By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator
What happened to that Red Wave? We know the answer: it crashed against the rocks of real voters. Our topic today is: what happened to the pundits and gasbags who for months predicted that Red Wave?
The short answer is of course nothing. They will continue to dispense conventional wisdom and memory-hole their farcically-wrong pre-election prognostications.
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| The pundits were spot on as always |
But there's a longer answer provided by long-time media critic Dan Froomkin:
Ever since they started handicapping the 2022 election...leading political reporters and pundits consistently predicted a midterm shellacking for Joe Biden and Democrats. It’s almost like they were looking forward to it.
They never even considered that voters might reject extremism.
No wonder they didn’t see it coming.
They wrote about the inevitably devastating impact of Biden’s low approval ratings. They wrote about the undeniable historical trends. And more recently, they wrote relentlessly, about inflation as a Democratic albatross, even though it was a global phenomenon being exploited by fossil-fuel and grocery-store giants.
After the Dobbs decision, they briefly entertained the notion that things might go another way. But then they dismissed it entirely.
By contrast, what any responsible, halfway-intelligent and not coopted political reporter should have been asking, over and over again, is: After all this — after Trump’s attempt to steal the election, after a violent right-wing assault on the Capitol, and with the GOP swearing fealty to MAGA, spreading vile conspiracy theories about white replacement, and accusing teachers of grooming — how could America possibly vote for Republicans ever again?
That's a harder question, especially in Texas and Florida, which we'll have to leave for another day. Today we seek only to turn the hot lights on some of the supposed experts who were left with their junk flopping in the breeze when the Red Tide receded.
Here's that Niagara of conventional wisdom, Politico, getting it wrong to the very end (November 7):
The story went to cherry pick a poll that asked voters what would play a major role in deciding how they would vote. Lots said the economy. Can you name a single year in the history of polling when voters didn't say the economy was a major issue? Our lines are open! Politico also cited a finding that 70% of voters thought the country was on the wrong track. By a marvel of meta-incomprehension, Politico itself took the wrong track and concluded that this was bad for Democrats. Have you met any Democrat after Dobbs, Trump, DeathSantis, election denial, endless hate speech and acts, and an attempted and continuing insurrection led by Trump and supported by 90% of Republicans who thinks the country on the right track?
Speaking of the Usual Suspects, let's go back to October 28:
That voters might have other things on their minds than Joe Biden (whose performance since inauguration given his razor-thin majorities has been nothing short of astonishing) never seemed to find purchase in the great empty spaces of Cillizza's brainpan. Women worried about losing their half-century right to control their own bodies thanks to a Republican-bent Supreme Court? Not an issue...for white men like him.
Not to be outdone in quoting some poll data and then free associating it to nonsense, reliably wrong Chuck Todd opened Meet the Press on October 23 thusly:
Overall, the battle for congressional control, it's a dead even 47-46. But if you go under the hood of our poll, this brand new poll, you will see that among likely voters, Republicans have an advantage, and among the final group of persuadable voters, Republicans have the advantage. That is why it feels as if the wind has shifted a little bit here.
Dead even? That must be good news for Democrats because, as pundits never tire of telling us, the party controlling the White House usually loses a bunch of seats at the midterms. There was indeed a mighty wind brewing but poor old Chuck needed a weatherman, or perhaps a 25-year-old woman, to tell him which way it was blowing.
Sadly the results were not much better at the summits of the journalism food chain. Here's The Washington Post's Michael Scherer on October 23:
You would think that it's always the case that Democrats express pre-election shpilkes, in part because they're Democrats and in part because it's tactically wise to strike fear into the heart of your base by claiming that even a single vote could change the outcome (as indeed appears to be the case). And Republicans always express steely confidence, in part because they're Republicans and in part because everyone they talk to at the Bushwood Country Club bar thinks like them. That's why if you just rely on party hacks, you will, like Scherer, f*** up.
By the way, what's he saying now?
We're seeing a lot of passive voice in the post-election coverage. The midterms looked like a GOP lock? To whom? And with the keen hindsight now being deployed by Mr. Scherer, how could any f***in' idiot have missed the signs?
Here's his post-mortem:
They [Republicans] were hobbled by unprepared first-time candidates, fundraising shortfalls and Trump, whose self-concern required constant attention — right up to the eve of the election, when he forced party bosses to beg him once again to delay a presidential campaign announcement.
Interestingly, each of these phenomena were in public view before Election Day. Anyone could have observed them if they weren't too busy jabbering to consultants and their fellow hacks.
But don't worry, Scherer based his coverage not on what real voters think but on the same disingenuous clowns who misled him all along:
This story of how the Republican Party red wave became a ripple — with Republicans on track to narrowly win control in the House and still at risk of falling short in the Senate — is based on interviews with 47 strategists, donors, advisers and candidates from both parties...
Which is why he focuses on insider baseball and not on the views of his fellow citizens worried as much about the future of democracy as reporters are about the soaring price of Cheetos in the Post's vending machines. It also means that he regurgitates the Republican talking point that their problem is not their sucky white supremacist pro-rich anti-women anti-Earth views; it's that they can't find anyone to put them across as smoothly at St. Ronald of Bitburg did 40 years ago. Just because the Republicans pour this into the ears of credulous reporters doesn't make it true.
We've saved the apex of the journalism food pyramid for last. How did The New York Times do?
Not so good:
lot of egg on plenty of faces but it does seem like the Times was particularly strident predicting a Republican wave long before votes were counted. pic.twitter.com/8tq0HsAnsP
— Eric Schultz (@EricSchultz) November 12, 2022
But surely The Times in its post-election analysis would not step on the same cowpie as the Post by relying on self-serving spin from Republican hacks, right?
Sorry, Scotty:
So how many interviews does it take to f**k up a story like this? Seventy! And it's yet another triumph of the passive voice:
All the conditions appeared to have been set for a Democratic wipeout: inflation at 40-year highs, concerns about crime, elevated gas prices, the typical thrust for change.
Appeared to whom, we ask.
Did the Times piece delve deeply on the vital issues that caused millions of voters to gag at the thought of voting Republican?
Our careful review of the piece reveals:
Phrase not found.
In fairness, the word is found in a subhead several thousand words into the piece, in connection with a brief, stupid discussion of how the loss of reproductive rights protected for a half-century helped the Democrats, wait for it, raise money.
How about one more fun word search?
Yeah, we knew that.
So like the Bourbon Restoration, the political punditocracy has risen from their debacle having learned nothing. Unlike the Bourbons, though, they've forgotten everything and appear ready to commit the same elementary mistakes beginning today:
Sure, that sounds right. If Republicans are able to shut down the government, default on the national debt, disarm Ukraine, and spend the next two years yelling about Hunter Biden, you can be sure that our reliably wrong pundits will faithfully pass along the talking points they get from their red-hot Republican “sources” who will term the ongoing Republican subversion of democratic government a “midterm stalemate.”
UPDATE, November 13: Remember Dan Froomkin? Here's his latest:
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