Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/05/the-six-types-of-people-who-wa.html
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Ugh. This explains why the MSM would not stop enabling the endless round of tweets and obvious distractions from the important news/administration actions of the day. How can we capture the interest of the public in reforms and policymaking without turning the process of governing into a reality show?
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Trump is going down. But the death throes of his Presidency will be mind boggling.
Buckle up!
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Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
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Even those in the media who want him to go away are ignoring basic childcare principles. Attention to misbehaviour, even negative attention, can be rewarding. Consequences of birtherism should have been, “welp, we’ll interview you again when you stop being a racist fuckhead”, not careful looking of both sides, as if it wasn’t a question of reality vs. a lie, and giving his Big Lie a megaphone.
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Liberals do tend to freak at the slightest hint of bad news. The other thing to consider is that the polls likely will tighten as voters on the margins make decisions. A 50-40 poll split means some could go either way in the end. It’s not a good spot for an incumbent, that is for sure.
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Yeah, count me in the liberal 2016 PTSD crowd. It’s less psychological than it is a recognition that the DNC has an undeniable history of incompetence, complacency, and business-as-usual entitlement.
This is in part because I’m also a member of the Gen X demographic who remembers the establishment Dems in the 1990s trying to one-up the GOP as being the “real party of law and order” – something Biden is doing again.
If Biden had an off-the-charts charisma score like Obama, all that might not matter. But he doesn’t, so it does matter.
At least this article differentiates between my views and those of the petulant BernieBros, but in the end it’s the same kind of Beltway “inside baseball” analysis that had people believing a Clinton win was a sure thing because the alternative was “unthinkably” awful and because the polls never lie.
Even if the polls are favourable, this race still needs to be fought by the Dems as if it now looks like Biff will win in a landslide. That’s not “defeatism”, it’s demanding better of the Dems. It’s 2020, not 1992, and liberal democracy is on the line.
[edited for grammar]
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Well put. And unthinkably awful is where we’re at now. I’ve never had to worry about stocking up on water and non-perishable goods for anything less than a CAT3 hurricane in FL, but I am stocking up now for Nov…just in case. I’ve also never even thought about buying a firearm before, but I’m reconsidering that choice given the number of “TRUMP 4EVER” bumper stickers I’ve seen.
- Hindsight should be here by now.
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That’s OK by me. I’ll be glad to have less news to stress over in the next few years.
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That explains so much of the content in the comments section of every major newspaper, social media platform, etc. .
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I’m curious, do you feel the need to have a firearm in the event Trump loses or wins? I think you imply a loss, but wouldn’t a win add more chaos to this country over a loss? We’d have even more rioters, and we’d have even more of these ‘Trump 4Ever’ jerks crossing state lines with guns. I actually think the loss will calm things down. Maybe either situation is going to be a mess. It’ll still be within the curse of 2020 so I’ll just expect the worst I guess.
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It’s true that the media wants a competitive race . But there’s a sharpening of this effect that pundits generally don’t see: the media business needs Trump to win.
If it encourages you to reconsider the validity of this argument, Trump himself has explicitly made it. That’s one example, but there are dozens more.
I know not literally everything he says is the result of brain worms or a pathological inability to speak truth. Personally, I think he’s done about as much for the news industry as he has for coal mining and heavy manufacturing—i.e., fuck all, while claiming credit for massive rebounds that exist only in his head.
He/you could be objectively right, of course. And obviously you can reach this conclusion without being the once-in-a-millennium kind of shitbag he is. I’m just saying, you’re in scary epistemological territory when Trump is agreeing with you.
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From your lips to God’s ears, @KathyPartdeux!
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Personally, I’d expect some riots in either case, though maybe in different places. Severity-wise… honestly not sure.
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One thing he definitely does is make their jobs easier. They were already derelict in terms of actually investigating anything, but now headline news is literally a matter of just repeating the ffact that he said or tweeted some random garbage.
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Ha, well, that’s true in terms of filing copy. On the other hand, it doesn’t make it any easier for reporters to do what reporters tend to want to do, which is get the scoop, because every cubicle in the White House has fifty scoops in it.
Every person in the WH press room gets tips to three stories a week that would have been Pulitzer material in any other administration, but now, it’s worth a tweet at best. “Our photog caught @realDonaldTrump counting bundles of rubles from a paper bag after Putin meeting, if anyone wants to follow up. Too busy myself.”
Of course, J-school fantasies of being the next Woodward and Bernstein don’t affect circulation numbers, either. But as a researcher myself, I sympathize. The only thing worse than having nothing to go on, when you’re trying to Break the Big Story, is having too much.
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I at least appreciated that he only did so after days of constant ranting from law and order scolds in the press, and by party standards (and certainly his old standards) it was a bare minimum. His campaign knew it was a mirage.
The new media mirage (???) now is “Biden isn’t putting this to bed because Trump is better on The Economy, Biden needs to Talk Economy”
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I have friends who wake up and puke because they have to write about Trump, but know that it (their jobs) are gone if there’s a Biden landslide.
The goodbad news is, if he doesn’t win in a landslide, it ain’t over!
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He’s not that smart, he isn’t selling guns.
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I think that’s what those hoping for change fear. We’re all so exhausted that once Biden wins, there might be an enormous wave of “we just want a few years about not having to think about politics”.
And if those elected in Congress and the Senate hear that, Biden’s personal predilections aren’t going to matter unless he too chooses to attempt to rule by executive fiat.
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