The Huffington Post has decided to cover the Trump campaign as entertainment rather than politics (whatever that means). Jay Rosen generally agrees, though his main point of agreement seems to be that journalists should add more context to the coverage of the Trump campaign.
The horseracing DC Press Corpse has a hard time adding that context, probably for a lot of reasons. Saying Trump is just a sideshow carnival barker who will never, ever win would deprive them of precious eyeballs and associated clicks. Taking Trump seriously means they can emit tons of breathless blah-blah-blah about every stupidity that escapes from Donald’s boiling id via his ignorant cakehole. It also allows the Chris Cillizzas of the world to continue pretend that they are objective arbiters of truth, since “the polls say” that Trump is a serious candidate. Never mind that he’s got less of a chance than almost-President Rick Santorum, who actually won one of the real polls (well, semi-real, it was Iowa). (By the way, are we sure Trump can’t win Iowa? I think he’s got a good chance there, given the fucked up rules of that contest.)
From where I stand, every time the sun comes up with Donald’s face in the news, the less Democrats are in trouble. That’s especially true if our noble DC stenographers ask the other Republican candidates to repudiate Trump’s neanderthal utterances. Even Hillary’s band of idiot brothers should be able to make hay from that footage a year from now when it matters.
One more thing: if you really believe that Trump’s candidacy is making headlines simply because there’s nothing else to cover, and that Trump will amount to nothing once the process really engages, then should we care about something that happened at the 2015 Netroots Nation? Setting aside the merits of that particular protest, it’s inevitable that it will be a long-forgotten event by the time the bulk of the electorate engages.
aimai
I think this is absolutely immoral of the Huffington Post–its part of the way the press (such as it is) continues to protect the image of the Republican party. Trump is the Republican party–he’s as much a contender as any of the other crazies thanks to Republican base lunacy and Cititzen’s United’s destruction of the GOP party structure. Not showing Trump as a candidate is basically a fraudulent representation of the GOP field, its voters, and its money.
Trentrunner
The sooner Trump is drummed out of the Republican race, the more likely it is that he will launch a third-party bid.
But the longer he stays in the Republican race, the worse it is for Republicans.
Win-win.
Waldo
Love the Trump follies, but he is doing the eventual nominee a huge favor by making the rest of the field look at least marginally presidential by comparison. What looks like a PR disaster for the party could be good news for stumble bum candidates like Jeb! and a charisma-deficient goofball like Walker.
Splitting Image
Iowa’s Republican party is controlled by the godbotherers. It’s not impossible, but Trump isn’t the sort of crazy they’re looking for.
Ruckus
@aimai:
I think this is absolutely immoral of the Huffington Post
Like that would stop them.
But your point is well made. He is a candidate. That someone can be like him and be one says volumes about the republican party, but in theory the voters get to decide if he is serious or not, not the press.
Amir Khalid
@aimai:
In fairness, HuffPo should cover the entire Republican presidential field, not just the Donald, as entertainment rather than politics. There’s not a serious or principled candidate in the lot.
scav
Good number of the electorate probably does think of it as an entertaining hobby — along the lines of voting for head cheerleader or prom king. America’s Got President! For a long time, it really didn’t seem to matter who got elected: broadly similar policies ensued on the ground. Learn the habit early, well, you don’t bother to vote or play about with symbolic stuff or use it as a form of class signalling.
Punchy
It’s this in spades. All the GOP clowns do noawdays is bash each other, mostly centered around whatever the Don does that day. They’ve no time to bash Hillary, Hillghazi, HillMailGate, or Bernie’s funny glasses.
They’re just throwing feces at each other, all day long every day. That HAS to be to the Dem’s advantage.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
But that’s the candidates they have, the ones they want, not the ones sane people do.
jl
The hypocrisy of the GOP pols and RNC suits complaining about Trump, when the GOP itself has been much more ruthless itself in saying much worse against veterans in previous races and political controversies (Kerry, Duckworth, Hagel, etc.) really bothers me. So, I can’t follow it in detail. I’ll just be happy that it is going on.
I have heard so many clips of any Trump’s utterance that could even remotely be connected to the crime from the horse ace pundits, and I am asking myself ‘That is it? That was what was so bad?”. Many other veterans running for office or office in the past would have loved such gentle treatment from the GOP itself.
But they made their befouled bed, let them lie in it.
Splitting Image
@Trentrunner:
I have to disagree with you here. The “sunk-cost fallacy” would seem to indicate that Trump is more likely to launch a third-party bid the longer he stays in. If he were to bail out now, for example, he could toss the whole thing off as a joke. If he stays in until the primaries begin, then he’ll have to deal with the fact that somebody else won a contest that he said he would win in a cakewalk. And oooh the Republicans will have to pay for that.
aimai
@Waldo: I’m not sure I think that is right. I mean–theoretically it is but in practice I’m not sure that is how the imaginary middle of the road voter looks at it. Because what Trump is doing is publicizing how crazy the Republican base is. And if there were such a thing as a responsible swing voter who would like to vote Republican if Republicans were only like dad’s old Republican party this has to be pretty scary. Every time you see the toothless, crazed,assholes screamign for Trump you think “I don’t want to be in their party.” And in any event none of the morerespectable republican candidates can afford to displease the base so they won’t really be able to distinguish themselves from Trump. I mean–they can insult Trump all they want but at the end of the day they actually have to say the same stuff even to survive the primary.
KG
@Splitting Image: per the latest polls on wikipedia, about a month ago, Trump was tied for second in Iowa with Carson at 10%, Walker was leading at 18%, so striking distance for sure. As for the other early states: as of a week ago Trump leads by double digits in Nevada (I’m guessing that’s an industry thing) but is still under 30%; as of a month ago he was second in New Hampshire behind Jeb (two polls mid-June had Jeb around 15% and Trump at 11%); and in South Carolina there hasn’t been anything since late May/early June when he was statistical noise at 2%.
Super Tuesday is going to be March 1, it looks like (Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and North Carolina all go that day). Most don’t have recent polling, those that do show Trump at 2% in Texas (Cruz is winning with 20%), he’s second in Virginia (tied with Walker at 14% and trailing Jeb at 18%), and Trump is leading in North Carolina at 16% (Walker and Bush each are at 12%).
All of those primaries/caucuses will award delegates proportionally, so as long as Trump can make it through Super Tuesday, he could have a decent number of delegates – especially when you consider that the polling averages have him leading or close to the lead nationally.
MattF
I think Trump’s antics are the political version of short-selling on the stock market. He believes that the Republican Establishment is overvalued, so he sells– not just any stock that he owns, but also borrowed stock that actually belongs to someone else (e.g., by slagging McCain’s reputation). Given that the Establishment’s candidates have lost twice now to That Man, he may have a point– particularly with the Republican base.
cokane
your last paragraph is spot on. NN debate will be deep in the memory hole within 3 months. trump’s candidacy will similarly be forgotten except as an amusing anecdote (think Herman Cain) in a year.
cokane
what libs need to do is encourage Trump to run in the general when he fails to grab the nomination. these chickens aren’t gonna fuck themselves people, get to work.
SteveKnNKY
Donald Trump and the Fox cultivated Teahadist are to the GOP what Strum Thurmond and the Dixiecrats were to the Democratic Party. Fox has spent years grooming the Raygun Dems.
All the hatred for minorities, government doesn’t work, we are for war heroes until we are against them (I am human and do not have it in me to ever forgive their treatment of Max Cleland.), teachers are horrible unless they teach at a grab the money and run charter school then their doing God’s work…
All coming home to roost, to the shock of the DC media, in Trump’s blatherings. Good. Perfect.
I want to goad it on, stoke the fires, troll them for all it’s worth to see it all go down in flames.
hells littlest angel
When I find myself thinking that Trump is a ridiculous buffoon with no chance of winning the presidency, I just picture him with a little toothbrush mustache.
Belafon
Who?
KG
@Belafon: it’s a new band, i saw them this weekend, you’ve obviously never heard of them.
Belafon
@KG: Guess not. Thanks.
dmsilev
@hells littlest angel:
…with a double-reverse combover.
JPL
Trump is still on the front page of Huffington Post. If you want to click to that article, does it really matter whether it brings you to entertainment or politics? He’s still on the front page.
the Conster
Anyone who doubts whether to take Trump seriously needs to read the comments to this ridiculous Sheryl Atkisson” turd. This is Palin level ignorance for the ignorati, and they’re not going to be satisfied with any apologies, any nuance, any concessions to reality. What these morons all know is that McCain lost because he kept Palin on a leash. Now they found their new BFF with the same attitude but with more accomplishments and enough money and ego to refuse to be leashed. Trump is actually Frankenstein, but he hasn’t left the castle yet.
ThresherK (GPad)
Remember when it was proved to be Nate Silver’s world one election and we were just playing in it?
Jay Rosen is a media critic quite ready for his closeup; maybe 2016 will be his year. If so, good for the body politic, and bad news for the hacks.
Tom Q
Just for the record, Rick Santorum won considerably more than one contest: my recollection is he finished first in something like 8-10 primaries or caucuses (and that was with the handicap of splitting the lunatic vote with Gingrich, while Romney was alone in near-sane territory). Santorum’s positions may be clownish, and his chances of winning a general were miniscule, but he represents a significant chunk of GOP voters.
As does Trump, and that’s why I think it’s arrogrant of HuffPo to dismiss him like this. The part of the journo establishment that forever wants to pretend there are nice/sensible Republicans is doing its best to partition off the electable candidates (pretty much Bush, or Kasich in their dreams) from the other candidates who, collectively, represent the far greater slice of the party. (Add up the Walker/Trump/Cruz/Carson votes, and compare them to Bush/Christie/Kasich and then argue how big the GOP establishment influennce is). The press is doing its best to camouflage the crazy, and Trump is ruining their strategy.
Tree With Water
I admire Donald Trump’s capacity to shit disturb.
There was no way Jeb! Bush was going to be held accountable for cheering on John Kerry’s malignant Swiftboaters, until Trump inspired a reporter to unearth this blast from the past, one that spells real trouble for the Floridian. If Jeb’s! inner Chang is fated to be released, now would be a good time:
crooksandliars.com/files/images/15/07/ckoavswusae80tc.png
Elie
What is the big deal about Trump? He is polling under 20% in the Republican Party (= 20% of 30% of the overall populace) — at best. Nothin X nothing = nothing.
I think he is a reverse agent for the Hillary.
The Republicans are so damaged and so without identify that this fat faced comb over clown is humiliating them and they can’t seem to stop it! And they want to insult the brown and black people? For anything? Oh Pleez… I dunno what is going on and who is pulling the strings, but its clear to me the Republicans are wandering in the wilderness. Sure, they have lots of people with hate and insecurities but they seem to be unable to put together even a semblance of self respect and dignity. Jeb! might win the nomination but he is a homely wimp, and appears none too bright. Trump at least seems to have some passion and energy. Jeb can’t seem to point his eyes in the same direction, much less his brain. The others are beneath contempt. This is what the White Supremacists have to offer that shows themselves as the “best”. Like Wow! Comb overs, crossed eyes and stupid as far as the eye can see…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Trump is a political story because he has, out of an apparent need for (more) attention I can’t begin to fathom, made himself the embodiment of the Republican base’s Id on immigration. You can draw a straight line, or some kind of line, from John McCain croaking “build the dang fence in 2010 to Eric Cantor losing a primary to Laura Ingram’s smoke monster (GOT reference) to Boehner turning the bipartisan (Hail Broder!) Senate bill over to Steve King. And while there are valid critiques of immigration, Trump’s followers care, at least care so much, because Brown.
@Belafon: Carville, Rendell, Lanny Davis, the bitter, vindictive mini-Bubba devil on Bubba’s left shoulder…
If Mark Penn is seen in Manhattan, much less Brooklyn, Left Blogosphere will explode.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tree With Water: I saw that on Media Matters and Oliver Willis’s site, has it surfaced in the MSM, or at least MSNBC?
Elie
I do have to say, if Trump hangs around too long, he will find out what it means to be jumped by the Bush Crime family. Their son might be ugly and stupid, but Barbara and company do not play nice and that comb over would be pulled out by the root before its over…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elie: I’m in a quandary on that score: I can’t decide if I want the WASP Corleones (MoDo had the Bush family’s number, I’ll give her that) to take down the smug little nutcase Walker, or if I want Big Bad Bar, and to a lesser extent that poor, hapless sorceror’s apprentice Pappy, to see The Smart One lose to some backwater below-stairs sort who never even got a degree from some little college in Kansas or Michigan or one of those middle states that no one one knows has ever even heard of!
Elie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I hear you… it IS challenging. I do not want to underestimate Walker but I don’t think that there is much there. Watching Babs and company take down fat face would just be too much fun. I would love to see that hair standing straight up.
Elie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Actually, you said something different than what I responded – and it would be delicious to watch Jeb get sent packing. Hmmmm. Jeb or Walker??
Dunno. That is tough
cokane
@Tom Q: Trump is a joke candidate though, and serious media coverage of him would do well to explain that to their readers. Doing otherwise would be completely disingenuous clickbaitery.
Trump is polling well because he’s probably the most famous person in the race. I think people who are hard core into politics fail to recognize how little most Americans pay attention to politics. Ask an average American who Edward Snowden or Rick Santorum or even Joe Biden are… they won’t know! Most people aren’t paying attention to politics right now, and you know what, that’s perfectly reasonable. It’s insanely early in the election cycle.
People know who Trump is though because he’s a TV celebrity. It’d be the equivalent of George Clooney running for the Democratic nomination. But he is a joke candidate. He has no organization. He has no support from the party. He will fail to receive a single endorsement from any major politician (think senators, governors, big city mayors). He will not have people on the ground, knocking on doors, calling people on the phone, getting out the vote for him. He has no clue how to run a political campaign. He’s polling well because when the average voter sees a list of Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, there’s only one name they can currently identify.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
These polls are, I believe, reflecting GOP primary voters, people who are as engaged in politics as we are, and the race includes someone whose brother and father were president. Of the United States. I think the reason Trump is leading is because the field is so large– the establishment and even religious right votes are split among three candidates– but he went from being tied with Chris Christie and Rick Santorum, to effectively tied with Bush and Walker because he tickled their sweet racist spot on Messican Immigants.
cokane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: there’s no doubt ppl like some of what he’s saying, but no, primary voters not as engaged as the average BJ reader. BJ readers consume political news on a daily basis, no sane person does that.
Seanly
Trump isn’t as big of a joke as our media coverage. I heard the tail end of Cokie Roberts’ always terrible political insights on NPR. She was droning on about the Netroots issue – since when has media cared what happened at Netroots? Then she continued crapping out of her mouth with the BS that Hillary must veer to the right because this a center right nation. Hillary should be more like her husband who veered to the right because he was a good politician who knows this is a center right nation.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Seanly: To be fair, the last time Cokie’s brain showed motion was in 1994, and even then she was playing catch up with Sam Donaldson (is he still with us?).
Dood, these people watch Fox all day! they make us look well-balanced.
I said “engaged”, not “informed”
Elie
@Seanly:
Yeah, Cokie is really with it. She chided Obama for vacationing in Hawaii during his first campaign — because you know, its foreign…
Tom Q
@cokane: I think you’re doing the same thing the press is doing: recognizing that (for you) Trump is laughable as a presidential prospect, and deciding that, therefore, no one who supports him could be serious. Yet how different is what he says from what Ben Carson or Ted Cruz says?
Simply because he’s made his reputation as a media celebrity rather than in medicine or by being elected in Texas (not a tough climb for a Republican right now), I don’t think that gives the press the right to treat him as fully illegitimate. Hillary Clinton benefits in poll terms from bring a media celebrity; Bill Bradley only got to be a Senator because he was a famous basketball player, and John Glenn clearly reaped glory from being an astronaut. Why the “doesn’t count because you’re famous” rule only for Trump?
Tree With Water
@efgoldman: I disagree. The story has legs, and will be remembered by people that vote. The democratic candidates should each incorporate it into a speech, and Nancy Pelosi should ask her people to make a concerted effort to allude to it whenever possible. R.I.P. Terry Schiavo.
The Donald Speaks! (let’s listen in):
“If I do something wrong, I try to do something right,” he said. “I don’t bring God into that picture.”
Spoken like an ethical agnostic, right? But perhaps sensing his answer wasn’t adequate, he tried to recover:
“When I drink my little wine — which is about the only wine I drink — and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed,” he said.
The Washington Monthly.com brought that to my attention..
Waldo
@efgoldman: True dat, unfortunately. Every GOP presidential candidate since Reagan has inherited the Gipper’s teflon mantle. Jeb! ain’t sweatin’ this one.
Chris
Here’s the real problem for the DC media and anyone else covering this –
If you decide that Trump isn’t a “serious” candidate and choose not to cover it, or to cover it as “entertainment,” by what metric can you do that to him without doing it for, frankly, the entire Republican candidate field? What does Trump say that’s so much dumber than Governor “All of thrm, Charlie!” and Senator “Bomb bomb Iran?” What does Trump say that’s so much more offensive than the 47% comment from the last election? Or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan’s “of course there are Americans who go to bed hungry! They’re all on a diet?” Why weren’t Romney, McCain, Palin, let alone Santorum, Perry, Cruz ALL covered as entertainment?
This is kind of the thing with the Trump campaign; he’s not objectively any sillier than anything else the Republicans usually put up.
cokane
@Tom Q: Trump is a joke candidate, he will fail to carry a single state in the nomination process. Mark it down. Ben Carson is also a joke candidate. Ted Cruz won a tough primary race as an underdog candidate, tho he certainly has no shot at a prez nomination in 2016, winning his Senate seat actually demonstrated some real political organizing skill.
I never suggested that Trump is illegitimate because he’s a celebrity. I merely said that he’s polling competitively because he’s a celebrity (and no one else in the race is very famous). But without a campaign structure to actually motivate voters from curious to actually physically voting, he has no chance. The hard labor of campaign work actually matters. Obama’s victories should have taught us this if they taught us anything. Trump does not have an Axlerod or Plouffe nor especially tens of thousands of highly motivated volunteers and organizers. He will fail to carry a single state.
Tom Q
@efgoldman: Well, of course; I’m certainly not saying they weren’t excellent Senators; merely that the extra-political fame that preceded their elected careers were instrumental in getting them where they got. (And agreed fully on Nixon — evil and unstable, but way smart)
Tree With Water
@efgoldman: “How much did the exposure of JWB’s phony service hurt him?”.
A better question is why did American journalists permit Dan Rather to be destroyed by Bush Inc., although his reporting about GW’s desertion from a champagne unit in a time of war was important (history will remain curious). Which gets into the old ‘media vs. politicians as agents of change argument’. I know were I a candidate for the presidency, people would be reminded of Jeb’s! Swiftboat hypocrisy on a regular basis. No doubt all of the other GOP candidates are on record somewhere as supporting the attacks of the malignant Swiftboaters, and I’d unload on them, too. R.I.P. Terry Schiavo.
EriktheRed
Couldn’t agree more, which is why I haven’t offered any comments on it. It isn’t gonna mean shit next year.
Tom Q
@cokane: I’m not saying I think Trump is a winner; I rather think, as other candidates give up the ghost early on (by Iowa, at least), someone else will be able to gather together the supporters of these straggler candidates and vault ahead in polls. (I think Jeb Bush, by virtue of not having crazy-appeal, is less likely to be that guy, but that’s a different argument).
What I’m saying is, I don’t see it as a press prerogative to decide for everyone who’s serious and who’s not. There have been people in past cycles (Rudy Guiliani, Fred Thompson, Wesley Clark) paraded as hot-shot possibilities who expired on exposure to voters; others, like Huckabee or (going back a ways) Gary Hart, who made far greater inroads than prevailing wisom anticipated, and indicated unexpected things about where the party was headed.
I’m not certain what Trump’s ultimate impact on this race will be in the end, but I think the attempt to short-circuit him by the press is an attempt to push his positions off the table as unrepresentative of GOP feeling, and I think the press is very wrong on that.
Brachiator
@Splitting Image:
Don’t know. Don’t really care.
I say, “Run, Donald, run!” I love the butthurt he is causing. The GOP loved him when he was spouting birther BS. If he wants to turn on the party he wants to lead, deity bless him.
Also, I don’t really care whether the Huffington Post puts him in the comic pages. It’s not as though the HuffPo was really a serious journalistic enterprise.
Run, Donald, run!
cokane
@Tom Q: def agree w/ you there. Sure the press should give every candidate a fair shake, in a way. But I think they are more than doing that w/ Trump, to varying degrees. The media are pretty diverse, so generalizing about them is always stupid. But I think it’s also important to give readers context — i.e. Trump has absolutely zero institutional support that was key even for outsider candidates like Hart, Obama, even Santorum.
catclub
@JPL:
I would guess that a key barometer of Trump’s staying power will be how much time he gets on Fox News. The last few weeks he has gotten huge amounts of coverage – taking it away from all the other GOP candidates. Will that continue?
raven
So, after years of you weenies going on and on about this McMegan dope I finally get to see her on MSNBC. She can’t say a sentence without saying “like”, she could eat an apple through a picket fence and she’s a creep. She’s talking about dildo’s right now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@raven: well, to be fair, we weenies were making fun of her. She is typically awful, but that segment was embarrassing.
I usually like Alex Wagner, but she devoted how much time to Instagram, hashtags, Ashley Williams (which was going to go public? that was kind of interesting) and no mention of Scott Walker saying he’d be ready to go to war on inauguration day?