There’s no need for Democrats to act as if we’ve been mugged by reality. A small segment of the electorate spoke on Tuesday. There’s no need to panic. Since it happened on the West Coast, the political press has conveniently forgotten the ass whupping Trumpers took in the California recall election.

The press has a nasty habit of ignoring political events in my original home state of California:

• The first modern media campaign was waged in 1934 against Upton Sinclair.
• Celebrity politics got into full swing with the election of George Murphy and Ronald Reagan in 1964 and ’66, respectively.
• The Jarvis-Gann tax-cutting initiative in 1978 foreshadowed the so-called Reagan Revolution.
• Then Governor Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant policies led to California’s emergence as a blue state in national politics.

As you can see, the press has a tendency to think that important things only happen on the East Coast. It’s not the only thing they’ve been wrong about this week.

I concur with Eric Boehlert’s reaction to the media coverage of Tuesday’s results in his newsletter Press Run:

Democrats have been down this rocky road before. In November, 2009, just one year after Barack Obama’s landslide victory, Democrats lost both the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races. But that didn’t end the Obama presidency. The following year he signed Obamacare into law and in 2012 he won re-election with relative ease.

One thing that has clearly changed since then though, is the caterwauling political press, which is treating Tuesday’s two-race results like a political earthquake that has all but destroyed Biden’s four-year term. Rushing to use every conceivable, hysterical adjective to describe a three point-loss in Virginia as the equivalent of the Democratic Party’s permanent demise, the press has eagerly lost all perspective and seems to relish the assignment of burying Biden. (WashingtonPost.com Wednesday night posted no less than 15 articles and columns about the Democratic loss.)

The title of the piece says it all:

Virginia lesson for Democrats: The media are not your friend

The MSM has a masochistic relationship with the party of stupidity and sedition. After four years of abuse at the hands of the Impeached Insult Comedian, the MSM are still in thrall to the GOP.

What the GOP does best is lie. Glenn Youngkin’s campaign was based on the racist lie that CRT is taught in Virginia schools. Instead of calling them out on the lie, the press praised them for savvy messaging. They’re the cult of the savvy, after all. TM: Charlie Pierce.

Instead of panicking and listening to Lizard Man James Carville, Democrats should stay the course. 2022 already looked perilous, the small sample of voters who turned out on Tuesday is reflective, not predictive of that stark reality. Besides, Carville is a has been who hasn’t managed a winning campaign since 1992. He hasn’t been a man of the people since The War Room was in theatres. Carville and his wingnut wife Mary Matalin lived in a mansion on St. Charles Avenue for many years before moving to a two-million-dollar condo in downtown New Orleans. That’s a man who has his finger on the pulse of the great unwashed? Oy, just oy.

The lesson that Democrats need to learn is how to deal with opponents who incessantly lie and a press corps that enables them. The press aren’t calling GOPers out on their lies, so we must do it ourselves. It’s not going to be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is.

I, for one, am tired of the panicking on the Democratic side every time there’s a reversal of any kind. It’s not what grown-ups do. It’s time to toughen up and stay the course. It’s what Republicans have been doing since 1980. That’s the only way Democrats should be more like Republicans.

Democrats need to stop fixating on the details of the sausage making and pass the Biden agenda.  We’re committed and should stay the course.

The last word is aspirational in nature. It goes to Mavis Staples: