nicholasgrossman.bsky.social
International Relations prof at U. Illinois. Editor of Arc Digital. Author “Drones and Terrorism.” Politics, national security, and occasional nerdery.
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Thanks. Best of luck to you until our paths cross again.
(And now I'm logging off for real)
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A treasure Indiana Jones steals by replacing it on the pedastal with an American flag of equal weight.
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It's not that news organizations are failing to tell any story of Trump attacking freedom of the press. They are. Rather, it's that they're *rewarding* those attacks — see, for example, "Gulf of America" and the AP — while reserving punishment for Democrats for *actually addressing the problem*.
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No, the criticism I'm making is not about omission. It's about standards that create bad incentive structures for politicians.
The question for the press: What's the purpose of critical coverage? Is it to prompt improvement? Or is it to create a running—ideally never-ending—narrative of negativity?
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But that would undermine the vaguery, which is essential to the accusation.
Besides, "elite" in practice mostly means "person I don't like." Therefore, a middle school teacher or a barista who puts pronouns on their name tag is elite, while a born-rich, highly influential public official is not.
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Clinton didn't sue news organizations, threaten to revoke broadcast licenses, or abuse power to block mergers because corporate parents didn't force news orgs they own to toe the party line.
This is a crucial difference. Trump isn't brazening it out. He's actively attacking freedom of the press.
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More or less.
Also, hat tip for "Militia Etheridge." Dad joke quality pun (complimentary).
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Yes. And be unapologetic. If anything, get defensive and angry when anyone suggests you should be apologetic.
Acknowledging error and correcting something brings prolonged negative coverage about it. Defiance, doubling down, and threats to the press brings acceptance.
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To address this directly, yes, the incentive structure media created for politicians is:
If politicians correct XYZ, the news will smell blood, treat it as a gotcha, and make "you didn't correct XYZ for a while" the story.
If politicians resist correcting XYZ, news will stop treating it as bad.
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Reasonable universal principle: Not good when a president is old with age-related cognitive decline. That's a serious issue that merits extensive coverage.
But prominent media orgs aren't operating that way. They're negative on the party that addressed it, and indifferent to the party that didn't.
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Biden is old and appears to have declined.
Dems push him off the ballot, nominate someone younger.
Year later, media still treats "Biden Old" as scandal.
Trump is old and appears to have declined.
Republicans embrace him and cover for him.
Media lets it go.
What should politicians take from that?
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That works. It’s not either/or.
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Since I think 2024 election discourse is:
-mostly rehashing long-running arguments or psychological cope
-plagued by erroneous assumptions that swing voters closely follow news
-full of what if assertions no one can possibly know
-and one of the few things that's actually a distraction
I'll stop.
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Culture, identity, vibes, what seems cool or funny in the moment, etc. It varies.
But the vast majority of people who know and care about policy are consistent partisan voters. After all, the parties offer different policy platforms and approaches.
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Campaign strategists should do post-vote analysis and lessons learned, yes. But a lot seems driven by a psychological preference for “a few Democratic leaders made bad choices, and if they chose differently this wouldn’t have happened” over “voters are adults with agency and a plurality chose this.”
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No, and that makes a similar mistake, assuming that late-deciding voters and swing voters are policy voters, with at least decent knowledge of the candidates’ platforms. Few are.
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This is why I find so much of the post-2024 discourse to be a waste or actively detrimental. Much of it assumes that late-deciding voters pay close attention to politics and have strong opinions on specifics like word choice or endorsements, and underrates the chance that Trump voters wanted Trump.
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Ah. Counterpoint.
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I am very skeptical that many thousands of votes swing on the degree of visibility of a vice presidential nominee.
Most swing voters aren't paying attention, and probably didn't notice that there was more or less Walz either way.
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I don't know the answer (and don't have time right now to research it closely). But I'm wary of reading it as Harris was winning and then fell back. Doing so requires assuming polls are the equivalent of votes. Possible what we saw was fluctuation of models, predictions of turnout, and sample.
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Wasn't it mostly undecided voters deciding, and some wavering GOP coming home? Write-ups of polls often left out "don't know," and someone moving from Harris to Trump is different than from don't know to Trump.
Plus there's the usual distortion of who chooses to talk to a pollster at each moment.
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Or something
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Book sellers will try to sell books, that’s true.
But when a Democratic politician is invited on a show to distract from Trump, bash their party, and help sell the book, they’re not obligated to say yes.
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January 6 was good, everyone involved who got convicted of a crime was innocent and deserves a pardon, and thankfully President Trump put it down with force!
1984 is over-referenced, but there's no better word for that than "doublethink." Like going "Back the Blue" while celebrating cop-beaters.
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This whole time, I've thought that it's a big mistake to conflate long-running policy debates in legal channels with lawbreaking and anti-Constitutional actions. But I've accepted that I lost that argument, and could be using my time/energy more productively elsewhere.
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Yes. <sigh>
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Additional unfortunateness: Most of those who believed the canard and are seeing it disproven will deny that it has been disproven and continue embracing the canard.
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I was just about to say something like "I, too, have noticed that a subset of computer engineers think every problem is an engineering problem, except that's really not right," but then I saw this reply right below yours:
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I am unfortunately not optimistic about this, but yes, it really should make everyone realize that the US federal government was quite efficient and low waste for a large organization.
a big example: some talented people chose public service even though it pays a lot less than what they could make.
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Maybe eventually. But no way it'd happen in one day. For some, it'd never happen. And a subset would react to talking to other people face to face by not liking it.
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I made that chart last year. The threats to annex neighbors and take territory from allies came after he took office this January, they weren't part of the campaign.
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It happens. 'tis the internet.
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When you pretend it's entirely "do things you don't have the power to do" and ignore "do things within your power that you are choosing not to do," it does look different, yes.
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Yeah, I didn't mean that as a big media criticism or anything. Just that it stood out to me. More typically see reports say something like "possible suicide bomb," or the stronger "apparent suicide bomb," or a police cement saying it wasn't or don't know if.
But maybe just if the attacker is Muslim.