It’s been a long campaign for the Democratic nomination. Very long. Too long. How many debates did they have? Lord.
News networks and pundits have to fill lots of air time and spill lots of ink to make these long cycles work. They’re on tight deadlines, and they seem allergic to any deeper analysis involving ideology or political methods and goals. The result? They publish a lot of junk! Here are the five silliest campaign stories and narratives I’ve found during the 2020 campaign.
For a bit of suspense, I’ll count down from 5.
5. Any Story About Twitter
Ah, Twitter. At times, Twitter dominated pundit discussion. We saw countless stories on Harris’s ‘K-Hive,’ the dreaded ‘Bernie Bros,’ and bickering among various groups of supporters. Reporters routinely quote ‘hot take’ tweets in their stories, and we saw discussion of hordes of tweets for or against the likes of Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Yang, et al.
All this was pretty much apropos of nothing. Candidates running Twitter-centered campaigns crashed and burned before the Iowa caucuses. And while I’m sure Twitter drove clicks for many journalists, it seemed to have no impact at all on the actual race.
Why? Only 22% of American adults use Twitter at all, and most of those who do use Twitter aren’t using it regularly. Narrowing it further, about 2-3% of Americans create the vast majority of U.S.-based Twitter content, and they’re extremely unrepresentative of the voting public. And so, the ‘Twitter narrative’ is a tiny group of people tweeting at each other in an echo chamber while most Americans are off doing different things and not paying attention. Go figure.
4. ‘Warren Erasure’
I covered ‘Warren erasure’ in depth in my post on how Elizabeth Warren lost. The gist of it is that some Warren supporters claimed the press was biased against Warren because they stopped covering her campaign in January and failed to correct after the Iowa caucuses.
The trouble is there’s no such thing as Warren erasure. Warren’s coverage dropped because she had been sinking in the polls for months and she performed poorly in every nomination contest. This is how the press always treats candidates in comparable situations.
Some of the disconnect here is that most Warren supporters live in liberal bubbles of one kind or another. And, as with supporters of any politician, motivated reasoning is a helluva drug. But people way too smart to fall for something like this were falling for it anyway.
3. Hand-wringing About Medicare for All
Using scare tactics against good social democratic legislation is a proud American tradition. Medicare for All is no exception. In general, the silliness comes in two forms: ‘How will you pay for that!?‘ and ‘It’ll take away your health insurance plan!!!’
Of course it’ll take away our health insurance plan…and replace it with a much better one. You ghouls. That’s the whole point, folks. And single payer health insurance is so hard to pay for that…most wealthy nations have already figured it out.
Give me a fucking break.
2. Everyone I Don’t Like is a Russian Asset
At some point during the first year of the Trump administration, about half the Democratic Party decided to to throw in their lot with red-baiting and foolish conspiracy theories about Russia. One lingering consequence is that pundits and politicians sometimes call their opponents a ‘Russian asset.’
Did it happen during the campaign? Why yes, it did. The main target was Tulsi Gabbard. And the lead dunce lobbing the charge was Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s comments directed at Gabbard were about as foolish as her 2016 campaign decision to spend more time in Arizona and Ohio than in Wisconsin. Some people have also lobbed the ‘Russian asset’ charge at Bernie Sanders.
This is all silly season stuff. Yes, Russia has done bad things and we should address it. No, there aren’t Stalinist spies behind every closet door. If you’ve been calling people a Russian asset, let me offer some advice to you: Knock if off. It makes you sound like some dipshit military official in a bad Cold War movie. Just quit.
1. Corn Pop!
Corn Pop was a bad dude, and he ran a bunch of bad boys. Don’t believe me. Ask Joe Biden.
Wow.
