I almost gave the New York Times’ Peter Baker’s recent exercise in furrowed-brow journalism a pass, as it really said nothing new, but on second thought, I decided that was actually the problem, and so figured it was worth a reaction.
Dan Froomkin, one of our best media critics, dissected Baker’s column itself, particularly Baker’s treating Biden and the individual I refer to as The Angry Inch as essentially co-incumbents, but I want to approach it from another angle.
In a nutshell, I am increasingly convinced that political journalists in this country have convinced themselves that Republicans represent “real America” and frame their reporting around that belief. Don’t think so? How many stories have you seen where Biden voters are interviewed in diners?
Further, they myopically report on the political divide as though it were some kind of organic, grassroots occurrence instead of being the product of decades of divisive messaging by the right. From Roger Ailes to Lee Atwater to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to Rupert Murdoch, white America has been bombarded for more than half a century by messaging aimed at stoking resentment.
When I say Baker’s piece, “The Looming Contest Between Two Presidents and Two Americas,” says nothing new, I mean that two ways. First, writing about America’s social and political divisions has a long history; even though the danger looms larger, it’s a matter of degree. One might say David Brooks’ 2001 Atlantic piece, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible,”was a watershed moment for this kind of thing. Second, these kinds of pieces all have a serious blind spot, born of the need to be “objective” to the point of missing (or ignoring) the reason for these divisions.
The running premise is that the divide between Republican/conservative America and Democratic/liberal America has grown into a chasm, with worrying implications for democracy. The subtext—sometimes stated, sometimes implied—is that this is somehow Democrats’ fault, that they have become the party of elites (a slippery term, depending on who’s throwing it around) who have lost touch with, and support of, ordinary Americans, who in turn have long been in the mood to get even.
This view took particular hold at Baker’s paper and among the Amtrak-corridor media generally (talk about “elites”) after the 2016 election. More than a few high-level journalists agreed that they, like Democrats, had failed to recognize the anger of millions of “forgotten” Americans, rooted in economic anxiety.
Baker checks this box in his piece:
“Mr. Trump has transformed the G.O.P. into the party of the white working class, rooted strongly in rural communities and resentful of globalization, while Mr. Biden’s Democrats have increasingly become the part of the more highly educated and economically better off, who have thrived in the information age.”
Let’s start with that last point. A handful of economic elites have indeed thrived in the information age; in fact, they essentially control it. They became mind-bogglingly wealthy, and some of their most visible colleagues are generous, vocally and financially, in their support for Republicans. The rest of us buy our smart phones and laptops and find ourselves as dependent and vulnerable as we are liberated by technology. We aren’t necessarily getting rich, either.
As for Democratic voters tending to be more educated, on the face of it, that’s correct. I remember, growing up in the 50s and 60s, that education was thought of as a desirable goal. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, born after the Russians launched the first Sputnik satellite, helped make a college education accessible, even commonplace. Education was a good thing; it better-prepared you for an increasingly complex world. However, it also opened the door to broader, more tolerant thinking, which is why the Rs are hell-bent on destroying it.
Baker is correct when he describes Republicans as “the party of the white working class,” but that is not rooted in economic anxiety. It is rooted in racism. I have touched on that particular point at greater length before, so let me just repeat one fundamental element: the Republican party in 1963 saw the growing backlash in white America to the Civil Rights movement and decided to make appealing to racism a core principle of their political strategy. The Party of Lincoln did a 180 and became the Party of Jefferson Davis.
It works. Friend of mine was helping with a union organizing drive down south a few years ago. One white guy asked her, “Is this going to help the ______s?” Trying to roll with it, she said it would help everybody. Guy snorted, “Then I don’t want it.”
As for the working class more generally, it is growing more diverse, and, if you define it as people making less than $50,000 a year, Joe Biden won 57 percent of that vote in 2020. (Hillary Clinton won it more narrowly in 2016.) Biden also won the next income cohort, $50,000 to $99,999, by 56 percent. Guess who won a majority of “economically better off” voters last time.
Beyond this kind of mis-characterization—and Baker is hardly the sole practitioner—there is often an added level of false equivalence that suggests that both political parties have moved a more-or-less equal distance from the American mainstream. Given the broad support for many fundamental Democratic policies in areas like gun control, abortion, taxing the wealthy, protecting Social Security, and voting rights, it’s patently obvious much of their program is in step with what most Americans want. One of the major Democratic successes of the last 25 years is the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Passing that cost Democrats dearly in the 2010 elections, but the program itself has proven popular, with enrollment surging in the past year, particularly in red states.
One outlier is that polling often shows people believe Republicans are better at managing the economy, which always has me scratching my head, since, going back to Eisenhower, data clearly shows Democrats excel in promoting growth and economic stability. They’re better at bringing down the debt, as well. (Baker and his colleagues might want to reflect on how their reporting on the economy, which consistently has downplayed Democrats’ recent success, may have contributed to that.)
Meanwhile, Republicans have gone way out into the wilderness of the lunatic fringe, with serious, even potentially fatal, consequences.
We’re not just talking about superficial journalism, here, which would be bad enough. This is an abdication of basic professional standards and responsibility. It blurs the stakes, as Jay Rosen points out, and, this time, those stakes are more serious than any time in my life, and I was born during the Truman administration. Yes, journalism should be objective, but the concept of objectivity is not served by ignoring the truth. The truth is not just that there are two parties with wildly different plans for running the country. The truth is that one of those parties pits Americans against one another and advocates for oppression and violence, and its leader is very clear about his intention to be an authoritarian.
I don’t know how things are going to turn out in November. Anyone who says they do is conning you. But I know that how our media frames its reporting, the language and emphasis it uses, the stories it selects to run, will have a serious impact. This is no time for journalists to put on the blinders.
Later.
Scaypgrayce 