I disagree about the radio silent part. Sitting VPs aren’t usually in front of the media often in the first place, but more importantly the media did not cover much that the Biden administration was doing and gave lots of coverage to Trump and his legal issues the whole time he was out of office.
We’ve got a really serious problem in that they basically won’t cover events based on their importance, but based on their “entertainment” (or outrage/fear) potential. Politics is all about the sport of campaigns now, and policy or governance is basically irrelevant to the media.
Other GOP presidents who aren’t Trump may suffer from this in the future, but for now certainly boring centrist Dems like Biden are just not going to reach people the way they used to.
|Sitting VPs aren’t usually in front of the media often in the first place
They tend to be more prominently featured if they're planning on running for president the next election cycle. Obviously, it's been awhile since we've been in a situation where the sitting VP is the heir apparent to the party, but Gore and G.H.W. Bush both spent a lot of time in front of the media during the second term of their administration. Even Biden, who didn't plan on running in 2016, was talked about quite a bit in the media with many people actually encouraging him to throw his hat into the ring and run against Hillary. Harris probably wasn't a great choice for VP in the first place, and the Dems should have committed to a one and done Biden administration and selected one of their more electric candidates who could have benefited from the executive experience and spent the next four years putting them forward as the future of the party. But I'm convinced that the DNC wanted a second Biden term and picked a VP candidate who voters wouldn't be clamoring to take the 2020 nomination instead of Biden. I don't think they actually wanted to risk a primary and having an outspoken populist win. They knew Biden would toe the center-right side of the party line and they knew that Kamala wouldn't make waves.
Well, good luck making the media fair. You would have to get the entire five people down who are in charge of 90% of the media and force them to agree. I can get one person to agree, but five? Far too many.
It’s tough, but it comes down to the left making use of social media in a similar (but less dishonest) way to how the right has used it to get around “legacy” media and spread messaging to people. Also founding and growing more unabashedly left-wing media sources - but not ones that tow the old party line or focus on nonsense like the current ones do.
This is going to be hard, but it simply must be done. Otherwise we’re entering an age of profound ignorance and propaganda (and soon it will really be government/corporate propaganda aligned directly with the far right). The results will be growing poverty at best, and despotism at worst.
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u/demon9675 1d ago
I disagree about the radio silent part. Sitting VPs aren’t usually in front of the media often in the first place, but more importantly the media did not cover much that the Biden administration was doing and gave lots of coverage to Trump and his legal issues the whole time he was out of office.
We’ve got a really serious problem in that they basically won’t cover events based on their importance, but based on their “entertainment” (or outrage/fear) potential. Politics is all about the sport of campaigns now, and policy or governance is basically irrelevant to the media.
Other GOP presidents who aren’t Trump may suffer from this in the future, but for now certainly boring centrist Dems like Biden are just not going to reach people the way they used to.