Liberal Media Owns Election Loss
Maybe it shouldn't have covered up Biden's mental decline
“Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan,” was attributed to President John F. Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
There will be a lot of finger-pointing at who is to blame for Kamala Harris’ overwhelming election day defeat. Harris will likely be spared much of the criticism despite the fact she was a disastrous candidate. As one female acquaintance shared with me, “There are so many qualified women who could have been the presidential nominee and the Democratic Party picked the one who has failed upwards her entire adult life.”
Whoa. That was brutal.
The elites who have called Trump voters racists, fascists, Nazis, anti-American and garbage have not yet learned their lesson. For example, MSNBC talking head Joe Scarborough insisted black men were misogynists and Latino men and women were both racist and misogynist because they did not uniformly vote for Harris. Such hysterical finger-pointing will continue.
One direction at which the liberal media should be pointing their finger is in the mirror. One of the chief morning-after complaints was there wasn’t enough time to select a candidate other than Harris to represent the party. Maybe. But who’s to blame for that? The liberal press.
Almost from the day he took office, the liberal press was wallpapering over every Biden mistake, misstep and disaster. They obfuscated, lied, and pretended actions, statements and events didn’t occur. The problem working against them was the (mostly) open internet and social media allowed Americans to see with their own eyes actual proof the liberal press pretended didn’t exist.
Perhaps if the liberal media behaved like honest journalists and reported newsworthy events rather than act as the Praetorian Guard of the Biden Administration then maybe an outcry to replace Biden may have arisen several months or even years earlier. This is especially true of Biden’s obvious mental decline.
Video clips of Biden attempting to shake hands with a non-existent person, or kissing a woman he mistook for his wife of nearly 50 years, or walking around looking confused in the White House garden were studiously ignored by the left-leaning press. But Americans already knew the truth. Kudos to Elon Musk for his purchase of Twitter/X to help open this window into reality.
It was Biden’s devastating June 27, 2024 debate performance with Donald Trump that revealed the undeniable truth before a national primetime audience. The media could no longer studiously ignore the obvious. This summer collapse may have been possibly too late to get a much better qualified candidate to replace Biden as the nominee.
I could write several thousand words giving scores of examples of the press not practicing actual journalism. Instead, I will offer just a few.
MSNBC downplayed the Afghanistan withdrawal disaster and tried to place blame elsewhere for the withdrawal ordered by Biden. Politico and other outlets unquestioningly carried the water for those who falsely claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian disinformation op despite ample evidence it was the real deal.
The Washington Post launched its Trump Trials newsletter trying to make the case the Biden administration-directed and encouraged prosecutions in deeply blue jurisdictions were legitimate criminal investigations. As exit polls indicated, millions of American recognized the slew of charges levied against Trump for what they were: government lawfare.
The estimated 10-12 million who illegally entered the US since January 2021 and were rewarded with money, housing, healthcare and cell phones was deeply offensive to most US citizens including the many immigrants who arrived in the US legally. Yet, Foreign Affairs was among countless news outlets that insisted no border crisis existed.
The economy was the top concern of virtually every demographic group. New York Times lied about inflation being a ‘transitory blip’ and immaterial to American families. Media organizations like The Atlantic went into overdrive and dismissed Joe Biden’s obvious mental decline as fabricated by the political right.
Of course, there were other issues contributing to Harris’ loss. The Democratic Party has moved so far left and it chose as its party standard-bearer someone who has little in common with most Americans of nearly every single demographic. Except maybe elderly cat ladies. The Democratic Party could have possibly selected someone else if there was more time. But there wasn’t. Because the liberal press was working hard to mislead the public delaying acceptance of the obvious.
In the end, it didn’t work.
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).