Given her reaction to the interview and those of her staffers, you’d have thought she was beaten and ravaged for 25 minutes by a rabid Grizzly Baier. She’d never faced such “hostile” questioning before. Of course, THAT’S the point. Republicans face hostile questioning every time they do an interview. There’s no use in complaining about that, frustrating though it may be, because that’s just the way things are. More to the point, it forces Republican candidates to challenge their own sheltered version of reality constantly. Harris has never had to do that before. NEVER.
Last night, Harris did a pre-taped bit for the Al Smith Dinner. Holy Hell but it was atrocious. She skipped the dinner in the first place because, in her reality, it didn’t matter. When that view was mildly challenged, she arranged to do a little skit that was dreadfully unfunny and mind-bogglingly weird. Why? Because she doesn’t know any better, because no one on her staff knows any better, and because the mainstream media couldn’t be bothered to tell them. Their bubble became her reality, and then it became a disaster.
If Kamala Harris loses to Donald Trump next month – and I think she will – heads may roll. Chances are pretty good, though, that they will be the wrong heads and will be replaced by ones that are even more Bubblelicious.
That’s the way these things work.
