By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Donald Trump may overplay it a little with his “FAKE NEWS” schtick, but the reality of inhered left-wing bias in the media is axiomatic. If we needed a few more examples, I offer the last few weeks.
It’s no secret that the mainstream media has been pretty much carrying the Harris campaign since the deposing of Joe Biden, whose foibles and steady degradation of mental acuity they had been all but covering for until it became so obvious that it would require a Truman Show-level of coordinated mass deception to employ the needed gymnastics. Since the primary-circumventing replacement of the Democratic Presidential ticket (a brilliant bit of political sleight-of-hand naturally left uncommented upon) most of the media have fallen over themselves in the near-deification of Harris, and, astonishingly, in covering for the presidential candidate’s blatant avoidance of media interaction or policy revelation.
In any other circumstance where an important public official so obviously and pointedly refused media questions and blockaded media access, the response from the media would be righteous outrage. With Harris, the response is idolatry.
The finally-deigned CNN interview didn’t do much to alter that landscape. First off, does anyone else find it odd that the interview with Harris – a Presidential candidate – was billed as being a monumental “watershed” moment, an event so rare and unique as to be granted the same level of newsworthiness as a superpower summit meeting or natural disaster? She’s a candidate for President of the United States for heaven’s sake.
Dana Bash came marginally close, at best, to trying to properly introduce Harris to the American people and maybe try to eke out a sliver of a suggestion of what her plans for the Republic might entail, but any viewer would be forgiven for coming away more confused than before. Bash asked some pretty decent questions, but then gave Harris a pass by absolutely refusing to ask a single substantive follow up. Bash is a talented reporter who really ought to know better. This was the kindergarten school of journalism.
Everything about the interview was designed to make it exceedingly easy on Ms. Harris – the fact that it was taped and edited, rather than live; having Tim Walz tag along to hold her hand and serve as pinch-hitter rather than risk her going it alone; the simple fact that it was CNN doing the interview. Granted, I suppose that having MSNBC or Jacobin Magazine run the interview would have been too much of an admission by the Harris campaign that they may just as well have issued a press release, and there weren’t many good options; still, it had the same aura as if Trump were subjected to a biting interview by OAN, or Vladimir Putin by Russian State television.
And still we know next to nothing about her policies and plans, when and why – or even, really, if – she changed her mind on policies covering just about every major issue since she last outlined her horrific designs for the nation in 2019. The closest Bash got to exploring that was on the issue of fracking, and the answer – that her “values hadn’t changed” – was so circumlocutory as to render it unintelligible.
The Washington Post’s A.J. Dionne dutifully answered the call to come riding to Harris’ rescue. He tried desperately to explain that the paradoxical relationship between the policies of Kamala Harris 2019 and Kamala Harris 2024 on fracking and the border – to the extent we know they exist – are not politically motivated “flip-flops” but merely “reflect a progressive movement that found a way during the Biden years to manage the trade-offs that progress requires.”
That’s on the order of suggesting Bill Clinton signed Newt Gingrich’s welfare reform, the crime bill, and the Defense of Marriage Act because he saw the light. Dionne writes, not unreasonably, that “in a democracy, good policy without successful politics is impossible. The two always interact, and not just because governing requires winning elections. The policies themselves regularly need to be reconsidered and adjusted to build the coalitions required to enact and preserve them.” I eagerly await the column in which he ascribes that truism to Trump’s newfound position on abortion.
Mr. Dionne’s elasticity in defense of Ms. Harris is admirable and says much about his ability as a polemicist, but nobody is buying it. Least of all, probably, Ms. Harris, who is checking with her communications team – including the Washington Post and the New York Times – to find out what her positions ought to be this week.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.