Whereupon We Pontificate About Poor Media Outlet Choices

[Danspartan]

Georgia will get seriously litigated if Trump loses. I don’t think PA will, or at least not significantly. (He will sue for something but state machinery won’t cooperate).

[LouisCyphre]

Didn’t they change the election laws after 2020 and there is a new election board controlled by Trumpers so that it is out of Raffensberger’s hands?

[Jman220]

Yeah, you’re right.

[Danspartan]

I still think there are limits. We shall see. I would hope GA alone won’t be able to swing the EC.

[Surf]

I think there some aspect of how obvious things are, like if GA race is a couple hundred votes and some get sketchily thrown out I could see the GA machinery delivering it for Trump. But if whole media reporting Harris got more votes and these new electoral stooges refusing to certify I think powers to be would probably recognize this as one those scenarios where an angry populace could bring out the figurative or literal guillotines if GA transparently threw the election

[chipsahoy]

How about if they refuse to certify but that doesn’t tip the election? I could see people accepting the non-certification and shrugging – making it impossible to ever win that state.

[Surf]

Yeah that’s more interesting, if Harris wins by enough that GA doesn’t matter I could see SCOTUS being wary enough to go ahead a smack down clear electoral shenanigans in GA. But who knows.

[goofy]

This feels unlikely to me, unless “people” is “courts”. Like even if it doesn’t change the election result, a state refusing to certify and throwing its EVs in the dumpster because some set of state officials doesn’t like the outcome will get litigated to the highest places. (and the good guys may lose! but I don’t think the reaction would be to let it go)

[pvn]

@chipsahoy

How about if they refuse to certify but that doesn’t tip the election? I could see people accepting the non-certification and shrugging – making it impossible to ever win that state.

hopefully Harris replaces milquetoaste merrick with someone who will actually do something

[pvn]

honestly it seems really dumb for GA goons to go to the mat in this case. If they can’t flip the entire election then all they’re doing is opening themselves up to a very high probability of jail time with a very, very low probability of getting off and setting a precedent that they would be happy with.

[goofy]

[pvn]

even for these dipshits that’s some astronomical levels of hair-splitting

[pvn]

“He didn’t say ‘I will not accept it’ he just said ‘it’s cheating’” listen to yourself you sound demented

[McTrollson]

I don’t even know who the audience for this nonsense is anymore.

[boredsocial]

People who are barely interested in politics who they are trying to convince to stay home on behalf of the owners of the media outlet. It’s not some big conspiracy it’s just the way the incentives work. People like this get jobs because the people who own newspapers like this lazy mealy mouthed both sides bullshit.

By all means when one person tells you it’s daytime and the other person says it’s nighttime report that instead of going outside and reporting that someone lied to you about what time of day it was.

[pvn]

@boredsocial

People like this get jobs because the people who own newspapers like this lazy mealy mouthed both sides bullshit.

yeah this is the key

people who say “BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME” act like they’re free thinkers but they’re the biggest media kool aid drinkers

[MrWookie]

https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1825784820187750607

"He didn’t say those direct quotes, or plain interpretations of direct quotes. Er, well, maybe he said those things, but he didn’t mean them like we know he meant.

[pvn]

@MrWookie

"He didn’t say those direct quotes, or plain interpretations of direct quotes. Er, well, maybe he said those things, but he didn’t mean them like we know he meant.

“well, he DID “mean them” BUT he at least provided a halfassed completely unbelievable backpedaling statement that he was taken out of context”

[pvn]

@goofy

[goofy]

Great article about poor media outlet choices:

Beware the Pundit-Brained Version of the Democratic Convention

For years, largely because Republicans are better at working the refs and crying foul about any effort by the media to hold them accountable for their actions, the idea that the media are dyed-in-the-wool liberals has become the orthodoxy. Of course, the Beltway media are conservative. This is not a novel argument by any means: It’s an industry run by (increasingly reactionary) plutocrats, who reliably summon their charges to lead a highly effective, “But how will you pay for it?” pincer movement against anything resembling liberal policy. Meanwhile, there is seemingly no sin grievous enough to earn a Republican the same sort of nullifying skepticism—the Trumpists who aided and abetted the former president’s attempt to overturn a lawful election remain in the good graces of America’s cable news bookers.

The roller-coaster news cycle of this summer has revealed not only how little the media have learned from the Trump era of politics, but also how badly they want their little old world back, one where Republican operatives dressed as cable news pundits can shape the decision-making of the Democratic Party, “sensible” Democratic leaders are the ones who tack to the right to win over voters and politicians who can never be won, and everyone can grab a martini at Café Milano—Washington, D.C.’s version of what the late Anthony Bourdain would call “The Despots’ Club”—and laugh about it afterwards.

Let’s consider the past few weeks in the life of The New York Times. This summer, the paper of record demanded President Joe Biden’s departure from the race. After getting their wish, they had criticism galore, which they expressed by pushing full stories on crystals-loving Marianne Williamson’s complaints that the party needed an open nomination process (without regard for the legal and logistical impossibility of such a process), followed by multiple columns chastising the elevation of the current Vice President, Kamala Harris, to the top of the ticket as a “coronation” (again, despite the fact that she was the only Democrat in the United States who could actually surmount the aforementioned legal and logistical challenges).

They got what they wanted but, oh no, not how they wanted it ! And when the veepstakes didn’t go to their precise specifications they then found a half dozen of Minnesota’s nearly six million residents to say they do not love Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s pick for a running mate, even as his favorability jumped 20 points after his announcement. Finger on the pulse, baby!

It is as if the media are actively trying to direct chaos or uncertainty because chaos and uncertainty would create something new or interesting to them—a good show—which is what they’ve decided the news is about. As our country has inched closer to collapse, as we are not even a full presidential cycle away from Trump sending insurrectionists to the Capitol to murder members of Congress and his own vice president to steal an election, this direction seems clumsier and more desperate than it’s ever been.

During no event was this media disconnect from reality more evident than at the August 7 announcement of Walz as Harris’s number two on the ticket. Watching CNN, you would have thought that Harris had made a fatal error, that she was antisemitic and politically radical—despite being married to a literal Jewish person and having no such political record—for opting against Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Anchor Jake Tapper could not process how Harris could have chosen an effective, proven Democratic legislator over an anti–public education governor whose state needed to pay almost $300,000 to settle a sexual harassment case involving Shapiro’s top liaison to the state legislature, who also happened to be Republican. Reporters and the Republican operatives-turned-pundits who are permanently seated next to them were flabbergasted, as a person with actual agency went against the stage direction they had coalesced around.

Meanwhile, the images from the stadium at that very moment, which we could all see, showed thousands of people finally energized by and enthusiastic to support a ticket comprised of two fully animate human people who could put together cogent sentences about what it means to be a Democrat. Not to mention applause lines on how the GOP’s vice presidential pick is a weirdo. If the media’s job, in part and during live events, is to document what they are seeing to translate those observations to an audience, it appears they would prefer to create a fantasy world to talk about, rather than simply discuss what’s plainly in front of their faces.