Here's a superficial response to something you only mention in passing: the adequacy (or not) of Michael Tomasky's argument that right-wing media won the election for Trump. The argument is not that the Democrats didn't deserve to lose. The argument is that that's not why they lost. A vast closed ecosystem of Fox, talk radio, right-wing …
Here's a superficial response to something you only mention in passing: the adequacy (or not) of Michael Tomasky's argument that right-wing media won the election for Trump. The argument is not that the Democrats didn't deserve to lose. The argument is that that's not why they lost. A vast closed ecosystem of Fox, talk radio, right-wing websites, and evangelical pulpits engaged in nonstop fantastic exaggeration about the Democrats ("Marxists." "socialists," "communists," "unpatriotic," "baby-killers") and equally important, said not a word about Trump's manifest dishonesty, cruelty, ignorance, and incompetence.
Obviously the Democrats are terrible. But the Republicans are horrible. In their fanatical devotion to plutocracy, they are so much the greater evil that any non-brainwashed person seeking to choose the lesser evil would vote Democratic. But Republican voters were brainwashed. Of course they're free, in theory, to read Times or the Post or the Nation. But in the real world, those are not live cultural options. They believed in Trump because every outlet in their environment told them to.
Here's a superficial response to something you only mention in passing: the adequacy (or not) of Michael Tomasky's argument that right-wing media won the election for Trump. The argument is not that the Democrats didn't deserve to lose. The argument is that that's not why they lost. A vast closed ecosystem of Fox, talk radio, right-wing websites, and evangelical pulpits engaged in nonstop fantastic exaggeration about the Democrats ("Marxists." "socialists," "communists," "unpatriotic," "baby-killers") and equally important, said not a word about Trump's manifest dishonesty, cruelty, ignorance, and incompetence.
Obviously the Democrats are terrible. But the Republicans are horrible. In their fanatical devotion to plutocracy, they are so much the greater evil that any non-brainwashed person seeking to choose the lesser evil would vote Democratic. But Republican voters were brainwashed. Of course they're free, in theory, to read Times or the Post or the Nation. But in the real world, those are not live cultural options. They believed in Trump because every outlet in their environment told them to.