XPost: alt.gossip.celebrities, alt.politics.democrats.d, sac.general   
   XPost: alt.rush-limbaugh   
   From: democrat-traitors@house.gov   
      
   I have to admit that my biggest surprises of this election cycle   
   have been the speed with which former San Francisco Mayor Willie   
   Brown’s favorite underling, Kamala Harris, crashed and burned   
   and the difficulty that Elizabeth Warren has zipping to the head   
   of the field. If you check my writing earlier in this year, I   
   fully expected the 2020 contest to be a Trump-Warren cage match.   
      
   That has not materialized. Harris is out. Warren is engaged in a   
   race for second place with superannuated commie Bernie Sanders.   
   And, as in most competitive endeavors the technical term for   
   someone finishing in second place is “loser.”   
      
   Why might that be? The New York Times has an answer, the major   
   media are just too biased towards centrist candidates.   
      
   Last month, [Politico founding editor and current columnist John   
   F.] Harris wrote a column that I can’t get out of my head. In   
   it, he argued that political journalism suffers from “centrist   
   bias.” As he explained, “This bias is marked by an instinctual   
   suspicion of anything suggesting ideological zealotry, an   
   admiration for difference-splitting, a conviction that politics   
   should be a tidier and more rational process than it usually is.”   
      
   The bias caused much of the media to underestimate Ronald Reagan   
   in 1980 and Donald Trump in 2016. It also helps explain the   
   negative tone running through a lot of the coverage of Elizabeth   
   Warren and Bernie Sanders this year.   
      
   Centrist bias, as I see it, confuses the idea of centrism (which   
   is very much an ideology) with objectivity and fairness. It’s an   
   understandable confusion, because American politics is dominated   
   by the two major parties, one on the left and one on the right.   
   And the overwhelming majority of journalists at so-called   
   mainstream outlets — national magazines, newspapers, public   
   radio, the non-Fox television networks — really are doing their   
   best to treat both parties fairly.   
      
   …   
      
   Once you start thinking about centrist bias, you recognize a lot   
   of it. It helps explain why the 2016 presidential debates   
   focused more on the budget deficit, a topic of centrist   
   zealotry, than climate change, almost certainly a bigger threat.   
   (Well-funded deficit advocacy plays a role too.) Centrist bias   
   also helps explain the credulousness of early coverage during   
   the Iraq and Vietnam wars. Both Democrats and Republicans, after   
   all, largely supported each war.   
      
   The theory goes this way. Because the media are unwilling to   
   give a fair hearing to outside-the-box ideas, those ideas never   
   take off. And the columnist points to many things that were not   
   considered moderate and now are.   
      
   The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, labor rights, the   
   New Deal, civil rights for black Americans, Reagan’s laissez-   
   faire revolution and same-sex marriage all started outside the   
   boundaries of what either party favored.   
      
   I think that is a fairly shallow understanding of any of those   
   issues. For instance, when you read the Republican platform for   
   the 1860 election, it is pretty obvious that at least one party   
   was running for office on the idea of abolition of slavery. If   
   this columnist is in doubt, the slave state governors were not.   
      
   All in all, I think this theory is one of those self-pleasuring   
   exercise to which our media is prone. If you look at the   
   coverage given any campaign by the media, you will actually find   
   next to no coverage of any significant issue. If you’re getting   
   your economic commentary from any outlet that employs Paul   
   Krugman, you’re really doing it all wrong. Quite honestly, the   
   media are not at all reticent about pushing outlandish ideas   
   when their reporters are sympathetic to the cause. If you’re   
   trying to tell me the media did not push homosexual marriage and   
   are not agitating for a pride of place for transgenderism now,   
   you’re nuts.   
      
   Neither Warren nor Sanders are failing to excite the masses is a   
   mystery. Everyone knows Warren is a fraud and a liar. Even if   
   you think President Trump is also a fraud and a liar you are   
   forced to admit that Trump is, at least, an entertaining one who   
   doesn’t care how you spend your money or how many sheets of   
   toilet paper you use per bowel movement. Sanders is a communist.   
   He’s a guy who honeymooned in the USSR while it was aiming   
   nuclear missiles at the United States. No number of position   
   papers and supporting experts is going to get that past a   
   majority of Americans.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)