In his reply to my response, Mark writes:
Charlie thinks that the press’s embarrassing, malign behavior might well be “worth two, three, perhaps five points at the polls.” And it very well might be. I’m ready to concede that point. And if you want to say that it matters, then I suppose I will agree with you.
I just don’t think it’s decisive.
I don’t know what this means. If one concedes that the press’s support might be worth two, three, perhaps five points at the polls, then one is necessarily conceding that any race in which a disfavored-by-the-press candidate is running is not a 50—50 affair. As a practical matter, it is of course sensible for Republicans to act as if they have to start, two, three, or perhaps five points down, rather than merely to whine about that being the case. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is the case. If, as Mark has, you concede that point, then you’ve conceded that the press’s behavior is, indeed, “decisive” in any race where the margin for the Republican in the absence of the press’s bias would have been smaller than two, three, or perhaps five points. That seems irrefutable, no?
As for this:
At the risk of straining an analogy to the breaking point, I think American politics is something like Major League Baseball. Does it matter that Charlie’s New York Yankees have the ability to outspend most other teams while building their roster? (This year, the Yanks spent something like $300 million on their lineup.) Of course it matters. But it’s not decisive.
Of course it’s “decisive.” It’s “decisive” in any case in which the players that the Yankees have because they’re so rich make the difference between the Yankees winning and the Yankees losing. That the Yankees are rich doesn’t guarantee their success, sure. But it makes a big, big difference — which is why, given all the other options, they routinely spend the money that they do. If MLB worked like the NFL, the Yankees would not have their current roster, and they would not be doing as well as they are. If you don’t believe that, take just one of Gerritt Cole, Juan Soto, or Aaron Judge out of this year’s lineup.
As a friend points out to me, this claim is broadly equivalent to the one made in defense of affirmative action. For years, apologists for racial preferences said, “well, they matter, but they aren’t decisive.” But of course they were, or they wouldn’t be defending them. Certainly, there were many other factors involved when colleges picked students, but adding in racial preferences pushed a bunch of people over the edge who, absent those racial preferences, would not have made the cut. That’s what affirmative action was.
So it is here. Once one has accepted that the press’s conduct helps one side at the polls — and that it is designed to do so — one has accepted that the press’s conduct will be “decisive” in a whole lot of close races. That, sometimes, Republicans do well enough to overcome that handicap does not mean that it was never there; it means that, for a time, and all other things being equal, they were winning by more than two, three, or five points. Go look up the last 30 years of election results in this country, and apply the filter that Mark has conceded exists. Why am I irritated about this? That’s why.