Some Observations About the GOP Primary, Pt. 3
Iowa and NH, everyone drops out, Nikki Haley and the Confederacy, media bullshit.
An election narrative changes by dint of how CNN or The New York Times or Washington Post covers it, and how these outlets cover it will go a decently long way in deciding how voters will come to interpret a presential race. That is something that the people in charge of mainstream media outlets surely understand, and may even take some pride in, but would never publicly admit to. If it is in the professional and financial interest of these organizations to frame cakewalk presidential elections as a suspense-filled horserace or to give Donald Trump over $2 billion in free media coverage, it is in the interest of the Times or whoever to make all of that work and all of those editorial considerations invisible. For an industry that deals in objectivity and journalistic integrity, the idea is to act as if this dynamic doesn’t even exist.
It’s that last bit, the pretense of a perspective that is immune to the viral noise and chaos of The Discourse, that makes discussing presidential elections so unpleasant. Accept it, and you find yourself jaded at the state of current affairs; deny it and you will find yourself convulsing and talking more heatedly about how an obscure law removed Trump from the Colorado ballot and what this means for voter turnout. Go off about how the mainstream media is beholden to a smug, musty status quo and how this is a bias it is built to miss, or about how its virtuosic dispassion serves to translate the ravenous dictates of all-consuming capitalism into something less tonally alarming, and you will be mostly correct—but doing so involves asking the wrong questions and turning yourself into someone who isn’t very pleasant to be around. Most of what’s wrong here, and so much of what perpetuates the wrongness of droll and tedious electoral coverage, is less about what these journos actually believe and more about what these outlets see and don’t see in their own broader hand in things.
Now that a New York jury has ordered Trump to pay $83 million to E. Jean Carroll in total damages for repeatedly defaming her after she accused him of sexual assault, his life has come to resemble a Murder She Wrote plot. Despite his ongoing legal troubles, Trump has coasted through pretend primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire against spineless, replacement-level Republicans running half-baked campaigns. Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Barack Obama, has made some compelling arguments as to why these primary victories are underwhelming and could signal a swing voter problem for Trump. But Trump’s victories have been described as “historic,” “stunning,” and an “exclamation mark,” and not an entirely expected rout over a feeble crew of flub-prone and flustered nullities who weren’t all that committed to stopping him in the first place. The two most notable challengers were Nikki Haley, who couldn’t even muster the courage to say that the Civil War was fought over slavery, and Ron DeSantis, whose high heels were always his Achilles heel. It was clear that everyone was fighting to either run on Trump’s ticket or secure a position in his cabinet. The best that Chris Christie could hope for is something vaguely resembling Mitt Romney’s career: Flaccid opposition to Trump that will be quickly forgotten.
The speed at which DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott dropped out and endorsed Trump only cemented that there was never an alternative to head empty fascism in a party that is now a complete factory of bozos and chuckleheads. I pray for a cartoon anvil to fall on Vivek’s head; he’s the biggest meatrider I’ve seen in a while. At least in one of the debates, he pointed to Nikki Haley and said, “Look at the blank expression on her face.” And Meatball Ron should consider laying low for a few election cycles and giving it another shot—maybe he will finish second on Super Tuesday behind Nick Fuentes or The Quartering.
Whether any of this campaign minutia is compelling to you will depend on how interesting you find the braying drawing-room drama of punditry dullards, and how patient you are with being spun to by blowhards dumber than you. The world-historic fatuity of The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime Since the Last One has mostly been characterized by a senile mummy squaring off against a dopey golf blob, and the media remoras pouting grandiosely atop its egregious and specifically geriatric talking points. Their dreary personal defects and cheesy clubhouse feuds cycle in and out of urgency without ever ceasing to be palpable, and it casts a long and dispiriting shadow over the broader culture. On the merits, this is all familiar horserace coverage broadcasted by mediocre and self-regarding lanyards unfolding as dull anxieties and off-the-rack doctrine until they assume the size and shape of coherent analysis. These are not very interesting reporters or surprising campaign developments, but the narrative has permeated The Discourse enough to give Trump an aura of inevitable victory. A recent YouGov poll shows that only 32% of Americans expect Biden to win the election, even if aggregated polling data suggests this election will be a toss-up.
This anxiety and high-handed busybody bluster scales effectively up and down until there is a feeling of dissociative vertigo. The twitchy coverage sort of obfuscates the media’s role in this election—as the invisible hand of respectable opinion, a tidal force that carries things forward or back. Trump beat Haley by a far narrower margin in New Hampshire than he beat her in Iowa, and the Live Free or Die state is far more representative of the broader population. Yet, the press is going to keep trumpeting about how he had a “commanding” win while the actual voting shows he is an incredibly weak candidate facing an immense challenge in a general election. It would be foolish and exhausting to speculate on Biden’s odds of returning to the White House because there is nothing to do but speculate. His poll numbers and favorabilities look grim, but Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterms, a series of “pro-life” ballot initiatives have flopped even in red states, and state-level elections last fall augured well for liberal governance. These developments would indicate that Republicans have handicapped themselves by overturning Row v. Wade and crafting a campaign strategy geared toward getting Ben Shapiro to retweet them.
Right Wing Pundit: “This election was a disaster! This is unacceptable! Republicans need to look inside and figure out why we can’t connect with fed-up Americans.”
Their Previous 10,000 Tweets: “LOOK at this scene from BARBIE. The woke mob INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED Ken’s bathing suit to make PEDOPHILES’ COCKS HARD!!”
While there is the media’s understanding of itself as the author of The Discourse and all that ostentatious behind-the-scenes decisions of what is and is not a story and what is and is not up for debate, it is also depressing to see just how much the press will be complicit in further degrading if not destroying our democracy. You already know how this works and we are soaking in it. Political journalism has been corporatized and perverted by a relentless profit motive and will unlikely change because the source of revenue won’t change. What begins as irresponsible and ideological media discourse shows up down the line as manufactured reality. The squabbling will only ever continue; the resolution will arrive without any visible fingerprints, let alone accountability. The rest of us will tune in and tune out.
An Addendum
I don’t like the man, but he is taking a courageous stand here. A lot of people are saying this, and saying this strongly. Based and baggrumpilled.
I am aware that it is the standard hack lib-brained comedic instinct to insult Trump’s looks, but Christ, surely he can afford proper tanning lotion instead of using basting oil.
The man is pure Crisco. My cholesterol shot up eight points while watching this.
He is a turkey-gravy-embalmed syphilitic nightmare in diapers.
He’s got that neckussy.
i’m feeding off the discourse
going to the disc golf course
in college gotta take this course
grab ya lightsaber and use the force
these aren’t the droids you’re looking for
but you should make sure of course
Politics as entertainment is all fun and games until policy as societal decay comes knocking.