We have to stop looking to the president for some mythical unification that will occur. It won't occur with anyone who looks at the press, Democrats, Liberals, feminists, BLM, etc, as terrorists and "enemies of the 'people'" (because this narrow slice of delusion gets to say who "the people" are?). It's hard to not admire the battle strategy of Trump and other GOP leaders, proclaiming themselves the "pro-life" party while committing countless acts that are the opposite of "pro-life." Married to the evangelical mob and joined by Catholic crusaders, the GOP now has a ready-made army formed to fight not only against abortion rights, but any mythical evil that has now been attributed to Democrats. If we kill innocent babies, why wouldn't we be also sacrificing them and running pedophile rings? And why WOULDN'T we have stolen the election to continue our nefarious crimes?
(Has there ever been a good expose of pro-life Republicans who have had abortions or asked their partners to get one?... Of course, any of those "crimes" would have happened in the past, before they were "born again" like Trump...)
No, Biden's role isn't to reach the unreachable. His goal should be to make the "unreachable" a narrower and narrower slice of the country, continuing to do whatever he can to help as many Americans as he can, and to do the right thing as a world citizen.
Excellent comment. I would add that media has completely bought into the right’s framing of themselves as “pro-life” which not only ignores all the anti-life positions they have but also implies that their opponents are “pro-death”.
You are right to point to their belief that abortion is murdering of babies as the key to understanding how so many on the right can demonize Democrats. I always thought responding to their argument that abortion = murder with “it’s a woman’s choice” was ridiculous. Advocates of the legalization of abortion should have addressed the right’s claim that an embryo is a full person. That is a faith-based claim based on the belief, at least for Catholics, that God “infuses” a soul at the moment of conception. My parents were devout Catholics who, like Biden, were pro-choice because they understood that the Church’s opposition to abortion is based on faith, not provable facts. They were strong believers in the separation of church and state so they opposed forcing others to live by their beliefs.
I know several people who believe that “higher” animals have souls, therefore killing them even for food is murder. I keep waiting for them to use the “pro-life” argument to try to ban meat-eating. That sounds ridiculous now but given how many young people I know think like that I wouldn’t rule it out. I also want to see a Jehovah’s Witness sue to keep from having to pay for insurance which covers blood transfusions for their employees. You know the right will twist itself into knots to claim the principles aren’t the same as the ones they have use to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.
You asked if there has ever been an expose of Republican hypocrisy on this issue. When Republicans were trying to remove Clinton from office for lying about his sex life, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, Larry Flynt, offered huge rewards for anyone who could give him proof of Republican hypocrisy. The ex-wife of Georgia’s devout Christian Congresscritter Bob Barr came forward to say that he had paid for her to have an abortion. She was willing to say that under oath in a deposition. Flynt’s rewards also led to the resignation of Bob Livingston for adultery after he had replaced Newt who had to step down on ethics charges. (We only found out later that Newt was also cheating on his wife with his now wife, a “good Catholic girls who was Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican.) Livingston was replaced by that squeaky clean, good Christian Denny Hastert who eventually wound up serving time for molesting students on the high school wresting team he coached.
There are many hypocrites in the Republican Party and on the "Religious Right" - rabidly anti-gay 'crusaders' who frequent gay bars or trysting places, serial philanderers, engage in inside trading, etc. "Pro-life" is a misnomer as is "pro-abortion." Anti-choice & pro-choice are accurate.
Don't forget to add Pulpit Pimps like Jimmy Swaggart who got caught in the act with a prostitute...The same Jimmy Swaggart who demanded Clinton's impeachment...
Remember those Pro Lifers...this is, and always has been their motto; "Love the Fetus, Hate the Child". They love the Fetus during election seasons. That is the number one issue that boosts the turnout for the GOP, with the religious right members. That and the Johnson Amendment (which never made it anywhere).
They don’t even really love the fetus. If they did they would be fighting hard for quality health care for all pregnant women. There is a reason the US has such a high infant and maternal death rate.
Oh I have to tell you what happened to me on Twitter last night. This tweet appears in my timeline. Profile picture is prim and proper young woman. It says the attached is a must read by David French. He has gotten a few words past me because he is anti Trump, a few. I open his article, he has his own print label, and it starts with, I have devoted my life to ending abortion! I go to comments for the young woman not him. There is no hope for him. I said, the opening statements in this article make me nauseous. 🤮 David French is a man and has no say, let alone over what are private communications between my doctor and me. Anyone who is not talking about the whole negligent murder of 450k people is not prolife.
The press confuses unifying the country with unifying or more accurately, appeasing the Republican Party. Fact - The Republicans lost the House, the Senate, and the Presidency therefore I believe Biden does have a mandate. More importantly as you point out, Biden's economic bill has the approval of over 70 percent of the country. Biden himself has an approval rating of 61 percent, a percentage Trump never saw in four years of being in office let alone even reaching 50 percent. The Democrats need to press forward and pass progressive agendas that the country largely supports. Due to voter suppression and gerrymandering it only appears that the Republicans are a powerful party. They are not and folks are dropping from the party in droves. The way forward and the way the Democrats keep power is to forge ahead regardless of the Republican Party's claims of non bipartisanship. The real hero, in my opinion, so far in the Biden administration is Jen Psaki who goes out there every day and squares up every fastball the DC press fires at her. How she does that without throwing something at them is a testament to her professionalism and her ability to clearly articulate what the Biden administration is attempting to do. What an amazing difference from the nightmare over the last four years.
Can't say that I'm shocked by how the press literally is missing the point once again. Everything is always the Democrats fault. At no point have they called out the Republicans and asked why they object to helping out the people. It just comes back Jen Psaki having to explain this is what unity looks like. Helping out people in need regardless of political party affiliation. Write about that jerk offs. I'm just so annoyed with the press. I do hope that the Democrats DO NOT FOLD and remember that the Republicans certainly didn't care about you when they had the majority. And guess what? They still don't care and their in the minority yet acting like they still have the majority. Thanks Eric. You looked good on MSNBC. Keep this up we need you.
For years Democrats, but not Republicans, have had to answer to the the civility police, the optics police/appearance of corruption police, the charisma/coolness police and now the bipartisan/unity police? This is a perfect example of how the media allows those frames to dictate the emphasis of their stories which distorts the way the public perceives what Democrats are doing.
To be fair Biden himself talked a lot about bipartisanship in terms of legislation but the media is now insisting that that be the case on every piece of legislation. They obsessing over than rather than putting the emphasis on the more important fact that the Covid relief plan is desperately needed and has strong bipartisan support where it counts most, not in DC with the American public shows how skewed the media’s priorities are. In this case they are putting bipartisan legislation over the needs of the American people and of our democracy.
I forgot about the journalists constantly policing the Democrats looking for signs of disarray. Then I saw this headline in todays WaPo:
“Democratic lawmakers splinter over criteria for $1,400 stimulus payments as Biden relief bill advances”
Splinter? That literally says they have broken apart. What in the world is wrong with journalists who view reasonable disagreements as a bad thing? That headline should have read “Democrats have a healthy/reasonable debate about the size of the payments in Biden’s bill”. Maybe the public would start to realize that that is what healthy democracies do instead of seeing fact-based disagreements as dysfunctional.
Almost every time President Biden* mentioned bipartisanship in the campaign, he qualified it with "as much as possible", "if possible", "if we can", and so on.
*That felt SO good, to capitalize President before the President's name. I haven't capitalized either in almost four years.
Eric, I have read Press Run since the beginning and recently saw you
on MSNBC, which is always nice, because we are communicating with people we never see. Here is my view about the Republicans that is not being given credence. They have abdicated the positions and the people they were elected to serve. Their embrace of treason and sedition is , in my view, a form of mental illness. We embrace tv shows like the Walking Dead but fail to point to the walking dead in big positions of power. Until this is processed and dealt with, we will continue to have displays of sedition like Ron DeSantis and the grotesque Super Bowl. Citizens of this country, doing the right things with covid, have money and are trapped in a prison, of quarantine and getting everything delivered, while we let the poor die. Denial of truth is a massive cultural mental illness. That is where this conversation begins. Thank you for your epic writing. It sustains me here in prison.
Thanks Eric. Especially for the data supporting Biden's policies.
I write that because the WaPo Opinion Editors write this: "Biden should exhaust the possibilities for compromise for covid relief."
Here's a thought. Let's have a vote on things that are as you say wildly popular, allow the Rs to vote against them, and let the chips fall where they may. The days of McConnell preventing votes on the floor are over.
Exactly. Let's not "exhaust the possibilities for compromise" to the point where hurting Americans aren't helped. And can we please bury forever the notion of trickle-down economics or whatever it's being called these days? Relief right to the people who need it, not greedy CEOs.
I saw the stories about the retirement of Richard Shelby, including how great he has been for the people of Alabama because his programs have been designed to help his state, and I thought two things:
1. Has anybody looked into what he got and what the money does?
2. He must be a great source or very friendly on the rope line to get what we might call the equivalent of what Ms. Lewinsky did to Mr. Clinton.
It's not the president's job to unify the country. That may be blasphemy to some people. But unity is mostly a pipedream. You can't achieve unity with people who believe in authoritarianism. Or whose values, such as racism, are morally repugnant to the other side. Nor can Democratic lawmakers be unified with their Republican counterparts when the latter demonstrate no interest in working together in a substantive way. Sure, Biden is correct to discuss the idea and set it as a goal, especially at a time of great division. But unifying disparate groups with divergent ideas has to happen organically.
Maybe journalists should spend more time covering what will emerge as one of the dominant stories of this year and beyond: ramped up, extreme voter suppression. It's the only way Republicans can regain power.
A part of the absurdity of the "unity" push on by the press is the measure of "unity" or "bipartisanship" that they always use, namely whether any Republican in Congress will support something, and then how many. The press is obsessed with polls in their horserace coverage of races, but when it comes to Congressional action it's polls? What polls? Just changing this bogus measure of "bipartisanship" would go a long way towards more honest, let alone useful, coverage.
The Unity Pony is exactly why Chuck Todd’s very first question to-then newly elected President Obama was if he would veto the Affordable Care Act in the name of being bipartisan.
If that doesn’t prove how looney the press behaves towards Democratic administration, I don’t know what does.
Our political press needs to quit talking only to each other (and only to Republican voters in diners while on anthropology expeditions west of the Beltway) and look at the rest of the country. No one cares nor will remember if a bill was supported, but we do know if we are being helped or not. And we might know which party helped us.
I think they fear Dems because face it, Dems are far and away smarter than most of those in the press. The Dems look at "what can we do for others"? The GOP belief system is: I got mine screw you all.. That is why the Press isn't ever sure of what to ask, so that they will understand the answer.. Not all of the press. There are some sharp ones out there
We have to stop looking to the president for some mythical unification that will occur. It won't occur with anyone who looks at the press, Democrats, Liberals, feminists, BLM, etc, as terrorists and "enemies of the 'people'" (because this narrow slice of delusion gets to say who "the people" are?). It's hard to not admire the battle strategy of Trump and other GOP leaders, proclaiming themselves the "pro-life" party while committing countless acts that are the opposite of "pro-life." Married to the evangelical mob and joined by Catholic crusaders, the GOP now has a ready-made army formed to fight not only against abortion rights, but any mythical evil that has now been attributed to Democrats. If we kill innocent babies, why wouldn't we be also sacrificing them and running pedophile rings? And why WOULDN'T we have stolen the election to continue our nefarious crimes?
(Has there ever been a good expose of pro-life Republicans who have had abortions or asked their partners to get one?... Of course, any of those "crimes" would have happened in the past, before they were "born again" like Trump...)
No, Biden's role isn't to reach the unreachable. His goal should be to make the "unreachable" a narrower and narrower slice of the country, continuing to do whatever he can to help as many Americans as he can, and to do the right thing as a world citizen.
Excellent comment. I would add that media has completely bought into the right’s framing of themselves as “pro-life” which not only ignores all the anti-life positions they have but also implies that their opponents are “pro-death”.
You are right to point to their belief that abortion is murdering of babies as the key to understanding how so many on the right can demonize Democrats. I always thought responding to their argument that abortion = murder with “it’s a woman’s choice” was ridiculous. Advocates of the legalization of abortion should have addressed the right’s claim that an embryo is a full person. That is a faith-based claim based on the belief, at least for Catholics, that God “infuses” a soul at the moment of conception. My parents were devout Catholics who, like Biden, were pro-choice because they understood that the Church’s opposition to abortion is based on faith, not provable facts. They were strong believers in the separation of church and state so they opposed forcing others to live by their beliefs.
I know several people who believe that “higher” animals have souls, therefore killing them even for food is murder. I keep waiting for them to use the “pro-life” argument to try to ban meat-eating. That sounds ridiculous now but given how many young people I know think like that I wouldn’t rule it out. I also want to see a Jehovah’s Witness sue to keep from having to pay for insurance which covers blood transfusions for their employees. You know the right will twist itself into knots to claim the principles aren’t the same as the ones they have use to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.
You asked if there has ever been an expose of Republican hypocrisy on this issue. When Republicans were trying to remove Clinton from office for lying about his sex life, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, Larry Flynt, offered huge rewards for anyone who could give him proof of Republican hypocrisy. The ex-wife of Georgia’s devout Christian Congresscritter Bob Barr came forward to say that he had paid for her to have an abortion. She was willing to say that under oath in a deposition. Flynt’s rewards also led to the resignation of Bob Livingston for adultery after he had replaced Newt who had to step down on ethics charges. (We only found out later that Newt was also cheating on his wife with his now wife, a “good Catholic girls who was Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican.) Livingston was replaced by that squeaky clean, good Christian Denny Hastert who eventually wound up serving time for molesting students on the high school wresting team he coached.
There are many hypocrites in the Republican Party and on the "Religious Right" - rabidly anti-gay 'crusaders' who frequent gay bars or trysting places, serial philanderers, engage in inside trading, etc. "Pro-life" is a misnomer as is "pro-abortion." Anti-choice & pro-choice are accurate.
Don't forget to add Pulpit Pimps like Jimmy Swaggart who got caught in the act with a prostitute...The same Jimmy Swaggart who demanded Clinton's impeachment...
Pulpit pimps! This one guy I follow said, Marjorie Taylor Greene was the tramp stamp of Trumpism! 😂
Remember those Pro Lifers...this is, and always has been their motto; "Love the Fetus, Hate the Child". They love the Fetus during election seasons. That is the number one issue that boosts the turnout for the GOP, with the religious right members. That and the Johnson Amendment (which never made it anywhere).
They don’t even really love the fetus. If they did they would be fighting hard for quality health care for all pregnant women. There is a reason the US has such a high infant and maternal death rate.
Oh I have to tell you what happened to me on Twitter last night. This tweet appears in my timeline. Profile picture is prim and proper young woman. It says the attached is a must read by David French. He has gotten a few words past me because he is anti Trump, a few. I open his article, he has his own print label, and it starts with, I have devoted my life to ending abortion! I go to comments for the young woman not him. There is no hope for him. I said, the opening statements in this article make me nauseous. 🤮 David French is a man and has no say, let alone over what are private communications between my doctor and me. Anyone who is not talking about the whole negligent murder of 450k people is not prolife.
The press confuses unifying the country with unifying or more accurately, appeasing the Republican Party. Fact - The Republicans lost the House, the Senate, and the Presidency therefore I believe Biden does have a mandate. More importantly as you point out, Biden's economic bill has the approval of over 70 percent of the country. Biden himself has an approval rating of 61 percent, a percentage Trump never saw in four years of being in office let alone even reaching 50 percent. The Democrats need to press forward and pass progressive agendas that the country largely supports. Due to voter suppression and gerrymandering it only appears that the Republicans are a powerful party. They are not and folks are dropping from the party in droves. The way forward and the way the Democrats keep power is to forge ahead regardless of the Republican Party's claims of non bipartisanship. The real hero, in my opinion, so far in the Biden administration is Jen Psaki who goes out there every day and squares up every fastball the DC press fires at her. How she does that without throwing something at them is a testament to her professionalism and her ability to clearly articulate what the Biden administration is attempting to do. What an amazing difference from the nightmare over the last four years.
The don't confuse it.
The Corporate Controlled Conservative Press is just another set of cogs in the Republican 24/7 BS Machine!
Can't say that I'm shocked by how the press literally is missing the point once again. Everything is always the Democrats fault. At no point have they called out the Republicans and asked why they object to helping out the people. It just comes back Jen Psaki having to explain this is what unity looks like. Helping out people in need regardless of political party affiliation. Write about that jerk offs. I'm just so annoyed with the press. I do hope that the Democrats DO NOT FOLD and remember that the Republicans certainly didn't care about you when they had the majority. And guess what? They still don't care and their in the minority yet acting like they still have the majority. Thanks Eric. You looked good on MSNBC. Keep this up we need you.
For years Democrats, but not Republicans, have had to answer to the the civility police, the optics police/appearance of corruption police, the charisma/coolness police and now the bipartisan/unity police? This is a perfect example of how the media allows those frames to dictate the emphasis of their stories which distorts the way the public perceives what Democrats are doing.
To be fair Biden himself talked a lot about bipartisanship in terms of legislation but the media is now insisting that that be the case on every piece of legislation. They obsessing over than rather than putting the emphasis on the more important fact that the Covid relief plan is desperately needed and has strong bipartisan support where it counts most, not in DC with the American public shows how skewed the media’s priorities are. In this case they are putting bipartisan legislation over the needs of the American people and of our democracy.
I forgot about the journalists constantly policing the Democrats looking for signs of disarray. Then I saw this headline in todays WaPo:
“Democratic lawmakers splinter over criteria for $1,400 stimulus payments as Biden relief bill advances”
Splinter? That literally says they have broken apart. What in the world is wrong with journalists who view reasonable disagreements as a bad thing? That headline should have read “Democrats have a healthy/reasonable debate about the size of the payments in Biden’s bill”. Maybe the public would start to realize that that is what healthy democracies do instead of seeing fact-based disagreements as dysfunctional.
along with lessons learned about what is wrong with the 4th Estate these days
Almost every time President Biden* mentioned bipartisanship in the campaign, he qualified it with "as much as possible", "if possible", "if we can", and so on.
*That felt SO good, to capitalize President before the President's name. I haven't capitalized either in almost four years.
This is so true. I like the use of false equivalency too. And if any entity has proven there is money in fear and negativity it is Fox.
Eric, I have read Press Run since the beginning and recently saw you
on MSNBC, which is always nice, because we are communicating with people we never see. Here is my view about the Republicans that is not being given credence. They have abdicated the positions and the people they were elected to serve. Their embrace of treason and sedition is , in my view, a form of mental illness. We embrace tv shows like the Walking Dead but fail to point to the walking dead in big positions of power. Until this is processed and dealt with, we will continue to have displays of sedition like Ron DeSantis and the grotesque Super Bowl. Citizens of this country, doing the right things with covid, have money and are trapped in a prison, of quarantine and getting everything delivered, while we let the poor die. Denial of truth is a massive cultural mental illness. That is where this conversation begins. Thank you for your epic writing. It sustains me here in prison.
Check him out on FSTV, Monday mornings with Stephanie Miller. He does a great segment with her also.
Thank you!
You are very welcome
Thanks Eric. Especially for the data supporting Biden's policies.
I write that because the WaPo Opinion Editors write this: "Biden should exhaust the possibilities for compromise for covid relief."
Here's a thought. Let's have a vote on things that are as you say wildly popular, allow the Rs to vote against them, and let the chips fall where they may. The days of McConnell preventing votes on the floor are over.
Exactly. Let's not "exhaust the possibilities for compromise" to the point where hurting Americans aren't helped. And can we please bury forever the notion of trickle-down economics or whatever it's being called these days? Relief right to the people who need it, not greedy CEOs.
WHY?? What have they ever done for the Dems in similar scenarios?
Seems the "fake news" has Stockholm Syndrome.
Good point
I saw the stories about the retirement of Richard Shelby, including how great he has been for the people of Alabama because his programs have been designed to help his state, and I thought two things:
1. Has anybody looked into what he got and what the money does?
2. He must be a great source or very friendly on the rope line to get what we might call the equivalent of what Ms. Lewinsky did to Mr. Clinton.
I agree, I wrote that just last week! Let them do their thing. Not quite how I put in my article, but...
It's not the president's job to unify the country. That may be blasphemy to some people. But unity is mostly a pipedream. You can't achieve unity with people who believe in authoritarianism. Or whose values, such as racism, are morally repugnant to the other side. Nor can Democratic lawmakers be unified with their Republican counterparts when the latter demonstrate no interest in working together in a substantive way. Sure, Biden is correct to discuss the idea and set it as a goal, especially at a time of great division. But unifying disparate groups with divergent ideas has to happen organically.
Maybe journalists should spend more time covering what will emerge as one of the dominant stories of this year and beyond: ramped up, extreme voter suppression. It's the only way Republicans can regain power.
I think Biden was referring to unifying Moderates and Progressives.
Lets make that the point
A part of the absurdity of the "unity" push on by the press is the measure of "unity" or "bipartisanship" that they always use, namely whether any Republican in Congress will support something, and then how many. The press is obsessed with polls in their horserace coverage of races, but when it comes to Congressional action it's polls? What polls? Just changing this bogus measure of "bipartisanship" would go a long way towards more honest, let alone useful, coverage.
The Unity Pony is exactly why Chuck Todd’s very first question to-then newly elected President Obama was if he would veto the Affordable Care Act in the name of being bipartisan.
If that doesn’t prove how looney the press behaves towards Democratic administration, I don’t know what does.
Our political press needs to quit talking only to each other (and only to Republican voters in diners while on anthropology expeditions west of the Beltway) and look at the rest of the country. No one cares nor will remember if a bill was supported, but we do know if we are being helped or not. And we might know which party helped us.
I think they fear Dems because face it, Dems are far and away smarter than most of those in the press. The Dems look at "what can we do for others"? The GOP belief system is: I got mine screw you all.. That is why the Press isn't ever sure of what to ask, so that they will understand the answer.. Not all of the press. There are some sharp ones out there