Monday Smackdown Watch: The New York Times and Bret Stephens Continue to Beclown Themselves Bigtime
The New York Times beclouds itself with: Bret Stephens: The Midterm Results Are a Warning to the Democrats: "Stop manning imaginary barricades, and start building real bridges to the other America. This week’s elections were, at most, a very modest rebuke of a president reviled by many of his opponents, this columnist included, as an unprecedented danger to the health of liberal democracy at home and abroad. The American people don’t entirely agree. We might consider listening to them a bit more—and to ourselves somewhat less. A 27-seat swing gave Democrats control of the House.... The Republican gain in the Senate... underscores what a non-wave election this was...
...It also underscores that while “the Resistance” is good at generating lots of votes, it hasn’t figured out how to turn the votes into seats. Liberals are free to bellyache all they want that they have repeatedly won the overall popular vote for the presidency and Congress while still losing elections, and that the system is therefore “rigged.” But that’s the system in which everyone’s playing—and one they had no trouble winning in until just a few years ago. To complain about it makes them sound like whiners in a manner reminiscent of Trump in 2016, when he thought he was going to lose. It’s also a reminder that, in politics, intensity is not strategy. You have to be able to convert. The Resistance didn’t convert...
Nate Silver has fun: Nate Silver: On Twitter: "This is funny: @SimonMaloy 'the NYT has been quietly updating Bret Stephens' bad post-midterm column and making it even worse https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/11/30/bret-stephens-2018-midterm-analysis-quietly-getting-worse/222190. Like, would it kill @BretStephensNYT just to admit that he made a hasty judgment based on having a deadline and not understanding that a lot of the uncalled races were likely to go to Democrats?I'm partly just trolling here but news is hard because it happens in real time and so you get things wrong. There should be more peer pressure (even trolling!) applied when people refuse to fix mistakes in the case of mounting evidence to the contrary. Would improve incentives..."
#journamalism #orangehairedbaboons
