Why Eric Cantor's loss caught the media flat-footed

And so it went. To be sure, Tea Party opposition contributed to Cantor’s loss. But how much is still unclear. So far, we have no empirical evidence such as post-election polling to quantify it, let alone draw vast national implications. Yet we in the media have already made it a truism.

The same is true for the immigration issue. Aside from the role of the Tea Party, the media automatically assumed that Cantor’s stance on immigration reform strongly contributed to his demise. Again, possibly true, but polling data is ambiguous. Nonetheless, the media buzz lingers that the issue was a huge factor.

We in the political media are very good at talking to ourselves. It’s bad enough that we do it on TV over and over again. What’s worse, we often do it when we write our stories, filling them with the intricacies of political process and insider jargon. Rather than simply inform voters about who the candidates are and what they stand for, our stories sometimes appear designed to show our colleagues in the media and the politicians we cover how much we know about the game. Or worse, we often paint overly negative portraits of the candidates and contribute to voter malaise.