The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Nobody knows nothin', more eruditely

James Fallows wants to put the domestic political press in a time-out:

[I]n historic terms, the midterm results under Joe Biden in 2022 are likely to be far better for the incumbent party and its president than for other modern presidents. As Biden would say, it’s a BFD.

[But] what has happened appears to be entirely at odds with what the political-reporter cadre — the people whose entire job is predicting and pre-explaining political trends — had been preparing the public for.

The Democrats have “defied expectations,” as the Post headline above puts it, largely because of the expectations our media and political professionals had set.

The premises of “analysis” pieces and talk shows over the past year-plus have been:

  • Biden is unpopular,” which may be true but seems not to have been decisive.

  • Afghanistan was the effective end of his presidency,” a widespread view 14 months ago. You can look it up.

  • Democrats have no message” — which in turn is an amalgam of (a) “Roe was a long time ago,” (b) “no one cares about infrastructure,” (c) “it’s all about crime” [or immigrants], and (d) “it’s all about Prices At The Pump.”

  • Dems in disarray.” On the day before people went to the polls, the Times’
    front page had two “analysis” stories on how bleak the Democratic prospects looked.

It’s not so much that this proved to be wrong. It’s that they felt it necessary and useful to get into the "expectations" business this way

How about this, in practical terms: For the next three stories an editor plans to assign on “Sizing up the 2024 field,” or the next three podcasts or panel sessions on “After the midterms, what’s ahead for [Biden, Trump, DeSantis, etc.],” instead give two of those reporting and discussion slots to under-reported realities of the world we live in now.

Whatever you say about the 2024 race now will be wrong. And what you say about the world of 2022 could be valuable.

Fallows, I should remind everyone, started his career as a speechwriter for President Carter and went on to write some of the most salient and prescient analyses of news media in the last 30 years.

Right now, however, I'm just glad I won't get 30 texts a day from candidates I've never heard of.

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