So much of the media failed us during the campaign.
Not all, of course. There was some great reporting done by outlets like ProPublica, Vox, Vanity Fair, etc. But my God, were the big two newspapers, The Washington Post and the New York Times ever terrible until right before the election. Probably too little, too late.
The Times ran pieces like this on Election Eve, warning of what a Trump win would mean. Would have been great to see more of that starting in say August.
The Washington Post’s owner, who also runs a little online shopping site and a media empire, fell over himself to enthusiastically welcome Trump. This leads me to wonder about what the media landscape will be like under a second Trump regime.
Trump has joked about reporters being shot during his campaign, which in a normal decent country would have been his political death, but everyone just sort of shrugged. He has openly talked about revoking the license of MSNBC. Individual reporters will be working under the threat of imprisonment, and probably worse. Despite this, there will be brave reporters, like those at ProPublica, which recently offered this pledge to their readers to report on a second Trump presidency.
But what about the Democrats? How do they communicate their message going forward? I admit this s a tough call because the future is so uncertain. But one thing I think they should consider is going on right media, such as Fox News and Joe Rogan.
There are examples of people appearing on right media and carrying the Democratic message. While I agree with Cassandra that Bernie Sanders should shut up right now, his effective appearance on Joe Rogan in 2019 is one example. Mayor Pete has done outstanding on Fox News.
The other is figure out how to create some sort of liberal equivalent to this giant right-wing media machine. The thing is, the Trump campaign had a four-year media blitz. Harris pretty much only had a few months. You could argue MSNBC was all about Harris, but not near as enthusiastic about Harris as Fox News was about Trump.
Having some sort of media machine is going to be crucial to report on the horrors that are to come from the Trump campaign. I know this is a small sample size but I have seen people pop up in friend’s Facebook feeds who do not seem to understand what is coming from a second Trump administration, being very dismissive of people’s fears. I assume these are soft Trump supporters, and they are definitely in for a shock if the media honestly reports what is to come. Political blowback is one of the things we are counting on to counter Trump, and the midterms are two years away. Trying to win back Congress will be vital in our efforts to stop Trump.
But I don’t trust the DC media to not normalize the worst Trump is planning to unleash. I also don’t trust the American public to fully understand what is happening in front of them, given the penchant for believing things that are not true. Those will be some tough things to overcome, but I have the feeling there is going to be some awful shit that will be very difficult to write off with “yeah but it was worse under Biden” and the Dems will need to hammer Trump hard with it.
We’ll need to get ready for a fight that includes winning the soft Trump voter back over to us, as difficult as that may be and without hurting parts of our coalition, such as trans people.
The last word goes to Death Cab for Cutie.