Media: Are they trying to elect Donald Trump?

As we go around the country speaking about the need to vote in this election and the need to vote for Kamala Harris, we encounter a lot of people who don't seem to feel that what's at stake is being properly conveyed by the media.  They don't doubt Kamala's grasp on the importance of the election but they do doubt the media's.  

 

 

 

 

For example, on Saturday, speaking in Atlanta, Georgia, Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris observed:

So so much is on the line in this election.  And this election is not 2016 or 2020.  The stakes are even higher for obvious reasons -- including because, just a few months ago, the United States Supreme Court basically told the former president he is effectively immune no matter what he does in the White House. And just think about this, right.  Before that ruling just a few months ago, at least there was some possibility of threat of consequences for misbehavior, for breaking the law.  But just imagine now Donald Trump with no guard rails.  He, who has vowed that he will be a dictator on day one.  He who calls Americans who disagree with him "the enemy from within." Understand where that comes from in history.  And says he would use the American military to go after American citizens.  He who has called for the "termination" of the Constitution of the United States of America.  And let us be very clear, someone who suggests that we should terminate the Constitution of the United States should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States of America.  Never again.  Never again. 

That's pretty clear cut.

And she gets it.

But so many people -- especially in swing states -- that we speak with doesn't feel the media gets it and specifically does not feel that the 'independent' media (THE NATION, DEMOCRACY NOW!, IN THESE TIMES, THE PROGRESSIVE, COMMON DREAMS, et al) gets it.  They are already spinning from the defectors of the left.  They complain, for example, about 'feminist' Naomi Wolf is promoting racist Jack Posobiec, snake oil, becoming anti-choice and so much more, about 'leftist' John Stauber becoming a Laura Loomer acolyte and his constant attacks on transgender people, on and on.  They feel let down by 'independent' media.

And they should.

Left outlets have failed with regards to accountability.  Did you promote John Stauber when he was a leftist?  Then you are required to alert people to the change and to call him out.  We promoted him for years.  We stopped promoting him and explained why.  (We've both also been banned by him on Twitter.  One of us -- Ava -- just for pointing out that, despite his asinine Tweet, Cher did not do drugs in the sixties.)  It's a big tricker for us with Naomi in that we warned against her all along.  We noted how she stole her first book from Judith N. Shklar's series of lectures.  We noted how her third book revealed -- did she not read what she wrote -- that her 'friends' raped a woman while she was at their frat house and she never reported them but joined in the morning after giggles.  We noted what a mess her books after that were.  We never took on the book that had to be pulped -- and honestly felt sorry for her over that -- but we noted her pill addiction and the reality that she wasn't a feminist.  She's going for Donald Trump in 2024 and, honestly, we don't see how a real feminist never found a woman to support for president -- not Hillary in 2008, not Hillary in 2016, not Elizabeth Kirsten, Amy, et al in 2020 and not Kamala in 2024.  We've long noted her fake assery and she's probably the person under 70 that we've called out the most over the years.  

But it's amazing how THE PROGRESSIVE, for example, longterm promoter of John Stauber, refuses to write about what happened to him and turned him into a nutcase who see George Soros money everywhere.

What we are recommending to people we speak with is POST-LEFT WATCH -- a TWITTER account by leftists that calls out those who became racists, homophobes, sexists, transphobes and whores. 

They call out all the liars, whores and idiots.  Like Lee Fang of whom they note, "Person who did the Twitter Files is complaining about people being handed scoops."

POST-LEFT WATCH is doing important work and we applaud them for it.

 

We wish we could applaud 'independent' media.  For example, an article last week?  We really, really wanted to applaud it.

Sasha Abramsky is what used to be called "tore up from the floor up."  Though born in 1972, he looks 20 years older than he is.  Life has apparently been very hard on him and we're about to join life in the pile-on.

At THE NATION, he writes:

After months of talking around the obvious, the Democrats have realized that it might be a good idea to call a fascist a fascist.

Throughout the campaign, the Democrats have talked around the obvious—that, in his rhetoric and in his calls to violence against his perceived enemies, Trump has adopted full-throated fascist messaging. And Trump has done so without provoking even a peep of indignation from the GOP leadership in Congress.

The Democrats have labeled him “weird” and “authoritarian,” denounced him for being “erratic,” and called him out for his increasingly incoherent babbling. Butonly in the last week, as Trump’s campaign trail message has gotten ever darker, have both Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz come out and said their opponent is a fascist.

The Democrats have labeled him “weird” and “authoritarian,” denounced him for being “erratic,” and called him out for his increasingly incoherent babbling. Butonly in the last week, as Trump’s campaign trail message has gotten ever darker, have both Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz come out and said their opponent is a fascist.

Sasha surely knows that politicians -- even strong leaders -- know that they can't get too far out ahead of the people.  The press will destroy you, among other things.

You plant seeds, you move slowly and, as the seeds sprout, you continue to move forward and plant more.  

That amplifies the issue and allows others to take cover if they're not willing to stick their necks out just yet.

You know, people like Sasha.

"Huh?  Ava and C.I. he wrote the article!"

Yes.  

 

 

Yes, he did.

It's a bit like him writing an article saying smoking cigarettes causes cancer and we should all stop . . . only to learn that he himself smokes.

After reading his article about how awful it was that Harris and Walz and other Democrats weren't using the term "fascist" until recently, we spent a half hour going through Sasha's TWITTER feed.

You know what we found?

Sasha has only used the word "fascist" in one Tweet -- the Tweet promoting the article we're talking about.

He's castigating others for not having used the term?  Does he not grasp that he himself hasn't been using the term?

 He's also doing nothing to promote Kamala's campaign.  

Oh sure, in July, he served up four Tweets about Kamala -- and he actually wrote one all by himself as opposed to just reTweeting.

 

After that?

Nothing.  Nothing in August.  Nothing in September.  Nothing in October.   Just  2 Kamla HQ reTweets in July, 1 Tweet directing people to his article on Kamala and 1 Tweet directing people to Joan Walsh's article on Kamala.  That is his Kamala 'coverage.'

(He did Tweet about Walz once.)

50 Tweets and reTweets from July to present.  How many times did the term "fascism" appear in those Tweets?

Again, none until is article on the topic was published at which point he Tweeted "My Nation column on Democrats finally calling a fascist a fascist." and provided a link to his own article.

Maybe we should Tweet this article and explain, "Our column on Sasha Abramsky finally calling a fascist a fascist"?

Maybe we could rewrite his entire article?  Let's try three paragraphs where we make his silence the focus:

Astoundingly, despite -- or maybe because of -- Trump's  increasingly demented rhetoric, hiss base has solidified around him, and he is riding as high in the polls today as at any time since Harris became the Democrats' nominee. This isn’t politics as normal; it’s a vastly dangerous departure from the norms and rhythms of democracy, and, because the GOP and the conservative media ecosystem have so wholeheartedly bought into the Trump cult, it’s happening without much of the public being aware just how radical this shift is.

Belatedly, Sasha has  realized that it might be a good idea to call a fascist a fascist. After Trump said that the military should be used against his enemies, Sasha finally called Trump out for being a fascist. That's right, last week, Sasha finally said the obvious.

Sasha should have done this months ago, instead of letting Trump rehabilitate himself in the political imagination of millions of Americans. He should have defined this terrible man, this man who, like so many despots throughout history, revels in the language of violence and intimidation, as what he is.

Not only did Sasha not call Donald a fascist, he and the bulk of his cohorts at THE NATION -- and elsewhere on the left -- write articles or broadcast segments insisting Donald and Kamala are basically the same.  Amy Goodman and company did that last week when they pretended to address immigration issues. 

Reality on immigration: The left has lost.  They can work on winning but don't think that's going to happen in a month or in two months.

Immigration is a scary topic by its very nature.  Immigrants are presented by the media as "the other."  We are taught in this country to fear the other.  When you can define someone as the other, you can do whatever you want.  We've done a lousy job on the left.  In part, we've done a lousy job because we let the right define immigration.  Where are our counter-proposals?  Where are our articles with facts and figures?  

Now that's not our beat.  We've tried to cover it from time to time over the years but we have other things that are our focus.  Seems like THE NATION -- with all the writers they have on staff -- could have assigned someone to the issue.  Or THE YOUNG TURKS -- flush with Jeffrey Katzenberg money -- and still interested in pretending to be left -- could have had someone on staff who made that their beat.

Didn't happen.

And while left outlets regularly avoided immigration every week, FOX "NEWS" spewed lies about immigrants on an hourly basis.

Kamala has to appeal to the electorate that our media -- All Things Media Big and Small -- (mis)informed and created.  

She didn't create the field.  She had to hit the ground running a few months ago and she knows she has to defeat Donald Trump in the election.

But a lot of idiots act as though they don't even know that.

Act as though they don't even know that and, worse, write as though they don't even know that.

That would include writers like Julia Metraux at MOTHER JONES who  is incapable of actual thought so she writes garbage slamming Kamala.

Kamala, she wants you to know, does not say the right things about disability!!!!!

Donald Trump has hidden 'concepts' for healthcare and his Project 2025 would do away with Medicare but dumb idiot Julia Metraux is attacking Kamala at left wing site.

We have watched this unfold.  We know that we have to elect Kamala Harris for our country to survive. 

And we marvel over the journalistic lice (nod to Joan Crawford) on the left who keep attacking Kamala.

Here's some reality, there has never been a presidential election year where the so-called 'independent' media like THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, DEMOCRACY NOW! and the rest have done so little positive coverage of the Democratic Party nominee.  Not even in 2000, when so many tried to elect Ralph Nader.  Yes, even when the presidential nominee was Al Gore, they went out of their way to note this or that aspect.  They don't do that with Kamala.  Black women especially are noting this new purity standard that exists for Kamala.  And there will be hell to pay for it.

 

We're lucky, we have money. So we don't need to go on disability.  But some people do and they often have to through months of not working in order to qualify.  Six months is not uncommon.  This is a situation which predates Kamala as vice president, as senator, as prosecutor.  It's a situation that needs to be addressed but obviously education on the topic is required -- especially for the idiot writing for MOTHER JONES -- because most Americans don't know the hoops required.  It's almost as difficult as getting a higher disability rating in the VA.  Did we lose you?  Well, we've covered that topic here repeatedly but if you counted on THE NATION, for example, we don't believe they've ever written about the need for an electronic, integrated medical record that starts when you enlist and follows you to the VA.  

So Kamala talks -- in a townhall -- about issues related to disability ratings and MOTHER JONES'  answer is to tut-tut and attack.  You stupid, stupid idiot.

This was not an informercial for ACA.  This was a townhall with people asking questions that were on their mind.

And your answer is to have a fit that she didn't give a 15 minute lecture?

You are so deeply stupid and you shouldn't be paid for your writing.  You should instead be forced to get a real job.  And maybe when the cuts to funding come in, you will be forced to get a real job.  Or maybe, at least, be forced to stop writing in such a way that it reads like you ripped off Betsy Ladyzhets article for SICK TIMES that was published over three weeks before 'your' own writing.

2025 will hopefully be the year Kamala is sworn in as president.  But 2025 will be a hard year for beggar media regardless.  Give, give, give.  They ask over and over, forever begging, forever insisting that you need them, that they keep you informed.  But 2024 is an election year and they've done everything that they can to keep you uninformed.  They've done everything they can to destroy enthusiasm for Kamala's historic run.  They've elevated people in another region of the world as more important than the people who suffer in this country and the people who will be targeted if Trump gets back into the White House.  The war on Civil Rights and education doesn't matter to them, the attempt to destroy LGBTQ+ rights doesn't matter to them, the attack on Latinos doesn't bother them, the attack on women's health does not bother them, the assault on overtime pay doesn't bother them.  No issue, apparently, is important but what happens in Gaza.  

Grasp for a moment what Trump plans to do with Latinos.  He wants to round up immigrants.  That means he has to arrest them in the first place.  How does that usually happen?  It generally involves profiling.  Oh, how we on the left especially miss Michael Ratner's strong voice today. So since our country shares a border with Mexico, Latinos will be targeted with profiling.  Latinos -- American citizens and others -- will be stopped on a regular basis.  It will be "let me see your I.D." over and over.  And some will be deported by mistake under Donald Trump's plan and, yes, he plans to break up families again with deportation.  As former US President Barack Obama explained in a speech in Nevada on Saturday, "He wants you to believe that if you elect him, he will just round up whoever he wants and ship them out and all your problems will be solved."  But that doesn't seem to matter too much to in left media.  For them, it's all about the Palestinians.  Here's a tip for the Gaza Freaks: You haven't seen anything yet.

Put Donald back in the White House and you'll see what happens when a US president actively seeks out a genocide. And have you noticed that while Amy Goodman can't leave her status as a Gaza Freak behind, other Americans have.  Because they're dismayed that our country's at risk and our lives are at risk and the Gaza Freaks are only focused on Gaza.  Good luck, under a Donald Trump presidency, building up a successful movement to save the Palestinians -- especially after you've turned off the bulk of Americans with your refusal to see the needs of those of us in this country as even just a little bit important. There's a saying that God don't like ugly.  Equally true, Americans don't like selfish. It's a reality the beggar media can't see but one we encounter in every state we visit as we speak to group after group about the importance of the 2024 election.