Doubling Down on Doubling Down

Jay Rosen succinctly prescribes one solution to the bafflement of the mainstream press in dealing with Trump:
"Don't let him be your assignment editor." (At 2:30.)

If only the fact checker at the Washington Post was paying attention.

Trump doubles down on lies all the time. The constant lying is a way to deny reality, distract from the malfeasance of his team, deflect attention from important issues to unimportant or irrelevant matters, and to accuse a political opponent or the press, usually falsely or in a grossly misleading way of doing some wrong thing.  Unfortunately, if there is the slightest veracity or mere appearance of relevance to Trump's false claim, our mainstream press feels compelled to analyze the Trumpian statement in excruciating detail. By that point, Trump has succeeded in derailing the press from their mission by controlling the narrative, the constant drumbeat that he uses to keep his supporters agitated, aggravated, on edge, and fearful or hateful as the case may be.

Thus, fact checking of Trump by the press makes no sense as a reporting method because it gives Trump exactly what he wants, helping him to achieve the goals of his communications effort - satisfying supporters and confusing some opponents.

Early on, the press was mystified by Trump's doubling down on his lies. Surely fact checking would expose Trump as a fraud (but we can't call him a fraud, despite the preponderance of the evidence - we are a free press, after all, who must recoil from anything that smacks as an opinion, even when the verifiable conclusions are clear.)

So what does the WaPo do after all these years of fact checking have proved insufficient to derail Trump's false narratives? When Trump doubles down, they double down too -- on fact checking!

Wapo calls their latest invention the "Bottomless Pinnochio". When four Pinnochios are not enough.

From the WaPo fact checker ---"Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again"

How exactly does "bottomless Pinnocchio do anything that 5 or even 10 Pinnochios would not accomplish?

Any reader who is not convinced by four Pinnochios will not be convinced by a bottomless Pinocchio. And, by covering the lies in this manner, as statements that are considered with regard to their veracity instead of statements that Trump makes to deny, distract, deflect, and/or accuse, that is, statements that are made tactically, WaPo continues to fail to cover Trump responsibly ( or any politician who operates in bad faith) in the manner in which they deserve --- which is the coverage that the readership deserves.

See also: "Hothead But Not a Liar II - Tactics for Truth" for coverage of similar WaPo fact checking flaws and apt comments of  the linguist George Lakoff.
And for more about deny, distract, accuse and masterful narrative control, see:
Birtherism as a Service (BaaS)

O Biased Fool!

The problems with mainstream media headlines are many.
Hears the title of an Opinion piece in WaPo:
Count me as one Democrat who thinks Trump made an excellent choice in William Barr

If that's what the writer believes, and the article makes a series of arguments, why don't the editors go with:
"Trump made an excellent choice in William Barr"

The original title implies - you, dear reader, may find the following article worth reading and the arguments more compelling because they are made by a member of one "side" who takes a position more common on the other "side".

But if a set of arguments is compelling, they need to stand on their own and by implying greater credibility of a writer's arguments based on resisting his own presumed bias, the editors of the WaPo are feeding the beast of false balance:

-There are two equal and opposite sides in politics.
-Everyone is either a Republican or a Democrat with biases.
-No one who is a Republican or a Democrat is able to be objective without submission to their own biases.
...
which, in the age of Trump as the apotheosis of Republican strategy over the past few decades has led to:
-All politicians lie sometimes.
-Trump is a liar, but Obama lied too.

Which is the place where nonsense reigns supreme. And in this particular case, if you, dear reader are a Democrat or vote for Democrats and oppose the nomination of William Barr, you do not have full standing to disagree with me, the writer of this piece, because I am admirably going against my natural biases just as you are succumbing to yours, O biased fool.

Election Security

The WaPo editorial board dishes us complete and utter nonsense in "The NRCC hack shows that election security is a bipartisan problem".

The big problem is the misframing of the issue.

The first sentence "PRESIDENT TRUMP may claim that Democratic incompetence was to blame for hacks of the party’s systems during the 2016 election."

Wait, why are we starting the discussion with a claim from the president who lies instinctively about every issue every day? Letting Trump set the framing of the issue is a complete mistake, but understandable if your WaPo antiquated editorial standards require you to take the view from nowhere.  The problem with that approach is that the lead nudges the reader to think about the claim - is it true? is it false? is it misleading? In what way might the claim make sense? But in light of the Russian cyberattacks on Democrats in 2016 that assisted with the installation of an increasingly authoritarian Republican regime, lending credence to the Trump claim by even mentioning it makes absolutely no sense.

WaPo editors, like the NYT editors , are inclined to view the world from a comfortable distance, with a presumed symmetry between two parties - Democrats and Republicans. (Incidentally, what would they do if there happened to be three large parties in the U.S.? Would the moderate party always be the right one and the other two always wrong when they disagreed with the middle path?)

The WaPo claim that "the NRCC hack shows that election security is a bipartisan problem" has its own problems.

What would WaPo have said four or five days ago, before the hack was revealed? It's a bipartisan issue, but we are waiting for a hack of Republicans to have "proof"?

What does WaPo mean by bipartisan problem?  Both "sides" should be able to agree because both "sides" have a strong interest in stopping hacking within the U.S. By now, WaPo editorial board should have learned that there are many issues where both "sides" have aligned interests, but somehow do not agree. WaPo would do better to try harder to understand and explain why it is so, instead of following the constant drumbeat that stems from an insistence on belief in two equal and opposite "sides" - that the world of America is divided into two equal and opposite parties that disagree most of the time, but can agree on compromise, if only they can put aside their differences.

Republicans in government found long ago that it suits their agenda to ignore actual discussion of policy issues and instead focus on winning through better marketing which meant taking down their political opponents with personal attacks that effectively distract attention from policy issues and arguments.

The WaPo editorial continues:
"It is, in fact, an issue for everyone in the United States, demanding a broad response from Congress and political actors across the board. 

Congress has done too little since 2016 to shore up election cybersecurity. Actions to increase the integrity of voting systems are regrettably stalled. Voting machines are not the only critical infrastructure under threat: There is no minimum federal standard for the cybersecurity of campaigns or parties, and there is no single dedicated agency responsible for overseeing how those organizations protect their information — or don’t. There’s a money problem, too: Without federal help, cash-strapped campaigns and state election systems lack the resources to guard themselves."

Congress has failed to act because Congress has been controlled by Republicans who benefited in 2016 from the Russian conspiracy of cyber attacks on the U.S. Setting that crucial fact aside ignores the larger problem that some Republican officeholders have purposely looked to the side while other Republicans actively participated in the attacks on the U.S. electoral system. Ignoring this stark fact with an appeal to "bipartisanship" in this editorial is complete nonsense.

Republicans Redefine Elections

"Stung by Election Losses, Republicans in the States Seek a Way to Neutralize Democrats" reads the NYT headline.

source: random house dictionary

"Stung by losses...". Think about the meaning of that purported objective news blurb.
Feeling hurt and sad, a little depressed perhaps - and only due to their hurt feelings, Republicans in the State legislatures that have a majority in the current lame duck session and, thanks to gerrymandering, in the upcoming legislative session, Republicans who received a minority of votes in certain states while maintaining a legislative majority, have passed laws that the current lame duck governor will sign, in order to eliminate gubernatorial powers that these Republicans want to deprive the newly elected governor - powers that the majority of voters were fine with - powers that these same Republicans were fine with, if and only if, the next governor was going to be a Republican.

Being "stung" asserts a feeling and that headline implies a cause and effect relationship. Only because of their hurt feelings, Republicans are doing things they might not otherwise do. The headline is subjective, not objective, a subjective thought that, according to NYT journalistic standards, belongs in an Opinion piece, not the headline to a hard news story. But the Times pulls back and casually observes each Republican step in its own solitary universe, without regard to a pattern of increasing anti-democratic behavior. How can we downplay this latest Republican maneuver in order to maintain our casual air of objectivity?

So voters in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan are denied the fruits of their ballots because Republicans are willing to act against the majority to change the laws that control the separation of powers - the very functioning of State government. Reps are only able to do this because the government has lame duck sessions as a means of assuring a smooth transition between legislatures. The existence of the lame duck is based on a basic trust,  the proposition that we are all in this together, that no one would think to take advantage of the lame duck to thwart the will of the people expressed at the ballot. But that is yet one more step in the destruction of a functioning democracy.

Feeling hurt, wounded and in pain, Republicans ....

Why not "Desperate to hold onto their minority rule and thwarting the will of the majority of voters, Republicans in the legislature are usingthe lame duck session...." ?

Republican tactics that are used to hold on to power are becoming more extreme. The more extreme and dangerous the tactics, the more the NYT news writers feel compelled to downplay the gravity of the threat to democracy, ostensibly because objective news writers must sound calm. But if you try harder to appear calm than you try to be accurate, you will find that it becomes too late to fix your reporting because it is too late to do anything to save functioning democracy.

Demonization as a Both Sides Thing

Joe Scarborough, who pilloried Hillary Clinton for years, had his own interesting twist on good people on “both sides” for his Thanksgiving moment:

But claiming “both sides” are hesitant to enter public service is off base in a few different ways.
Yes, effective office holders who are qualified to run for President on the Democratic ticket may be hesitant to run for fear of being demonized. But the Republican Party has demonstrated that you, too can win the Party nomination if you are unqualified, incompetent, corrupt, and adept at distracting voters from your sheer awfulness with obtuse, yet vicious demonization of your opponents. Scarborough’s tweet implies that this is a peculiarly trumpian phenomenon,  it Trump is simply the logical consequence of Republican electoral strategy over the course of several decades. And nothing suggests that we are ever going back. It would have been more accurate to suggest that good people can feel discouraged from running for the Democratic nomination for president and bad people can feel encouraged to run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Election Fallout

We are getting some interesting post-election fallout.

Doug Heye, whose HarvardKennedySchool bio touts "In 2010, Heye served as communications director of the Republican National Committee. Heye excelled in his handling of multiple large-scale public relations crises and pursuing an aggressive media strategy", citing as an example that he "was a player in the 2010[sic] Florida Recount, participating in Miami/Dade’s famed “Brooks Brothers Revolt."

Having had a whole lot to do with the RNC 2010 “Fire Pelosi” campaign, Democrats would be crazy to do just that. Republicans don’t like Pelosi precisely because of her effectiveness.

— Doug Heye (@DougHeye) November 15, 2018

Since when do Republican strategists, current or former, so readily admit to an active measure. It's obvious they aggressively kneecap Pelosi precisely because she is so effective, but to admit the truth? Never. But times change.

Their target audience is not just voters - giving loyal Republicans, especially Trumpists a target for all that hate, but Democratic members of Congress foolish enough not to perceive their game. For Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and others, it's hard to ignore that constant frame of the "hated" Pelosi, which crowds out the accurate frame of the "effective" Pelosi.

One of these "Senators" Is Not Like the Others

Conservatives understand the power of the frame and manage to keep one step ahead of their opponents in this realm. In 2000, the Miami Dade demonstrations on behalf of democracy looked like this:

But Democrats caught on and, after some research, this not-so-spontaneous demonstration late came to look like this:

This showing by Republican operatives who descended on the Miami/Dade vote count has been dubbed the Brooks Brothers Riot, a mocking label that is unusually catchy and apt for one affixed to a group of Republicans.

In 2018, with Republicans again determined to stop counting votes in Florida, another "spontaneous" riot might not fool folks quite so easily. As Bush the Younger has taught us  "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.'"

No, do not misunderestimate Republicans. You can count on Mitch McConnell, inventor of the 'Biden rule' to set the frame:

source:CNBC

"We're here this morning to welcome our six new Republican Senators." said McConnell. Notice how MSNBC repeats the framing with their chyron, doing the work for McConnell in the photo, even while noting that Scott is not elected as of this date:

source:CNBC

MCCONNELL WELCOMES NEW
GOP SENATORS TO HIS OFFICE

Actually, McConnell welcomes new GOP Senators-elect and purported Senator-elect Rick Scott to his office, but that is a mouthful. By being the first to set the frame, by framing Scott as the elected Senator, McConnell puts Democrats on the defensive. By casually grouping Scott with the five elected Senators in a photo op, McConnell visually removes any doubt about Scott's current status, despite the continuing counting of votes in the Florida senatorial election. This photo op puts Democrats in a defensive posture, having to insist on the legitimacy of vote counting.

This jumping to the front of the line -pretending that something exists that does not and something that does exist does not - is something Democrats never do. It's not in their nature. Democrats are more inclined to work within reality. Republicans do whatever it takes to win, and if that means embracing an alternative to reality, so be it. But it works.

News organizations like CNBC could react to a staged photo of a meeting that is designed solely to frame this issue, with their own more accurate label that recognizes how they are being used by McConnell. How about:
ONE OF THESE 'SENATORS' IS
NOT LIKE THE OTHERS