Lets not pretend the GOP is a normal party We k
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Posted On: 01/19/2021 7:13:07 AM
Re: Goodspeed65 #57424
Lets not pretend the GOP is a normal party
And that's a feature not a bug for some who post here.
Legitimate media must adjust to new political realities
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/...realities/
As of Monday morning, barely more than 48 hours will remain before a new president and vice president will take office. An administration rife with incompetence, openly contemptuous of the rule of law and immersed in right-wing populism politics will leave.
But the authoritarian leanings usually associated with far-right European parties will not vanish. The Republican Party will remain. The one-third or so of the population that still reveres President Trump — despite his having set off a violent insurrection — will not disappear. And that troubling reality should inform reporting and analysis in the coming months and years.
First and foremost, when considering public opinion polls, remember that large chunk of Americans believe something demonstrably false — that the election was stolen — and celebrate a president who sent love to a mob that included a guy wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirt and someone carrying a noose.
They will not support anything President-elect Joe Biden does. Take, for example, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, which finds that a “67 percent majority approves of the way Biden has handled the transition, including 65 percent of self-identified independents, 95 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of Republicans.”
Considering that a large segment of the Republican Party is unreachable, B iden is winning over a huge percentage of the rational public. The Trump dead-enders will remain a problem when it comes to elections (and hence should not be ignored on that score), but when evaluating Biden, you can fairly say that he has strong approval for his management of the transition, including by those Republicans who remain informed, rational and pro-democracy.
. . .
The next challenge is not new, but it becomes more acute in a universe of crazed Trump supporters. The media must resist the fetish for moral equivalence that makes politics seem like merely a matter of policy preference.
We know politics today is about something far more basic: Do you accept reality? Evenhandedness puts the deluded on the same level with the sensible. We should not say, for example, something along the lines of Biden believes the vaccination process is in shambles. Republicans do not.
Better to be clear: According to factual criteria, the vaccination process is in shambles. Trump Party members who never recognized the severity of the disease and balked at mask-wearing despite its proven efficacy will not admit the process is in rotten shape. The short version is easier, simpler and headline-ready; it is also hugely misleading.
7. Demographics have not been on their side for decades...
the GOP can't win nationally without cheating of some sort. They have lost the popular vote in presidential elections 7 of the last 8 IIRC. Basically, they won the popular vote once this century, and that was Dumbya's re-election, which tends to be a lot easier.
13. ...They are a big tent party...
They welcome religious nuts, sadists, white collar crooks, exploiters, fascists, conspiracy theorists, violence fanatics, royalists, anarchists, libertarians, torturers, pedophiles, firearms fetishists, and control freaks.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214951731
Quote:
We know politics today is about something far more basic: Do you accept reality? Evenhandedness puts the deluded on the same level with the sensible.
And that's a feature not a bug for some who post here.
Legitimate media must adjust to new political realities
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/...realities/
As of Monday morning, barely more than 48 hours will remain before a new president and vice president will take office. An administration rife with incompetence, openly contemptuous of the rule of law and immersed in right-wing populism politics will leave.
But the authoritarian leanings usually associated with far-right European parties will not vanish. The Republican Party will remain. The one-third or so of the population that still reveres President Trump — despite his having set off a violent insurrection — will not disappear. And that troubling reality should inform reporting and analysis in the coming months and years.
First and foremost, when considering public opinion polls, remember that large chunk of Americans believe something demonstrably false — that the election was stolen — and celebrate a president who sent love to a mob that included a guy wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirt and someone carrying a noose.
They will not support anything President-elect Joe Biden does. Take, for example, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, which finds that a “67 percent majority approves of the way Biden has handled the transition, including 65 percent of self-identified independents, 95 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of Republicans.”
Considering that a large segment of the Republican Party is unreachable, B iden is winning over a huge percentage of the rational public. The Trump dead-enders will remain a problem when it comes to elections (and hence should not be ignored on that score), but when evaluating Biden, you can fairly say that he has strong approval for his management of the transition, including by those Republicans who remain informed, rational and pro-democracy.
. . .
The next challenge is not new, but it becomes more acute in a universe of crazed Trump supporters. The media must resist the fetish for moral equivalence that makes politics seem like merely a matter of policy preference.
We know politics today is about something far more basic: Do you accept reality? Evenhandedness puts the deluded on the same level with the sensible. We should not say, for example, something along the lines of Biden believes the vaccination process is in shambles. Republicans do not.
Better to be clear: According to factual criteria, the vaccination process is in shambles. Trump Party members who never recognized the severity of the disease and balked at mask-wearing despite its proven efficacy will not admit the process is in rotten shape. The short version is easier, simpler and headline-ready; it is also hugely misleading.
7. Demographics have not been on their side for decades...
the GOP can't win nationally without cheating of some sort. They have lost the popular vote in presidential elections 7 of the last 8 IIRC. Basically, they won the popular vote once this century, and that was Dumbya's re-election, which tends to be a lot easier.
13. ...They are a big tent party...
They welcome religious nuts, sadists, white collar crooks, exploiters, fascists, conspiracy theorists, violence fanatics, royalists, anarchists, libertarians, torturers, pedophiles, firearms fetishists, and control freaks.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214951731
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