Convicted former mine boss Don Blankenship’s West Virginia Senate Republican primary campaign was loud, foul, and racist.
In other words, it was a dream come true for national media.
For several reporters and political analysts, the former coal baron, who was allegedly “surging” on eve of the election, was further proof of the moral disintegration of the modern Republican Party. Blankenship’s looming victory — and many journalists talked about him like he had a real shot at running against Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., this fall — signaled that GOP voters care neither for character nor ethics.
But Blankenship didn’t win. He didn’t even take 20 percent of the total vote. He came in third place, far behind the winning candidate, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.
Voters resoundingly rejected Blankenship, but not before certain members of the news media used his campaign as an excuse to accuse Republicans of being morally bankrupt.
“Don Blankenship is, in many ways, the perfect embodiment of the Republican Party at this particular moment,” remarked MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
Journalist Jared Sexton Yates, whose entire shtick revolves around him claiming Republicans are very racist, said elsewhere, “Don Blankenship isn’t surging in spite of his racism or cruelty. He’s surging because of them. This is exactly what Republicans want out of their candidates.”
He added, “Don Blankenship isn’t a train wreck, he’s not even an outlier. He’s a Republican in the direct lineage and philosophy of the modern Republican Party. He’s just worse at hiding his views. … The Republican base is interested in sending incompetent and unconscionably cruel politicians to Washington in an effort to punish the government and the rest of us.”
In retrospect, these remarks, and the amount of media coverage Blankenship’s campaign enjoyed prior to voting, were clearly undeserved, especially considering how far he landed from the finish line.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the press badly bungled this election. It’s like the 2016 election all over again, only this time the obsessively covered candidate lost.
The idea that Blankenship even had a chance can be traced to reports by the The Weekly Standard, which reported that two West Virginia “internal campaign polls” showed “Blankenship narrowly edging GOP rivals,” and Politico, which cited four anonymous Republicans, who claimed “polling conducted in recent days” showed Blankenship “surging” ahead of the primary.
But even if the cited polling was good, and it doesn’t appear that it was, the newsrooms that rushed to position Blankenship as the likely winner should’ve exercised greater caution. Internal polling is, after all, notoriously unreliable. And since when do we make election predictions based on the say-so of anonymous Republican sources? Answer: When it creates a great narrative — and many national newsrooms were on the Blankenship-is-poised-to-win-despite-his-obvious-and-well-known-flaws narrative Tuesday evening.
There was no good reason to believe Blankenship was a serious contender. It was just too good of a story for the press to walk away from: Bad man is preferred candidate! Here’s what that tells us about his party!
The nation’s leading newsrooms talk a big game about preserving democracy and resisting the erosion of social norms, but they just can’t resist a good freak show, especially if the freak is running as a Republican.
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CORRECTION: The first draft of this piece called Blankenship a felon. He was instead convicted of a misdemeanor.
