Observe the media "blaming themselves for Trump" but not Clinton

I was expecting a rather predictable turn of the worms to show up in the media once Donald Trump became the presumptive nominee, but I honestly expected them to wait until the funeral for the Cruz campaign had at least left for the cemetery. Wasting no time, however, the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus was out of the gate early, providing the media post mortem as to how they simply failed us all during the GOP primary. The hand wringing seems to include dabbing at some alligator tears, however, because the “failures” to which Marcus alludes all seem to fall under the category of working insufficiently hard for the Democrats.

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Let’s start with their failure to utterly expose the GOP for what it is.

Mesmerized by the bright, shiny object that is Donald Trump, we collectively failed to plumb his gaping lack of policy knowledge and proposals. Not completely, just not enough, and way too late. And not just his: Distracted by Trump, we let the whole field off the hook.

The purely commercial explanation for this dereliction would be that the media, television in particular, didn’t want to kill the golden goose of traffic. That’s too simplistic — and too sinister.

I think we also believed that exposing Trump’s outrage du jour was doing our job, and would, eventually, sink him.

Notice that despite the author’s claims that it’s the job of the media to inform the public about candidate positions and policies, she can’t resist slipping in an admission that their real failure was their inability “to sink him, with the “him” in question being Trump, of course. Is this truly what Ruth Marcus sees as the result of her newspaper doing its job? One might have foolishly expected that the Fourth Estate should be a neutral referee, putting out the facts about all the candidates and then dutifully reporting what the citizens decided after the dust settled. But in this case, Marcus unwittingly exposes the (wo)man behind the curtain and reveals that the conclusion had been drawn in the newsroom before the voting began. If they had properly done their job, the media (not the voters) would have defeated Trump.

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But what of Hillary Clinton? Was there no shortcoming on the part of the press in terms of her impending nomination? Of course! But the description from Marcus is a bit different when it comes to the historic, first female president.

Democrats have their own rethinking to do, even if they retain the White House.

Beneath the presidential level, their party is in dire shape. Since 2008, Democrats have lost 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, 12 governorships and 900-plus seats in state legislatures. That drains the party of legislative power and empties its bench.

Meantime, Clinton would take office with historically high negative ratings and be the first Democrat since Grover Cleveland in 1885 to be elected to a first term without the party’s complete control of Congress. Perhaps chastened Republicans will feel a new urge to conciliation and productivity, but the experience of the Obama presidency suggests a rockier path.

Notice that there isn’t so much as a morsel of regret over the prospect of nominating someone who may be on the receiving end of a federal indictment before the voting begins. There’s not a wisp of remorse over allowing a person so transparently callow and ambitious that she’s taken every position available on virtually every issue when it served her purposes. No… the only regret expressed is that her approval rating is too low and the Democrats have lost so many state and local races.

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You see, the media fell down on the job there, too. They didn’t do the hard work of propping up Clinton’s popularity or ensuring that her party won more down ticket races. This is what we can expect in spades now that the race is settling into its final configuration. Don’t blame the media for electing Trump in the primary. That was the work of the voters. But you can expect the news industry to do their level best to correct your “mistake” in November and sweep Hillary Clinton into office.

Thankfully the voters get a say in that as well.

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