It’s the media’s liberté, égalité, fraternité, huh?
First Amendment watchdog FAIR has some words for the New York Times’ moderation won, dontcha know? analysis of midterm election results.
“In true Timesian fashion,” FAIR begins, Jonathan Weisman and Katie Glueck (11/14/22) argue that voters rejected both right and left extremes:
In a jarring lead, they laid out three examples of “extremism” losing: Adam Laxalt (running for Senate from Nevada) and Doug Mastriano (running for Pennsylvania governor), both GOP election deniers and abortion-rights opponents—and Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a Democratic House candidate in Oregon who was described by the local paper (Oregonian, 10/12/22) as someone whose “ability to target common objectives will be key for uniting constituents” in a diverse district.
Confused? Republicans, Weisman and Glueck went on,
received a sweeping rebuke from Americans who, for all the qualms polls show they have about Democratic governance, made clear they believe that the GOP has become unacceptably extreme.
But, they argued, “on a smaller scale, a similar dynamic could be discerned on the left,” where “Democratic primary voters chose more progressive nominees over moderates in a handful of House races,” and thereby lost seats “that could have helped preserve a narrow Democratic majority” in the House.
It’s a bizarre case of journalists prioritizing balance at all costs, which they can only achieve by not pointing to a single thing that might qualify the Democrats in question as “extremists.”
The piece described some of the actual extremism that voters apparently rejected on the right, including “embrace of Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election,” “a morass of conspiracy theories and far-right policy positions,” the “drive to ban abortions,” and “a drift away from fundamental rights and democracy itself”—not to mention “the bizarre claim, given credence by some Republican candidates, that children were going beyond gender and identifying as cats who needed litter boxes in classrooms.”
While most would accept that these are extremist positions, the reporters matched them on the left with mere labels (“from the liberal wing of their party,” an “ardent progressive”) and not a single policy position, statement or action. Apparently if you call a politician “progressive” at the Times, it’s meant to be understood that they’re extreme, with no further explanation required.
Naturally, The Times features a quote from Third Way, the reflexively “centrist Democratic organization” that values bland over bold. The Times then cites several “extremist” House Democratic candidates (only one of which identifies as a progressive) including Christy Smith of California:
Christy Smith, perhaps the most baffling choice for the Times to include, is a former state assembly member characterized by the LA Times (5/16/22) as “a levelheaded centrist with years of relevant experience.” Smith’s district, long Republican, was won in 2018 by Democrat Katie Hill, who, running as a progressive, won by a 9-point margin (the kind of outcome that demonstrates the potential strength of a left-of-center platform even in a swing district). After Hill’s resignation, Smith lost the seat to her Republican opponent in a special election—running as what the American Prospect (5/18/20) described as a “safe centrist” with a “lack of motivating policy ambitions,” such as Hill’s support for Medicare for All. That the Times included Smith as an example of extremism run amok in the Democratic Party shows just how far it has to stretch to find balance in all things.
Smith won her primary against John Quaye Quartey, a former naval intelligence officer described by Weisberg and Glueck as what the veterans group VoteVets thought was a “dream candidate.” That “dream candidate,” a newcomer to both the area and politics, had the backing of some Washington Democrats, but netted just over 4,000 votes to Smith’s 34,000—which raises the questions of whose dreams such a candidate fulfills, and why the New York Times thinks he might have stood a better chance than Smith in the general election.
About that narrow Democratic majority in the House. New York state Democrats lost several seats, didn’t they?
But of course left-of-center candidates weren’t the only ones to lose key House races for the Dems. In New York alone, the Democrats lost four House seats; none of the losing candidates were progressives. While court-ordered redistricting in New York left Democrats scrambling, it’s notable that the Times analysis didn’t mention the high-profile loss of New York representative, DCCC chair and quintessential “moderate” Sean Patrick Maloney.
After pushing out a progressive incumbent who had represented most of that district prior to redistricting, and defeating another popular progressive in the primary with the help of a 5-to-1 funding advantage and vicious attack ads (Intercept, 8/12/22), Maloney lost, despite the district voting for Biden in 2020 by more than 10 points, and despite the full backing—and funding—of the centrist wing of the party (Slate, 11/14/22).
FAIR urges readers to ask the Times “to explain how the Democrats cited in its November 14 piece qualify as ‘extremists.’”
I had the same question asked of me at a wedding last week. What about extremist liberals? Again, the definition is fuzzier, more colloquial than issues associated with Democratic Party positions that, by and large, poll well even with the sort of people who think Democrats themselves are extremists. Remember when improving Americans’ access to a doctor’s care was extreme? And freedom to marry?