I seriously do not get this country. The subservience to the Republicans by the media at least made sense when they were in the majority and held the Presidency in 2001. But this is 2009, the Republicans have been routed electorally for the past few years, everything the Republican party believed in failed miserably the last eight years and they have been exposed as total frauds, they released a budget with no numbers on April Fools day, they have been whipping up teabaggers and gun nuts into a froth for months and screaming about death panels because they have no ideas or solutions, and when they finally do release their health care “plan,” it totally and completely sucks. It is nothing but fail, fail, fail, from the GOP, they just lost two more seats in the house, they are going through a horrible (yet delicious) civil war, yet according to the media, everything is bad news for Democrats.
I wish I could point to an obvious, vast conspiracy to ignore good news for Democrats. But instead there's a couple intangible factors at play: the first is that this bill isn't part of the "narrative." It goes without saying that a CBO thrashing of a Democratic bill would be huge news. That's because journos are focused on the bill that has a chance of passing and what the GOP has to say about it. They don't feel like taking the time to fill out the "narrative" by letting people know what the alternative is.
There's also no way to underestimate the power of hard-wiring. This town has been right of center for decades. The waiters at the Palm know it just like the reports at the Post. That doesn't change over night. Reporters are predisposed to taking what conservatives say more seriously. While we wait for the next generation of journalists to arrive, the current generation waits for the return of the Daddy Party.
