The MSM and Kamala “Joy”

Being the Democrat National Committee and the Main Stream Media – and I’m loving it. Months after losing the US Presidency, the Senate and the House, the Democrats and the US Left in general (plus leftists around the world) are still trying to figure out what went wrong. Given the complexities and depth involved, much of that belongs in a separate post, but for the moment I’ll just focus on the symbiotic relationship between the Democrat Party and the MSM.

The reason is an article in the New York Times just the other day (and highlighted by Times Whisperer, Ann Althouse), written by one Rob Flaherty, who was Kamala Harris’s deputy campaign manager, lambasting his side for not getting that the world has changed since the Obama campaign on 2008:

I was deputy campaign manager on Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign. I’ve come up through a party that clings to TV ads and news releases, holding onto a media environment that stopped existing a decade ago. A party that thought Barack Obama’s cultural cool would last forever, and that young voters were table stakes. A party fundamentally mismatched with the task at hand.
…
the center-left’s attention and viewership is generally pointed squarely at the traditional press. Opt-in voters are more likely to trust mainstream institutions, after all. This leaves us relying on a news media industry that is neither a partisan ally nor reaches the voters we need. Our online ecosystem can’t sustainably thrive…. It leaves Democrats unable to influence the culture that really matters today….”

The MSM not partisan for the Democrats? AYFKM? Perhaps he should look at the collection of headlines above that perfectly echoed the Harris campaign talking point of “Joy”, plus every other piece of bullshit the campaign trotted out. Perhaps he really does believe that MSM when they publish books crying Mea Culpa over their “missing” the decline into senility of “President” Biden, a cry for forgiveness that has fallen flat, given how blatant they were in both averting their eyes from what the rest of us could see, and attacking those who could see and spoke up (their cry of “cheap fakes” remains a favourite for me)

Still, the rest of his analysis of the “center-left” is correct and suggests they might be learning something. But then….

While we prattle on, concerning ourselves with those who already agree with us, the right has built an information machine aimed squarely at opt-out voters — people sick of traditional politics. Right-wing partisans, much like opt-out voters, don’t trust the mainstream media or Hollywood. They seek out alternatives. This helps generate demand.

This demand is met with supply: a network of influencers, personalities, podcasters and TikTokers who both inflame their bases and push messages into nonpolitical subcultures…. They present right-wing cultural narratives on every issue set — and push messages into nonpolitical subcultures…. Meanwhile,

In other words the delusion is still intact, and has now extended into new areas, in that “the right has built an information machine aimed squarely at opt-out voters”, while also admitting that it arose because supply will increase to meet demand.

But his phrase, repeated twice, about pushing “messages into nonpolitical subcultures” is also another tell that he really doesn’t get how this happened, because in his mind it’s not really about demand-pull but supply-push, which is exactly how the Democrats got into this situation. They thought they could say anything and gaslight the American voters by matching up their talking points – The Biden economy is strong, the border is secure, the C-19 vaccine works – with their powerful MSM ally as the megaphone.

Lefty herself, Althouse has no time for this bullshit:

 I take it to mean that Flaherty is both careless in his writing and genuinely afraid of the phenomenon of messages pushed into minds. The nefarious “influencers, personalities, podcasters and TikTokers” are out there generating “narratives” — “on every issue set” — and pushing that material into vulnerable people. There’s no sense that speakers have attracted listeners who will actually think and form preferences. That is, there’s no sense that the “opt-out voters” are human beings worthy of democracy. They’re victims who wander the dark streets of the internet and are raped by right-wing misinformation.

Boiling it down, what Flaherty is saying is that his precious Democrat Party has relied too long on the MSM to push their messages onto the stupid voters and now need to copy the Right’s online information machine to …. push their messages onto the stupid voters.

Yeah! That’s dynamite analysis there, deputy dawg. Thanks for missing the lesson. Please keep missing it, even as shit like the following keeps happening right before your eyes (just like with Biden) as his “not a partisan ally” MSM continue to pull against the Trump administration the same stunts of dutifully echoing the Democrat Party narrative of the day – the latest being the War On Judges being waged by Trump. Watch the following robots.