Rural vs. Urban divide?
I believe so. I think the red area is 99% forest.
Things would be different if the moose could get the suffrage.
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It’s one of those things people say, so if you’re up with the conversation you know it to be true and dont need to examine it. Like how republicans are better for the economy and national defense.
That Axios piece about Licht is a great example of what is wrong with journalism. It reports on the stated motivation of Licht and Zazlov with no attempt to interogate the claims or contextualize them agaist other things known to be true. It mentions and then dances around the elephant in the room - John Malone, the man who has hired and can fire them. The fact the PR statements from Licht and Zazlov are aligned with the stated desires for the network of a RW loon who has long criticised CNN for [insert Conservative bad faith attacks] and praised fox for being a better example of how to do truthful news is not mentioned. Nor is that information used to contextualize the moves these men are making with the company.
CNN is now in a position where they want to be seen as "centrist’. That’s not about being fair, its about perceived to be fair by people who wont think about the dynamics of it for more than 30 seconds. They want to move more in the direction that academics have identified as the main way mainstream media have failed us a society by basically both sidsing everything. Centrist in today’s day and age, with the brazen disregard for anything approaching truth from one side of the aisle, is basically a Doug Balloon approach to journalism.
The Speaker of the House has her husband in the ICU after being the target of political violence. Some Conservatives say it’s the left’s fault. Today on Tapper, why this is bad news for Joe Biden. Here to discuss this, Jan 6th insurrectionist, Baked Alaska
CNN has been partisan for some time. Not sure how that can even be considered controversial. The prime-time shows on Fox, CNN and MSNBC are all basically editorials.
The South of the state is very solid Democrat, the North is purple with a slightly more red than blue hue - the north is extremely rural. Its a split state for Presidential races with the North and South both being counted seperately and then one 1pt awarded for the overall winner of the state (almost always Democrats because barely anyone lives to the north of Augusta).
Jared Golden, an incumbant Democrat, is favoured to win the congressional seat for ME2 but he is very much on the right of the Democratic party and much of his election paperwork is trying to highlight how detached he is from “Biden’s extreme agenda”. I guess he feels he needs to appeal to the right in ME2. Elsewhere the Governor is Democrat and should win easily and ME1 areas will all vote Democrat with huge numbers. Chellie Pingree - incumbant Democrat Congresswoman for ME1 - is one of the safest politicians in America in terms of winning re-election. (She actually helped push through my visa application so I am happy about that!).
The National Guard base I work on is in the North, Bangor, so the full time people here tend to be pretty conservative.
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Reasonable people will disagree with the degree of partisanship where it exists, but if that is the lens you’re seeing it through, how do you explain their framing of the 2016 election, or are we just memory holing it? Doesn’t that map better onto the explanation of them chasing eyeballs and directing their coverage to the direction they think will maximize that - Trump is an amusing clownshow so lets cover his rallies. People dislike Clinton so lets stick it on her…and there is no end of great contributors we can find who will give us virality with their criticism of her.
Even if you see all that and somehow think CNN has been either displayed a liberal bias (as opposed to the framing the agrees with the supposedly liberal party on an issue is in fact correct), comparisons to Fox are still bad. MSNBC is a far better candidate of describing a network with a liberal framing, but even they are not the flip side of the coin from Fox. These are just blithe comparisons.
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I honestly do not remember how CNN covered the 2016 campaign, so I would not dispute that part of what you are saying. I only recall the shocked faces on election night, not just on CNN but many other places. My experience with CNN comes more recently, through the pandemic especially and up until now. Because I live with someone who gobbles up the prime-time lineup (we don’t have MSNBC on our cable service).
Jesus fucking Christ…
after watching the Twitter debacle, literally the last thing I’d do is take election advice from Elon Musk (even if I could vote in the US)…
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Stay sane US reds (not applicable to those that are that way inclined)…
Taken from the Beeb https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63545194
The thing that came to my mind is the following sequence:
- There will be a bunch of challenges - mainly from the GOP
- It will likely drag on to distract from any number of real issues and outcomes
- Dems will feel they need to make some challenges also, so they don’t they appear weak and all this will prolong the uncertainty
GOP win in/on all outcomes above. Even if the Dems get the best possible out come in the voting, the ensuing show will mean the GOP strengthen their base and secure a more lope sided playing field for the next encounter. It’s like Roe vs Wade. The constant barrage of shithousery means they will create homefield advantage on all subjects and the Dems will be way out of their depth.
Never underestimate the willingness of the Democrats to ignore that need.
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The Democrats are the most frustrating political party ever. They basically have a free run at anything left of batshit crazy in the States and should have a massive majority, but they keep finding ways to fuck up.
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This is the understated effect of the GOP election denial. They know the press are completely incapable of properly portraying a legitimate legal remedy against a rat fucked election as being different from their complaints over the past 2 years (which the press have given way too much credence to). This effectively opens the door to them doing whatever fuckery they want and it being treated by the press and the court of public opinion as simply “oh, now the Dems wont accept the results…they’re as bad as each other.”
It’s GOP 101. The lying is not just about not admitting to the truth, it’s creating cover for them to then do exactly the thing they accuse the dems of doing and presenting the criticism as just politics as usual and the press eating it up.
Four years ago, the first go around between Stacy Abrams and Kemp in GA, Abrams’ campaign pursued line after line of legal remedy to remove the obstructions Kemp’s office was putting in place for black people to vote (and get it counted). She was incredibly successful in the courts with these challenges, which validated her complaints were legitimate and not just political talking points. Yet in several cases the courts refused to grant her remedy because doing so would be seen as too political. So the courts effectively said Yes the election is being rat fucked, but this is the election we’re going to go ahead with. A couple of weeks before the election Abrams was on Meet the Press, probably the most influential political show in US tv and the host asked her if she had considered the damage her raft of legal challenges (again, all before the election, done with a view to making sure people could vote and have the vote counted) was having on people’s faith in democracy. It was probably the only time I’ve ever seen her flustered. The framing of the issue, from one of the most influential people in politics, was that it was better to pretend the election was on the up and up than to seek remedy for the people it was blocking from the process. This is the way the press treat these things and why the GOP now have so much room to rat fuck this one.
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They are just as much to blame for the current state of things in the US. For years they’ve just ignored what the GOP has been doing in State legislatures , gerrymandering , voter suppression , appointment of judges and packing the Supreme Court.
Too fucking late now.
They are not. Not remotely. There are no end of things to criticize them for RE strategy and priorities, but this thing of blaming them for not being able to prevent what the GOP are trying to do, in a media environment that gives the GOP cover for doing it, in a political system that doesn’t reward majority rule, is a large part of why the GOP is allowed to get away with it.
Clinton won 3 million + more votes than Trump did and lost. In Wisconsin the last state house elections saw the Dems get about 55% of the popular vote and the governorship, yet they won only about 40% of the house seats and got effectively shut out of decision making. In NC the GOP lost the governor’s race and immediately rewrote laws in the lame duck session stripping the governor of the majority of his powers. This is third world shit and it was barely a story.
The dems are constantly faced with a situation of shit decision 1 vs shit decision 2 and people are continually acting like the real issue which shit decision they took rather than holding the real perpetrators to account.
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