Never a group to let a crisis go to waste, according to emails posted to Twitter that originated from the official Democratic Party account, the Parkland students responsible for promoting walk-outs and #neveragain marches are now dropping the pretense and signing up as fundraisers for the Democratic party.

Parkland students fundraising for the DNC pic.twitter.com/aa4Z2Oe5FI

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) March 2, 2018

Attention Dumb Dumbs in my menchies pic.twitter.com/x5EBOGLZfh

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) March 2, 2018

This shouldn’t be surprising, as David Hines of the The Federalist pointed out Thursday, if one accepts how “professionalized” the student response was to the shooting. It was quick, coordinated and conformed nearly exactly to Democrat talking points regarding gun reform.

It’s been a recurring theme of the coverage of the Parkland school shooting: the remarkable effectiveness of the high school students who created a gun control organization in the wake of the massacre. In seemingly no time, the magical kids had organized events ranging from a national march to a mass school walkout, and they’d brought in a million dollars in donations from Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney.

…

The president of the American Federation of Teachers told BuzzFeed they’re also behind the national school walkout, which journalists had previously assured the public was the sole work of a teenager. (I’d thought teachers were supposed to get kids into school, but maybe that’s just me.)

In other words, the response was professionalized. That’s not surprising, because this is what organization that gets results actually looks like. It’s not a bunch of magical kids in somebody’s living room. Nor is it surprising that the professionalization happened right off the bat. Broward County’s teacher’s union is militant, and Rep. Ted Lieu stated on Twitter that his family knows Parkland student activist David Hogg’s family, so there were plenty of opportunities for grown-ups with resources and skills to connect the kids.

To reiterate: it shouldn’t have been surprising. But if it was, don’t beat yourself up. Because the whole thrust of Hines’ article is that the press worked hard to cover the fact that the kids were being organized behind the scenes by some reasonably powerful Democrat players.

For two weeks, journalists abjectly failed in their jobs, which is to tell the public what’s going on. And any of them who had any familiarity with organizing campaigns absolutely knew. Matt Pearce, of the Los Angeles Times, would have been ideally placed to write an excellent article: not only is he an organizer for the Times’s union, he moderated a panel on leftist activism for the LA Times Book Festival and has the appropriate connections in organizing. Instead, he wrote about a school walkout, not what was behind it. (In another article, Pearce defined Delta caving to a pressure campaign’s demands as “finding middle ground.”)

But it’s not just a mainstream media problem. None of the righty outlets writing about Parkland picked up on the clear evidence that professional organizers were backing the Parkland kids, either. Instead, they objected to the front-and-centering of minor kids as unseemly, which does no good: Lefties aren’t going to listen, and it doesn’t educate the Right to counter.

So if your instinct was to find Parkland student and rabid anti-NRA activist David Hogg as insufferable as your average lefty trying to shame you into buying whatever snake oil policy they’re trying to sell this week, your instincts look to be serving you well.

The good news is now that the pretense of traumatized kids just trying to be heard has been dropped, gun rights proponents should be freed up a bit to criticize their methods and statements a bit more without seeming insensitive to their suffering.