On Friday, Mark argued that, while “the American press is an embarrassment” that is “hyping Kamala Harris as the second coming and putting a thumb, two hands, and a 45-pound dumbbell on the scales in an attempt to prop her up”:
It also doesn’t matter. None of it is remotely decisive.
The reason why the Republican Party is, at the moment, on track to lose the 2024 election is that the Republican Party is a minority coalition that picked a very unpopular 78-year-old retread as its candidate.
More specifically, Mark wrote:
Is Harris an ideal candidate? Is she an incredibly talented orator? Is she deft on her feet and nimble in debate? Is she a famous wonk? Does she have a long track record of competence at the state and federal level? Has she been scrutinized by a tough no-nonsense press and come out stronger on the other side? No, of course not — but she’s an alternative to Trump/Biden, and that’s probably going to be enough.
I agree that the Republicans have made their lives pretty difficult for the last decade. I agree that they should not have chosen Donald Trump again (or ever). I just don’t think it follows that, because the GOP is not as good as it could be, the press’s extraordinary bias doesn’t matter. It does. Why? Because both things are happening at the same time. Like a car with an underpowered engine driving into headwinds, Trump is weak and ill-disciplined and unpopular and ridiculous and Kamala Harris is a fake candidate who is being treated with kid gloves by the very media that is curating her campaign. Trump’s flaws are noted and disseminated; Harris’s are ignored and suppressed. Hey presto, bias!
Mark notes that Harris is not an ideal candidate, or a talented orator, or a deft and nimble debater, or a famous wonk, and she does not have a long track record of competence at the state and federal level. That is all true. Also true is that is paying a smaller price for any of this than she should be — or would be if she were a Republican (any Republican) — because the media is running interference for her whenever it can. Harris has not been asked to give interviews, and has paid no price for her unwillingness to do so. She has not had to account for her prior radicalism, or to put together a full set of policy proposals, or to explain what has made her change her mind on the ideas she already had — if, indeed, she has changed her mind, which we don’t know because no hard inquiries have been forthcoming. Harris hasn’t had to demonstrate that she can speak in full sentences without a script, because she has spoken no sentences without a script; she hasn’t had to reveal that she’s not a wonk, because her entire campaign is running on vibes; she hasn’t had to explain her role in Joe Biden’s demise because that demise has immediately been forgotten. I struggle to believe that this “doesn’t matter.”
Conservatives start from where we are, not from where we want to be. Above almost anything else, that is the key to our approach. That being so, media bias must be acknowledged and fought rather than ignored. But there are two sides to not ignoring something. One is making sure that you nominate strong candidates who can navigate the problem and then overcome its effects. The other is making sure that you do not come to convince yourself that it never mattered in the first place. When, in 1955, National Review was launched into the world, it was with a clear-eyed acceptance that the views it intended to promulgate were outnumbered and disdained. Had they not been, National Review would not have been needed. Things are better now, but, in different ways — and to different extents — the problems that NR existed to address still exist today.
One of those problems is media bias — which, inter alia, gives the Democratic Party a persistent messaging advantage, limits what people who are not obsessed with politics hear about the world, determines how issues of great import are framed, and, at its worst, introduces such terrible lies into the bloodstream that our ability to have meaningful debates is corrupted. I simply do not think that it lets Donald Trump off the hook to observe that the press’s treatment of Kamala Harris has been astonishing or to propose that it might even be worth two, three, perhaps five points at the polls. At the DNC last week, a delegate told ABC that Harris didn’t need to talk to the media because the media would do her work for her whether she showed up or not. “I trust the journalists to explain these policies and our values to folks,’ delegate Kaivan Shroff submitted, “and I think when that happens, it will be successful for Democrats.”
Indeed.