They are hardly going to examine themselves…
But the editors are ALWAYS are looking for drama to get numbers…
This time they jumped on the polling and Republicans bandwagon disregarding signs that Trumpism and the economy were NOT the overwhelming worries for voters….
Yes…In two Red states Trumpism reigned
But outside of those two?
Things have played out much different…
Democrats did not get wipped out…..
And even a weak President Biden did not translate to major loses for his party….
Pundits such as Ben Shapiro noted the view had gone “from red wave to red wedding.” Even on Fox News, the right-wing cable network that had heavily hyped the red wave presumption to its audience, pundits acknowledged the reality. Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, called it an “absolute disaster” for the GOP.
So what happened?
Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the center-right American Enterprise Institute, suggested that a few factors were at play. Chief among them, a reliance on bad polls (i.e. InsiderAdvantage and Rasmussen), a herd mentality that swept the press, and the tendency to treat this election like midterms of the past when other significant issues (like democracy and abortion) were at play.
But Ornstein also warned of a “more troubling” factor that he believed impacted coverage. “There is so many in the mainstream press that are just fearful to a remarkable degree of being branded as having a liberal bias. And what we see is that the reaction to that is to bend over quadruply backwards to show there is no bias.”
In other words, Ornstein argued, mainstream journalists went along with a red wave narrative because it showed that they were being tough on Democrats. “This business of both-sidesism to show that there is no bias gives us another kind of bias,” he said.
“You put all of that together and it is a s–t show,” Ornstein said.
And while it is likely the GOP will still take the House and could eke out a victory in the Senate, the White House official dinged the press for taking jabs at the administration for its focus on issues outside the economy….