From an article in last month’s slate about what is supposedly the most controversial issue of all:
“Abortion rights in the U.S. are as popular now as they’ve ever been. Last year, nearly every major poll on abortion rights found support for Roe v. Wade at record highs. A June CBS poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans want to keep Roe v. Wade’s protections in place, while less than one-third want to overturn them. It wasn’t just Democrats: A strong majority of independents and a plurality of Republicans said they wanted to keep Roe v. Wade around, too. As NBC News has tracked views on abortion over the past decade, support for legal abortion has risen among most measurable demographics: Women, men, Democrats, and Republicans have all grown more supportive of abortion rights, a unified trend in opinion rarely seen on such a purportedly controversial topic.“
I am surprised the media hasn’t paid as much attention to the flat-earthers as they have to the small but very loud and whiny minority of Republicans who want to live in the Dark Ages.
Trump should be polling in the 20% range. How is it possible he still has anyone supporting him beyond his cult base? I won’t be breathing easy until Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20th.
But it will be interesting to see what Trump does in the transition after he loses next week. Cohen said he thinks Trump will resign and walk away. Based on things Trump has said at campaign rallies over the last week and his past behavior in the face of failure, I’m starting to see that as a real possibility. So, more chaos to look forward to, but at least he’ll be gone.
The real question is whether or not the media will see it as an opportunity to ramp up the division narrative once Trump’s gone, especially if Democrats have a clear mandate from the voters and Republicans are floundering in the obscure minority in Trump’s wake, even though everyone seems to like Joe Biden and things are calm and actually being accomplished. Will the media be that stupid?
Most of the news media is now in the category of entertainment. It's necessary (to them) to keep us on the edge of our seat as if we are watching a summertime blockbuster movie. Sadly one must now search for good hard journalism such as your blog. It's out there but only if you look for it. It's not just showing up on the TV anymore. In a fair election Trump loses as no other incumbent ever has. But that's the key word-fair. We are about to find out who we are, a country whose majority leans toward progressive values as the numbers show or a country that is ruled by a minority who goes to court to prevent votes from being counted. And from the military no less! The party that's always kissing the military's ass now wants to discount all of their votes after Election Day.
I know what you are saying to be true. The majority of this country are well intended, thoughtful and caring people who believe we should all have health care and work to heal a strained and damaged planet. Unfortunately the Republican Party and now with the help of Trump has eroded our institutions and cater to just the super wealthy, all others drop dead. We still are suffering from PTSD of the 2016 election. The polls are clearly showing Biden should win but it doesn't stop us from freaking out about what another four years of this shit show will do to us, our country, and our planet.
For at least a generation the GOP has been learning how to exploit the bothsiderist narrative that is so deeply embedded in our political media ecosystem. That narrative persists for intransigent structural reasons not just journalistic laziness (though obv. that's a factor), which is why it has been remarkable, and encouraging, to watch the fizzling-dud failure of the Hunter Biden "scandal." Must be SO frustrating for them, b/c on the surface they've done everything according to the tried-and-true formula. "Email" dumps are great for it b/c in a couple-ten thousand you can always find something to build your innuendo on, "more remains to be exposed," "questions have been raised," "if only the candidate would address the questions it would go away" (i.e., it will persist because all answers raise more "questions" etc etc. We've seen it over and over again. Only there's one key failure point: they need the so-called MSM to pick it up, and that pressures offiicial bodies to have a look, and then you've got a self-sustaining feedback-loop "scandal" that generates tons of smoke that obscures the fact that there's no actual, y'know, fire. That's what the impeachment phone call was about: they needed there to be someone, not them, to say there was an investigation. There didn't need to BE one. But they got caught in the act, which caused the whole thing to misfire. The key is that it has to catch on outside of the fever swamp or the whole thing just fizzles. And it seems like, mirabile dictu, the wider media culture are for once NOT PLAYING. Partly b/c the whole thing just has the stink of hoax all over it (the wildly improbably provenance, lack of meta-data, involvement of known-shady players starting with Giuliani). But none of that would have really been a real obstacle before. I think what's really made the difference is Trump. Four years of Trump have broken the media taboo of calling a lie a lie, to the extent that new reflexes, new muscles--feeble and atrophied to begin with, but stronger every day due to being exercised due to Trump--are actually being flexed. You can see the astonishment on their faces. "How can it not be working? It ALWAYS works!!!" For once, it sucks to be them.
But it must be true. Visitors from the DC political media brothel (the chief chucktodd of them all, madam) found economically anxious voters who went for the republican in 2016 and weren't in the least bit racist.
I doubt we can, but it would be great if we had a press that wasn't dependent on making money. I don't know of a solution that would keep the press free and fair in this age. But, as long as they need to keep the matchup close in order to drive ratings and advertising rates, we're going to be in this situation. Nobody's tuning in to watch the Chiefs play the Jaguars. But, if you can sell that the "game" is going to be a close one, they can make more money.
1) They love the horse race neck-and-neck narrative because it draws eyeballs and lets them furrow brows in concern while playing ominous music and graphics. The internet era has made them drama queens.
2) Decades of messaging from the right has made them skeptical/hostile to anything left of center - and the Overton Window ‘Center’ has been shoved rightward for years. It’s shifting back but the press hasn’t adjusted yet.
3) The press picks up and amplifies right wing talking points as a conditioned reflex so they won’t have the dreaded ‘liberal bias’ and can pretend to be ‘fair and balanced’. That plus the sheer volume of noise coming from the right is hard for them to discount.
Our legislators on the local and national level seem to have bought into the divided-country narrative effectively hamstringing all sorts of forward-thinking laws.
The astounding thing to me is how many opportunities he has ignored, blown off, or actively failed to capitalize on to actually BE a unifying, hugely popular figure. The sporadic gestures in that direction during his original campaign scared the sh** out of me because if he'd lived up to it--if he'd actually done the "infrastructure" thing, if he'd actually come up with an improved ACA--would have locked him in as the authoritarian Great Leader he liked pretending to be. Obv. the biggest blown opportunity was the one that's taking him down: C19 itself. If he'd just done the basic stuff right, same as ANY normal president of either party--let the CDC do its thing, NOT dissolve the agency set up to deal with this exact situation, treat the initial hot-zone states fairly and not as an opportunity for extortion, above all just make the right noises and gestures that communicate we're all, blue red and otherwise, in this together, he'd be riding an unstoppable electoral wave of his own. And the only thing that prevented him from doing that was, well, HIM. Time after time all the fears and hungers that drive him ran counter to him achieving the Great Leader status he fantasizes himself to be. His fantasies have always "trumped" reality, but ultimately reality wins. Heraclitus nailed it: character is destiny.
Is it really that the press in general is just that lazy? Like a music writer lifting text from a band bio? It is astonishing. We thank you for calling attention to it.
Thanks Eric. Looks like some push back today in the comment section.
The divide that concerns me is "loyalty vs. merit." Whether it is the white male type, or religious type, or some other, this divide leads to incompetency at the highest levels. There is much to complaint about Justice Kennedy, for example, but the idea that he can't provide accurate and rational legal reasoning is deeply troubling.
I suggest you should not be surprised that Trump has not narrowed the divide in America. He simply hasn’t tried to do so. I can think of only a handful of efforts to reach out beyond his base. (Counting numerous “infrastructure weeks” as one)
Need I catalogue the numerous efforts Trump has made to incite his base?
Next, I assert the US is indeed divided. That does not imply that it is evenly divided. The assumption of even division undercuts your argument.
If we assume Trump voters are 45% of the populace, and the population is 330 million, that’s still 148.5 million potentially irreconcilable Americans. 35% is still 115 million.
That’s a lot of people who seem to reject the very foundations of the country. Trump’s arguing “Biden will listen to Scientists” as if it’s a rational argument.
No, America is deeply divided and I’d like to see someone address the issue of reconciliation.
Thank you for saying this.
It’s not a divide so much as it is a minority party trying to enforce its autocratic impulses on the American people.
You nailed it again, Eric. The “polarization” narrative has been total BS for years.
From an article in last month’s slate about what is supposedly the most controversial issue of all:
“Abortion rights in the U.S. are as popular now as they’ve ever been. Last year, nearly every major poll on abortion rights found support for Roe v. Wade at record highs. A June CBS poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans want to keep Roe v. Wade’s protections in place, while less than one-third want to overturn them. It wasn’t just Democrats: A strong majority of independents and a plurality of Republicans said they wanted to keep Roe v. Wade around, too. As NBC News has tracked views on abortion over the past decade, support for legal abortion has risen among most measurable demographics: Women, men, Democrats, and Republicans have all grown more supportive of abortion rights, a unified trend in opinion rarely seen on such a purportedly controversial topic.“
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/majority-americans-support-abortion-access.html
I am surprised the media hasn’t paid as much attention to the flat-earthers as they have to the small but very loud and whiny minority of Republicans who want to live in the Dark Ages.
Who are these 5% of Democrats? My God. 🙄
Trump should be polling in the 20% range. How is it possible he still has anyone supporting him beyond his cult base? I won’t be breathing easy until Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20th.
But it will be interesting to see what Trump does in the transition after he loses next week. Cohen said he thinks Trump will resign and walk away. Based on things Trump has said at campaign rallies over the last week and his past behavior in the face of failure, I’m starting to see that as a real possibility. So, more chaos to look forward to, but at least he’ll be gone.
The real question is whether or not the media will see it as an opportunity to ramp up the division narrative once Trump’s gone, especially if Democrats have a clear mandate from the voters and Republicans are floundering in the obscure minority in Trump’s wake, even though everyone seems to like Joe Biden and things are calm and actually being accomplished. Will the media be that stupid?
Most of the news media is now in the category of entertainment. It's necessary (to them) to keep us on the edge of our seat as if we are watching a summertime blockbuster movie. Sadly one must now search for good hard journalism such as your blog. It's out there but only if you look for it. It's not just showing up on the TV anymore. In a fair election Trump loses as no other incumbent ever has. But that's the key word-fair. We are about to find out who we are, a country whose majority leans toward progressive values as the numbers show or a country that is ruled by a minority who goes to court to prevent votes from being counted. And from the military no less! The party that's always kissing the military's ass now wants to discount all of their votes after Election Day.
I know what you are saying to be true. The majority of this country are well intended, thoughtful and caring people who believe we should all have health care and work to heal a strained and damaged planet. Unfortunately the Republican Party and now with the help of Trump has eroded our institutions and cater to just the super wealthy, all others drop dead. We still are suffering from PTSD of the 2016 election. The polls are clearly showing Biden should win but it doesn't stop us from freaking out about what another four years of this shit show will do to us, our country, and our planet.
For at least a generation the GOP has been learning how to exploit the bothsiderist narrative that is so deeply embedded in our political media ecosystem. That narrative persists for intransigent structural reasons not just journalistic laziness (though obv. that's a factor), which is why it has been remarkable, and encouraging, to watch the fizzling-dud failure of the Hunter Biden "scandal." Must be SO frustrating for them, b/c on the surface they've done everything according to the tried-and-true formula. "Email" dumps are great for it b/c in a couple-ten thousand you can always find something to build your innuendo on, "more remains to be exposed," "questions have been raised," "if only the candidate would address the questions it would go away" (i.e., it will persist because all answers raise more "questions" etc etc. We've seen it over and over again. Only there's one key failure point: they need the so-called MSM to pick it up, and that pressures offiicial bodies to have a look, and then you've got a self-sustaining feedback-loop "scandal" that generates tons of smoke that obscures the fact that there's no actual, y'know, fire. That's what the impeachment phone call was about: they needed there to be someone, not them, to say there was an investigation. There didn't need to BE one. But they got caught in the act, which caused the whole thing to misfire. The key is that it has to catch on outside of the fever swamp or the whole thing just fizzles. And it seems like, mirabile dictu, the wider media culture are for once NOT PLAYING. Partly b/c the whole thing just has the stink of hoax all over it (the wildly improbably provenance, lack of meta-data, involvement of known-shady players starting with Giuliani). But none of that would have really been a real obstacle before. I think what's really made the difference is Trump. Four years of Trump have broken the media taboo of calling a lie a lie, to the extent that new reflexes, new muscles--feeble and atrophied to begin with, but stronger every day due to being exercised due to Trump--are actually being flexed. You can see the astonishment on their faces. "How can it not be working? It ALWAYS works!!!" For once, it sucks to be them.
But it must be true. Visitors from the DC political media brothel (the chief chucktodd of them all, madam) found economically anxious voters who went for the republican in 2016 and weren't in the least bit racist.
I doubt we can, but it would be great if we had a press that wasn't dependent on making money. I don't know of a solution that would keep the press free and fair in this age. But, as long as they need to keep the matchup close in order to drive ratings and advertising rates, we're going to be in this situation. Nobody's tuning in to watch the Chiefs play the Jaguars. But, if you can sell that the "game" is going to be a close one, they can make more money.
There are 3 things going on with the press.
1) They love the horse race neck-and-neck narrative because it draws eyeballs and lets them furrow brows in concern while playing ominous music and graphics. The internet era has made them drama queens.
2) Decades of messaging from the right has made them skeptical/hostile to anything left of center - and the Overton Window ‘Center’ has been shoved rightward for years. It’s shifting back but the press hasn’t adjusted yet.
3) The press picks up and amplifies right wing talking points as a conditioned reflex so they won’t have the dreaded ‘liberal bias’ and can pretend to be ‘fair and balanced’. That plus the sheer volume of noise coming from the right is hard for them to discount.
I wish I had your optimism... Wisconsin is so heavily gerrymandered it's unlikely we'll escape the yoke of a Republican legislature in my lifetime.
Our legislators on the local and national level seem to have bought into the divided-country narrative effectively hamstringing all sorts of forward-thinking laws.
The timber of a resonator guitar soothes. Nice "extra" today.
The astounding thing to me is how many opportunities he has ignored, blown off, or actively failed to capitalize on to actually BE a unifying, hugely popular figure. The sporadic gestures in that direction during his original campaign scared the sh** out of me because if he'd lived up to it--if he'd actually done the "infrastructure" thing, if he'd actually come up with an improved ACA--would have locked him in as the authoritarian Great Leader he liked pretending to be. Obv. the biggest blown opportunity was the one that's taking him down: C19 itself. If he'd just done the basic stuff right, same as ANY normal president of either party--let the CDC do its thing, NOT dissolve the agency set up to deal with this exact situation, treat the initial hot-zone states fairly and not as an opportunity for extortion, above all just make the right noises and gestures that communicate we're all, blue red and otherwise, in this together, he'd be riding an unstoppable electoral wave of his own. And the only thing that prevented him from doing that was, well, HIM. Time after time all the fears and hungers that drive him ran counter to him achieving the Great Leader status he fantasizes himself to be. His fantasies have always "trumped" reality, but ultimately reality wins. Heraclitus nailed it: character is destiny.
Is it really that the press in general is just that lazy? Like a music writer lifting text from a band bio? It is astonishing. We thank you for calling attention to it.
Thanks Eric. Looks like some push back today in the comment section.
The divide that concerns me is "loyalty vs. merit." Whether it is the white male type, or religious type, or some other, this divide leads to incompetency at the highest levels. There is much to complaint about Justice Kennedy, for example, but the idea that he can't provide accurate and rational legal reasoning is deeply troubling.
Mr. Boehlert,
I suggest you should not be surprised that Trump has not narrowed the divide in America. He simply hasn’t tried to do so. I can think of only a handful of efforts to reach out beyond his base. (Counting numerous “infrastructure weeks” as one)
Need I catalogue the numerous efforts Trump has made to incite his base?
Next, I assert the US is indeed divided. That does not imply that it is evenly divided. The assumption of even division undercuts your argument.
If we assume Trump voters are 45% of the populace, and the population is 330 million, that’s still 148.5 million potentially irreconcilable Americans. 35% is still 115 million.
That’s a lot of people who seem to reject the very foundations of the country. Trump’s arguing “Biden will listen to Scientists” as if it’s a rational argument.
No, America is deeply divided and I’d like to see someone address the issue of reconciliation.