One interesting thing about social media is to see how it creates something of an echo chamber. It is this precise issue of the pledge to back the GOP nominee that gives us a great example of that echo chamber in action. People on social media who oppose Trump hate the fact that Rubio, Kasich, Cruz and others had pledged to support Trump if he were the nominee. But off Twitter, my reporting indicates that average GOP voters are more than fine with such a pledge. In fact, before the Michigan primary, many non-Trump voters there specifically said how much they appreciated the pledge of unity. Even some non-Trump voters who said that they would never even consider voting for Trump said they were fine with the pledge. Some said it had given them comfort about the steadiness of the candidates. Others said they thought some anti-Trump activists were getting too extreme. Others said it was just a stupid distraction from the actual campaign.

I get that the media have decided that pressing candidates on whether they will continue to support Trump is their favorite thing to do, and that’s fine, but let’s spend some of that energy persistently asking Trump allies to denounce his statements against Heidi Cruz. Or let’s get some persistent questioning of the scandal-deluged Democratic front-runner, who has been avoiding press conferences for months. Or let’s just consider the fact that every campaign has declined the opportunity to back out of the nominee pledge and that this probably indicates that there is little to be gained politically by jumping to this media request. The voters that they seek to secure are different from the voters in newsrooms, after all.