If you say something enough times, it makes it true. These are the rules.
If, for example, you claim repeatedly that Hillary Clinton would’ve won the 2016 election were it not for the meddling press, it’ll come true eventually. Well, at least you’ll convince a few people.
Consider Vox’s Ezra Klein, who claimed Wednesday on social media: “Unpopular opinion: the way the media covered Hillary Clinton’s emails did much more to make Donald Trump president than anything Cambridge Analytica, or even Facebook, did. And it was less defensible on the merits.”
Unpopular opinion: the way the media covered Hillary Clinton’s emails did much more to make Donald Trump president than anything Cambridge Analytica, or even Facebook, did. And it was less defensible on the merits.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 21, 2018
First, “Har! Har!” at the idea that this tweet is any way “unpopular” in Klein’s respective media and political circles. They’ve been floating this particular myth practically nonstop for the last 15 months.
Second, come off it. Are we really doing this “Hillary would’ve won were it not for the press” narrative again? Don’t get me wrong: It’s amusing to watch Clinton acolytes and people who feel cheated that they aren’t working in the White House now twist themselves into pretzels as they avoid the obvious.
And here’s the obvious: If Clinton lost the election because of unflattering coverage, then how on earth did Trump win? By every measure, the coverage of Trump’s bizarre, freewheeling campaign was far, far more unflattering and unforgiving than anything Clinton saw. And yes, he often or even usually (or even almost always) deserved the negative headlines he got. But if Clinton lost because news headlines contained details about her unauthorized State Department email server and her temporarily successful defeat of the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act, then how did Trump win with headlines like, “‘GRAB THEM BY THE P—Y’”?
Klein and company often claim unflattering headlines and hacked emails bear a great deal of responsibility for the Democratic Party’s 2016 loss, but they’ve yet to explain which unflattering news report or hacked communication made voters choose Trump. It’s as if they’ve only a vague notion that Clinton’s second White House bid was scuttled because some things somewhere were negative. But the media didn’t make Clinton ignore states like Wisconsin for the entire duration of the general election campaign. The media didn’t make her ignore white and working-class voters. The media didn’t force Clinton to engage in ethically dubious behavior when she served at the State Department. Clinton has only herself to blame for the media scrutiny her campaign attracted, as Business Insider Senior Editor Josh Barro noted once again on Wednesday.
“The Clintons and their acolytes have spent decades insisting their negative public image was everyone’s fault but their own,” Barro noted. If the Clintons wanted to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest maybe, for example, Huma Abedin should have not been simultaneously on the payroll of the State Department, Teneo, and the Clinton Foundation. The media didn’t do that to them, though it did report it.”
He added, “And if she didn’t want an email scandal, maybe she shouldn’t have used a private server to shield her public-record emails from FOIA such that the Associated Press had to sue for access. My point is, the lesson of 2016 is you need to nominate people who can earn the trust of enough of the skeptical public (LIKE BARACK OBAMA DID) instead of someone whose ethical lapses you overlook because you, a partisan, trust them implicitly to act in your best interest.”
Hear, hear!
“[M]y point is that the Clintons got a lot of negative coverage because they brought it on themselves with their choices. The root problem is their behavior,” he concluded. “If you want a candidate who gets good coverage, nominate someone who hasn’t spent decades creating problems for him or herself.”
What a radical notion.
