Media and political campaigns have a revealing symbiotic relationship. Media needs to deliver stuff that appears to be news to attract crowds that draw paying advertisers.
And, as well-financed as some may be, campaigns need the free publicity that comes from staging events and feeding information to media that spread their version of that message far and wide.
The perversion comes when campaign operatives use media to spread misinformation that will help their campaign, truth having fallen on hard times on both sides these days.
Donna Brazile is a master at this. She's a Democrat strategist involved in that party's campaigns since the Jimmy Carter days. She was actually chair of the Democratic National Committee. Every cell in her body works for the D cause and has throughout all of her media gigs.
As you might expect, mainstream media hire her and other liberals as "commentators" who pretend to offer professional insights into politics, when they're really just selling the party's line and talking points.
CNN employed Brazile as a commentator back in the 2016 election cycle. She had to leave that position when she got caught passing advance copies of presidential debate questions to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Real journalist stuff.
As I said, every cell of her body...
On "This Week" this week, Brazile professed concern over the assembled power of the Donald Trump campaign and its cult-like following. My colleague Nick Arama covered this in detail at the time.
The election is 14 months away. GOP primary voting is four months distant, starting in Iowa. So, anyone already professing worry about that day is selling something else.
For a party constantly complaining about misinformation, this is a real coup. Donald Trump is the Republican that Democrats most want to face in 2024. They've already beaten him once, fair or not.
Trump is elderly (77) like Biden (81 this fall). So, that helps mute the "He's too old" meme. Biden's negatives are high, though not as high as Trump's. Trump says he'll skip all GOP primary debates, which gives Biden's campaign perfect cover to decline general election debates with a coherent Republican.
Remember in 2020, the overwhelming majority of pro-Biden voters said they were not voting for the Delaware vacationer so much as against POTUS No. 45.
So, to help Trump's campaign along, Brazille and others are expressing crocodile fears over his immense powers.
Show host George Stephanopolous played along with Brazile's fears, saying how shocked he was that Trump's support, according to current polls, shows him tied or alongside Biden. They hope you've forgotten that George is another Dem operative. He was senior aide to Bill Clinton back in the tawdry era of Juanita and Paula and Monica and Kathleen et al.
So, he's also passing himself off now as another TV commentator.
Think about their "Trump is so scary line" this way: How eager do you think the doddering, forgetful, confused incumbent and his puppeteers are to appear on a debate stage opposite a successful, well-spoken Republican governor in his or her 40s or 50s? Someone who doesn't need help finding their way off a stage?
That's what we're talking about in this week's commentary.
The most popular post in a long time was about my father, who passed away long ago. But he left behind a big surprise that echoes in my life to this day.
The most recent Malcolm on the Right audio interested me. It detailed a major, but little-noticed change in Americans' alcohol consumption patterns.
And finally, from my laptop came this week's column, another development that has yet to garner sufficient attention to my mind. The murderous folks of ISIS, the homicidal crowd that Barack Obama dismissed as "the JV team," are returning to strength in Afghanistan.
Little solace to its new victims that that land's current rulers, the Taliban, were once the insurgents. Now, the insurgents have insurgents.
As always, every day, every week, my RedState colleagues scattered across the country continue to come up with the widest range of conservative commentary anywhere:
Like Joe Biden's latest gaffe. You probably missed it on the TV news, but the president placed an overdue Medal of Honor around the neck of an elderly Vietnam vet. And then, to the puzzlement of the assembled audience, the President of the United States walked out of the room. The ceremony was not yet over. Except in Joe Biden's mind.
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