The title of this post is not a mistake. I did not mean The Stakes Of The Race. What I am writing about regarding the 2024 presidential election is indeed about the stakes AND the race.
One is overreported, and one is underreported. The horse race part is overreported, and the stakes part is underreported.
First, a bit about the race itself, and how that is being reported. Over the last month or so, the state of the race went from Trump probably being slightly ahead to it being even. Trump is definitely no longer ahead. Polls are trending towards Biden, including those that showed Trump holding a solid lead that caused a lot of overreaction earlier in the year, like the New York Times/Siena poll.
That particular one is notable because when the Times polls showed Trump with a five-point lead, the Sunday shows talked about it non-stop, and then the cable shows picked it up for much of that week. When the Times polls showed Trump’s lead shrinking to 1, which is a virtual tie, there was about a third of the breathless reporting. Take from that what you may.
In any event, polls are informative, not predictive, pretty much a snapshot of a moment. We are just under seven months out from the election, and anything can happen.
That leads me to the stakes. Jay Rosen, a media critic and New York University journalism professor, has boiled down criticism of the media’s obsession with the horserace side into six words: “Not the odds but the stakes.”
Rosen’s assertion that the media must pivot away from the superficial horse race narrative and toward the profound implications for American democracy is not just timely; it’s imperative. The specter of authoritarianism is manifested by Donald Trump, and the fact that he is so competitive means our democracy is edging towards a cliff. Rosen also insists that newsrooms must elevate the discourse beyond the catnip thrill of the next poll and focus on the existential threats posed by Trump and his followers. In fact, Rosen calls it a moral imperative.
Beyond the obvious fact that Trump is a threat to democracy, you might have noticed that he is an incompetent idiot who is the last person you want in charge during a crisis. Given the horrible situation in Gaza, and the unstable situation in the Middle East what with Israel’s retaliation against Iran last night, would you really want Trump in charge right now?
There are a few signs that the media is waking up to the need to report on the stakes. More stories are reporting on Trump’s bizarre plans for the country in a potential second term, such as this CNN article. There is also increasing scrutiny of Project 2025, which is a blueprint of a Trump second term from The Heritage Foundation that is a rather terrifying read. It is terrifying both for the plan itself, and for the clear indication, given it comes from an organization as supposedly mainstream Republican as The Heritage Foundation, that the entire party is behind Trump.
A Trump second term would include rounding up immigrants and sending them away, even for people who have only known life in America. It would include constant attacks on women, including the removal of abortion rights and the targeting of contraception. It would include revenge against his political enemies, including the specter of throwing them into prison. That’s just a sampling of what he says he wants to do, and he will have the full support of the party this time.
Biden is boring in comparison. He offers tax breaks for families, lower health care costs, smaller deficits, continuation of the fight against climate change, and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Yawn, right? We should all be so bored.
That is the stakes. Some media types insist that they cannot report on Trump in that way, that it would be biased. But what if it is true? How can you be both truthful and give some sort of vision of even-handed reporting if one side is doing reprehensible things right out in the open? When one side is so openly hostile to the very thing that journalism lives on, democracy.
The thing is, you can’t. So you just report the truth. In this case, the truth is simple; for the 2024 election, the stakes are high.
The last word goes to De La Soul.