I hesitate to argue with my friend Charlie Cooke too much on this subject, mostly because I think we agree more than we disagree. We both think that “Republicans have made their lives pretty difficult for the last decade” and “that they should not have chosen Donald Trump again (or ever).” Where we disagree, as it seems to me, is not on whether the press’s pro-Kamala and generally pro-Democratic bias matters at all but whether, in my words, that bias is “remotely decisive.”
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.
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.
For the last decade, the Yankees have been at the top or near the top of the payroll table nearly every year, but they haven’t won a World Series since 2009. Has the ability to “buy players” and outspend everyone else added the baseball equivalent of “two, three, perhaps five points at the polls” to the Yankees annual win totals? Sure, but it’s not decisive. If it were decisive, you wouldn’t see teams like the 2020 Tampa Bay Rays win it all. If it were decisive, you wouldn’t see organizations like the Seattle Mariners decide to even field a team!
So if it isn’t just payroll, what wins baseball games? Better players, better coaching, better scouting and drafting, better strategy, and, yes, that secret sauce in baseball: that providential bounce of the ball.
What’s the equivalent of all that in politics? Better candidates, better messaging, better grassroots organizing, and a better and more communicable political philosophy that totally normal, not-terribly-political people can identify with and want to buy into by voting for it. That’s what’s decisive. And that’s what the Republican Party, at the presidential level, is not very good at.
There’s a lot of talk that this is a 50–50 country. Well, sure, in a 50–50 country, one or two or five points at the polls might mean a lot. But why have Republicans allowed themselves to settle for the idea that this must be a 50–50 country? Why can’t conservatives turn this into a 55–45 country by consistently putting forth better candidates armed with a better message?
My argument is that, as a general proposition, good, personable candidates tend to win, and bad, annoying candidates tend to lose — even with the press’s thumb on the scale.
But — good news! — that’s what conservative voters actually have some degree of control over. Conservatives can choose better candidates if they want them. Conservatives can reward better messaging. Hell, conservatives can go out and shape the future political-philosophical direction of their party.
Again, Charlie and I mostly agree on all this, I think. So I don’t want to make a rhetorical mountain out of a rhetorical molehill. But I’m a lot more interested in what conservatives are doing and saying, and what their imperfect political vehicle, the Republican Party and its politicians, are doing and saying, than whatever the press is up to.