If I had the money to pay Siena research to commission a poll, the last thing I’d pay them in July 2022 is to survey Democrats about who they want for President in November, 2024. Yet, of course, the Times did that, and the results are predictably dismal for Biden [pdf]. Note that, in other polls, both Biden and Harris generally beat Trump and DeathSantis (not always or by a lot!) — it’s just that Biden’s current struggles have many Democrats on edge.
Still, who cares about 2024 when 2022 is coming right up? Palace courtiers a.k.a. the Times’ DC bureau, that’s who. In their little world, everything is about one thing: who’s King, and the more Trump pretended to be King, the more they liked it. This post-mortem quote on Boris Johnson’s stint as PM applies just as well to what the Times’ DC bureau wants in a President:
One of the most memorable quotes I have gathered during his premiership was from a former Tory cabinet minister and erstwhile supporter who said: “The trouble with Boris is that he’s not very interested in governing. He’s only interested in two things. Being world king and shagging.”
The other quote from that piece was also relevant to the relationship between the Maggie Habermans and Peter Bakers of that bureau and Trump:
On the retelling of Dominic Cummings, [Johnson] justified himself by saying: “Chaos isn’t that bad, chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who’s in charge.”
Another way of putting this is the smaller the frame, the easier the job. If all stories can be framed in terms of the king and who he’s shagging, and how he’s creating or responding to chaos, then your job is pretty fucking easy. Cultivate a couple of inside sources and put everything on a four-year timeline. Also, ally yourself with the party that wants a king, and we all know who they are.
Monday Morning Open Thread: Big Pictures
P Thomas
Jay Rosen on how politics is covered as sports and as a theatre reviews. From 2011. And it has gotten worse.
https://pressthink.org/2011/08/why-political-coverage-is-broken/
Mike in NC
Front page story in the local rag today: “Right-Wing Efforts to Ban Books on the Rise“. Turns out the fascist ‘Moms For Liberty’ organization with chapters all across the country is an offshoot of the Proud Boys. Funny how many neo-Nazi groups didn’t even exist until a certain Fat Orange Clown rode down an escalator in Manhattan.
Cameron
@Mike in NC: They may have existed, but he empowered them to crawl out from the sewers they were hiding in.
ian
If I read the PDF correctly, Biden is up 44-41 on Trump even with there being more Republicans than Democratic respondents to the poll. Given that things look ‘predictably dismal’, these are results I can live with.
Curious how the NYT framed this poll in stories.
Ned F
VICE News informs me that Victor Orbon is a guest at the August CPAC gathering in Dallas, perhaps in a panel with Hannity and Lauren Boebert. They don’t hide their plans, there out there for all to see.
The Thin Black Duke
@Cameron: The day when those neo-Nazi assholes with the Tiki torches openly marched in the streets and nothing happened to them, I knew this country was goose-stepping down a dark but very familiar road.
Amir Khalid
@ian:
I don’t have a subscription, so I haven’t read the coverage. But let me guess: “within the margin of error, effectively tied, bad news for Biden.”
VOR
IMHO the media loved TFG. The administration leaked like a sieve so the media had people feeding them stories. There was always a dumpster fire to draw attention. Ratings were good as people woke up every day to check the news to see the latest atrocity. The media didn’t have to think about the intricacies of either foreign or domestic policy because nobody in the administration cared beyond owning the libs. Plus, TFG was likely to change his mind any moment.
schrodingers_cat
@ian: Biden flipped AZ and Georgia so naturally they don’t want him to run against their golden orange goose.
kindness
I stopped buying the NY Times when I went east to visit family about 10 years ago. Not one dime will they get from me. Is it too soon to ask those of you who have subscriptions to this miserable Republican humping rag of a paper to cancel your subscriptions? They’re telling you what they want & represent and it isn’t you.
PJ
@P Thomas: Here’s an opinion piece today from NY Magazine about how the Jan. 6 Committee Hearings are a failure because they are bad theater:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/is-the-january-6-committee-really-saving-democracy.html
That the hearings are laying out the connections for a massive criminal conspiracy to overthrow the government, and in addition to helping the public to understand the truth of what happened, they are establishing the basis for criminal proceedings against the actors, including TFG, is irrelevant to the writer. He is not being sufficiently entertained. (His main point seems to be that he is disappointed that Democrats have not somehow abolished Republicans and established a leftist playground with a snap of their fingers.)
Old School
Heck, in this poll, Biden beats Trump. And the part that polls whether Biden should be the nominee doesn’t actually pit him against any specific candidate. I have my doubts that Democrats would coalesce around any other person.
CaseyL
TFG wasn’t wrong when he called the MSM an “enemy of the people,” he was just wrong about how and why.
I always bear in mind the MSM is no longer in the news business; it’s an infotainment industry. Ratings/clicks are their sole criteria of value.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think our English friend Tony has a you tube channel in the form of Jonthan Pie, some fine British ranting there.
mrmoshpotato
Fuck him (not that way), and gross.
PJ
And here’s another NY Mag piece arguing that Biden is a terrible President (he’s responsible for everything bad happening and is failing to “meet the moment”, whatever that means) and that, despite being the guy who beat TFG by 7 points, he is the only Democrat who would lose to TFG in 2024:https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/democrats-have-a-joe-biden-problem.html
mrmoshpotato
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: “He’s resigned but he hasn’t fucked off.”
LMAO!
mrmoshpotato
@PJ: These bastards really need to be buried by an avalanche of bags of dicks, and they can try to suck their way out.
trollhattan
@VOR: ONLY presidential candidate for whom the networks would go live to air an empty lectern because Trump had not arrived at the event yet. They couldn’t get enough of him, even after we clearly had had enough.
Free coverage is best coverage.
trollhattan
@The Thin Black Duke: Occasionally have to remind myself yeah, that really happened. Family of that poor murdered girl will never forget, of course.
catothedog
The NYT is a now cancer on American Society. It is Fox-lite.
The only way to react to NYT is to cancel your subscription and stop reading it at all (clicks and views). If _all_ the Dem-aligned people did it, then, maybe it would learn a lesson. But even if half of them did it, it should hit them hard.
Unless they bleed revenue, NYT will not learn.
That may mean that they may have to patronize WP (which is equally bad, but they can be dealt with later).
Cameron
@PJ: Christ , it’s like a serious version of Firesign Theater: “Nick Exxon, he’s so bad/He’s the President of everything/And everything is sad.”
ian
@The Thin Black Duke:
Not sure what you mean by ‘nothing’. Many were doxxed, lost jobs and friends at home, and otherwise faced social ostracism. The neo-nazi who killed Heather Heyer was sentenced to life in prison. Some of those who could be linked to violence were charged with crimes.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-arrests-made-connection-violent-charlottesville-rallies-n915851
Not sure what else you want. The ones who could be clearly linked to crimes got charged. Carrying a tiki torch at a white nationalist rally is not a crime, as odious as their behavior was.
Eljai
@PJ: Jesus, nymag seems to be going out of their way to find leftist white guys intent upon depressing Democratic voter turnout right before an important midterm election.
scav
Well, look at that. FTNYT trying to push its propaganda aim by “reporting” that everyone always agrees with it in spite of their ien evidence. The yoga position Functioning Journalist must look rather like Celtic knotwork with the eyes focussed steadily on their own naval simultaneously with their head being up their own ass while fellating their advertisers private reserves.
Betty Cracker
@Mike in NC: Well, that explains why so many “Moms for Liberty” types promote the Proud Boys on their social media accounts — they’re the “ladies auxiliary” branch! I’ve noticed a definite pattern here in FL whereby “Moms for Liberty” types who come under public scrutiny are outed as Proud Boy fans.
One of the kooks DeSantis appointed to the state board of education took some heat when the local media dug around her Facebook page and found pro-Proud Boy content. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune published a “guest essay” from a Proud Boys defender recently — today the editor apologized for it.
The local media seems better at ferreting out the white nationalist / GOP (but I repeat myself) leanings of these people. I’ve read national pieces on “Moms for Liberty” figures that unironically repeat their claims to bipartisanship and fail to note that most 1) don’t have kids in public school, and 2) have been hard-right Republican candidates and/or operatives.
oatler
Both sides are struggling to Kill The Other as ordered by The Corporation but remain hampered by civilization and shreds of humanity.
Geminid
@ian: I think only one of the Friday night tiki torch marchers was prosecuted. That was Chris Cantwell, the “crying nazi.” This march was an unannounced “flash mob” type event and caught local and state police by surprise. But local and state authorities were consistently behind the curve all week.
The few who were prosecuted for their actions the next day included several men who came for the streetfighting and assaulted people. I think they had fairly clean records, so Judge Moore gave them only 2-3 years penitentiary time. Fields, the murderer of Heather Heyer, has a life sentence with many years on top for the severe injuries to others.
Judge Moore also gave a Maryland klansman 7-8 years for firing one shot near a counter protester. It looked like a warning shot, but he could have triggered a firefight and a bloodbath and that’s why the judge put him away. When I consider how badly that situation could have gone, I think that Charlottesville was lucky that day.
JustRuss
Politics-as-a-horse-race has been a huge problem at least since I studied journalism in college 40 years ago. It’s literally the only thing most “journalists” care about, because it’s exciting and easy. Whereas policy is complicated and boring…and might requiring telling the truth about Republican goals and actions, which could get divisive.
Paul in KY
@The Thin Black Duke: Hope you are feeling much better, Duke! You are sadly correct. IMO, back in the 70s there’d have been a large contingent of WW II vets with 2 by 4s and various Union guys to beat them back under their rocks.
Ruckus
Curious how the NYT framed this poll in stories.
It is? Really? Curious?
Seems rather predictable to me.
The FTFNYT is owned/run by people who like money more than life, which is why many of us call it the FTFNYT. Many people like money more than life, consider it more important to life than blood, know absolutely that without a filthy excess of money, life is not worth living, nor even possible.
And yes money is important, without it commerce wouldn’t exist, that modern life wouldn’t be possible.
But. And it is a huge, firm, rounded but, it is not life, it is a tool, it facilitates life, but it ISN’T life. A rather simple distinction, but one of supreme importance. Money is not reality, an excess of it doesn’t make you better, it most often makes one a far worse human. The examples are everywhere. The FTFNYT is just an example of why money is not the end all be all of life, but a part of it, a piece to facilitate it, make it possible. It’s an example of humanity, that part of humanity that will put excess ahead of everything else in it’s attempt to be better, an attempt at which too much money almost always creates a failure.
Paul in KY
@ian: Ooooh! They were doxxed! That’ll show them!
The creep that murdered that girl should have gotten the death penalty, IMO.
ian
@Paul in KY:
Did the Nazis in Virginia deserve worse than they got? Certainly. I was responding to the statement that nothing happened to them. Doxxing white nationalists is a bigger deal than you give it credit, or else they would not go to such lengths to conceal their identities and faces.
Here is a good article about one Charlottesville organizer who faced social ostracization for his actions.
https://www.insider.com/white-nationalist-richard-spencer-is-shunned-as-a-summer-resident-in-whitefish-montana-locals-say-2021-9
Paul in KY
@ian: Yes. They deserved worse than they got. They’re fucking Nazis.
The Thin Black Duke
@ian: My apologies for not expressing myself clearly; what I meant to say was that these white supremacists shitweasels aren’t exactly Profiles in Courage, so the fact that they felt comfortable enough to openly express their racism in public was a sign that something had changed drastically.
schrodingers_cat
@The Thin Black Duke: The Republican party, the media and the lefties who elevated class issues over all else made it possible.
Tony Jay
@Eljai:
I got banned (permanently) from the FYF Guardian for prophesying that they were so financially dedicated to permanent Tory rule that they were going to flip their narrative 180 and do exactly the same thing in the run up to the next UK Election.
With the proviso that they were ‘suddenly going to notice’ that the NuNew Labour Party had been expelling left wingers on BS grounds since 2020 and had buried its own report on how racism and Islamophobia on the Labour Right had helped cause the 2017 and 2019 defeats.
They really don’t like being called out on their obviousness.
Mnemosyne
I spent half of yesterday arguing with white dudes who allegedly vote Democratic but who insist that people need a “positive reason” to vote for them in November.
My stance is that if someone can look at our civil rights being actively taken away — our voting rights, our right to clean air and water, women’s right to choose — and still think, “Well, sure, the Democrats want to protect those rights but what’s in it for me?” then that person is hopeless and not worth wasting breath on. Sorry, but I’m done with that bullshit.
And if voting didn’t matter, Republicans wouldn’t have spent so much time and money and effort to prevent people from voting, so anyone claiming that can stick that right up their asses.
ian
@The Thin Black Duke:
No apologies necessary, and I agree we as a country are going down a bad road. This rally was a giant red flag, and far too many people in our country ignored it.
Mnemosyne
@catothedog:
In my more paranoid moments, I suspect that the sudden influx of digital subscriptions to the NYT in 2016 that kept them afloat were courtesy of Russia. I still wonder, actually.
vbreakwater
@Ruckus: The framing was starkly anti-Biden and they cited a few ‘disgruntled’ democrats who yearn for younger leadership or lower gas prices. I am a journalist who’s worked at WP, Rolling Stone, ABC & CBS News and treasure the NYT for the reach of their coverage, but his article is simply a hit piece. There’s a similar cast to their Ukraine coverage. Where here Adam succinctly lays out what is really happening, the NYT frames it as if Russia is winning because of their brutal campaign of bombardment.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: They’re lying their asses off about being Democratic Party voters.
GoBlueInOak
Chao is a ladder.
NetworthEdge
I support this cause as its on humanitarian ground. Another thing which should be considered is the supply of raw food which is very important.