The national prestige press proclaims the dangers of "misinformation" in this election and how our democracy is too important for voters to be misinformed, or "misinfluenced." But you can sense that what they mean is Republican arguments are inherently false and must be rebutted. This is the task of "journalism."
On the first night of the Democratic convention, the "PBS News Hour" brought on their Monday night pundits – election prognosticator Amy Walter and NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith. When the voters are misinformed in favor of the Democrats, that is an opportunity, not democracy in peril.
Walter cited a new Washington Post poll that found "part of the reason Harris is doing as well as she is, is that she's not seen as part of the Biden legacy. In other words, she's not as closely tied to decisions that the Biden administration made." She said, "One of the most interesting data points I have seen" was the Post asking, "How much influence do you think that Kamala Harris has had within the Biden administration on economic policy and immigration?"
Now why is the Post asking a question with the essence of "is the sky blue?" Even if she didn't have "influence," she can absolutely be connected to it.
Walter said only about a third of voters recognized she had influence on those issues: "So, on the one hand, she wants Biden to say nice things about her, of course. On the other hand, she's going to want a little, like, maybe we can have a little distance here. I like you, but I have got to go my own way."
PBS and their pundits, including their "fact-checking" partners at PolitiFact, are interested in Harris creating "distance" from Biden – "distance" that is blatantly dishonest.
"News Hour" anchor Amna Nawaz played along: "But does she need to break more from especially problematic issues, problematic policies that have created issues with voters from the Biden administration?"
Tamara Keith declared Harris is "creating a tonal distance, but not actually a policy distance." She sounds different on Gaza, and on inflation, "in a way that is somehow more empathetic." She's pursuing "tonal separation from Biden."
PBS and the rest of the pro-Democrat press want to preserve her political viability, as Bill Clinton once said. They want to help her say the right things and strike the right chords with the less-informed voters, and the facts can be dismissed as malleable things.
In much the same way, a Media Research Center poll of 2020 Biden-Harris voters – both Democrats and independents – from Aug. 2-5 found they knew very little about radical views Harris expressed during her shambolic 2020 presidential campaign.
For example, 86% didn't know Harris wouldn't say "no" to granting voting rights to imprisoned rapists or terrorists (CNN mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers). Or 78% didn't know she promoted a fundraising link to bail out rioters in Minneapolis in 2020, and 73% had no concept that she endorsed the radical Green New Deal.
On immigration, 74% were unaware she wanted to decriminalize illegal immigration, and 77% didn't know she supported abolishing Immigrations and Custom Enforcement.
Right now, the Harris campaign has signaled to their reporter friends that she no longer supports much of her 2020 agenda. She's slippery, and journalists appear to think it's fine to let her slink out of that stink. Reporters are more interested in beating Trump with misinformation than dwelling on inconveniently correct information.
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