Sure, Elizabeth Warren may be third in the delegate count at the moment, ahead of Bloomberg, Klobuchar and Biden. And yes, she may have come in a close second to the tie in Iowa but that obviously didn’t matter because nobody talked about it and New Hampshire voters wrote her off because of it. But none of that means it’s too early for the media to treat her like she has simply vaporized into thin air.
Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post, sums it up with more humor than I can muster:
Determined to look on the bright side of the fact that her name has mysteriously not been included in head-to-head polling matchups and keeps vanishing from the lips of pundits despite her having one more delegate than Amy Klobuchar after the first two states (and eight more delegates than Mike Bloomberg), Sen. Elizabeth Warren looks forward to using this newfound invisibility to her advantage in the debate.
“Mayor Pete will be talking,” a voice told me, coming from I could not tell where, “and then suddenly his tie will be waving in the air! Or Mike Bloomberg will clear his throat, about to answer, but then an invisible hand will make an unexpected adjustment to his microphone! Imagine, an invisible hand that opposes billionaires! It’ll really be somethin’!” The voice seemed optimistic that this apparent magic would really make an impression.
Warren is hoping to maybe sneak up on Tom Steyer as he attempts to make an overture to Bernie Sanders and gently say “Boo!” Likewise, she looks forward to delivering a detailed response, only to have the moderators blink, baffled, in her direction, before turning back to Buttigieg. She had contemplated covering herself in money to make herself visible, but decided that this approach was best left to Bloomberg.AD
Yet the initial novelty of invisibility seemed to have worn off. After one wild ride secretly treating herself to an airline Economy Plus seat, the voice said that she was eager to be seen again so she could take part in discussions instead of sitting there for hours with only a floating policy paper visible, waiting to be called upon. “Also, the selfie line is a real disappointment lately.”
There’s more and it’s all depressingly on target.
Remember: the media knows what’s best. They determine the narratives under which all presidential campaigns live or die. We voters just have to sort our way through it as best we can.
This is not new. I wrote this one in 2015:
I think people sense the press puts its thumbs on the scale in a number of different ways in campaign coverage. They even admit it, as when USA Today’s Susan Page told Chuck Todd that journalists were yearning for a Joe Biden candidacy. Now it may be that they don’t have an ideological agenda but rather a bias toward drama, but the effect is the same. (And frankly, I do believe a sort of negative or positive group-think takes hold in the media that also tilts the playing field.)
The point is that what the press chooses to report is just as important as the reporting itself. If they knowingly publish or broadcast information they know is suspect and they also know that it influences the way campaigns are forced to deal with this suspect information, they are knowingly influencing our politics in a direction it would not necessarily go if the coverage, which they admit is suspect, was different.
They have agency in this — they are not potted plants. These polls can be presented in context and the analysis that flows from these polls can be presented in context. They can choose not to run screaming headlines about campaigns being in “free fall” or talking about dumb things like word clouds all day on cable as if they mean something real. The coverage is not some abstract thing that has a life of its own.
I’ve discussed that dozens of times over the years and it never really changes. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on media criticism in this vein because I see little appetite for changing it even among progressives when it’s one of their favorites getting the boost. Voters need to educate themselves and that isn’t an easy task with all the noise and confusion. But that’s what democracy really relies on at the end of the day, regardless. Let’s hope that the electorate’s common sense asserts itself this time. The stakes have never been greater.