Democratic nominees VP Kamela Harris and Gov. Tim Walz are the Dream Team. In a matter of weeks, they’ve created a level of excitement not seen in the Democratic Party for many years, raising a record $540 million while both voter registrations and new volunteers for their campaign have exploded. The HarrisWalz campaign has rightly reclaimed the word freedom. Sharing plans to increase opportunities for working and middle-class Americans, their patriotic, inclusive and joyful campaign has left today’s GOP to take what’s left over – namely the endless-grievance-xenophobic-look-up-your-skirt-and-take-your-rights-away-Party. The contrast is stunning. What VP Harris and Gov. Walz have been able to achieve in five weeks is all the more magnificent because they have confounded a corporate owned media in the process.
Addicted to a horse race and outrage clicks in order to boost their ratings, mainstream media are inexplicably in the tank for a corrupt, yet stale and flustered trump. Even though trump’s Project 2025 may very well burn down the country in the process, billionaires who control 90% of the media in this country don’t seem to care. Media minimizes trump’s sins at every turn (trump’s debacle last week at Arlington Cemetary comes to mind), but even with their constant assistance, he is as lost as they are — because VP Harris refuses to play their standard gotcha games.
For HarrisWalz, and their supporters, having the benefit of hindsight is helpful. Sadly, the brilliant Hillary Clinton didn’t have this 8 years ago. We saw how big media worked to destroy Secretary Clinton by pushing endless negative stories several years before she had even declared her candidacy, then dwelling on her nothingburger emails to the point that they created a scandal out of whole cloth. HarrisWalz now know you can’t allow big media to set the narrative – especially since they often function as GOP stenographers.
During the convention, Harris Walz had 200 content creators given seating space usually reserved for legacy media. While the MSM took umbrage at the slight, this was the treatment they deserved since their behavior had been so appalling. Look at how they hounded a very successful President Biden out of the race over his age, yet his fitness level soars past trump’s, who lives on “hamberders” and is but 3 years younger. Since President Biden has left the race and endorsed Harris, big media no longer seems to be ageist, despite trump’s rambling incoherence. Yet Biden’s endorsement of Harris and a surprisingly unified Democratic Party (due in great part to Biden’s strategic timing and HarrisWalz rise in the polls) have likewise left big media sputtering.
Harris-Walz are making their case directly to voters with every social media outlet available. Their rallies are electric, engaged and down-to-earth. Since big media didn’t expect VP Harris to be the nominee or to land on her feet as well as she has, mainstream media was again caught off guard. Harris-Walz connected BIG with voters across the country before media could poison the well with typical GOP framing.
Per David R. Lurie’s wonderful article in Public Notice:
“Kamala Harris is succeeding in accomplishing something none of Donald Trump’s adversaries have since 2016: Turning off his political oxygen supply by refusing to engage with his manufactured spectacles of insults and taunts, or with the often wholly substance-free issues that preoccupy the press. “
Trump has forever changed the dialogue because he has coarsened it and us. We can’t expect to take on bullies, cowards and weirdos by normalizing them – the media does enough of this. The HarrisWalz campaign cannot afford to. Smartly, they are not. They call trump/vance out hard and fast and get back to talking with the American people. And if you want to see how good they are at this, take a look:
Still, there is no doubt this will be a close race. We need to keep fighting as though we’re 10 points behind to secure every vote possible. Historically, the media picks our presidents but because of the unusual circumstances this election cycle, voters have a chance to pull off the greatest upset in history by electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz despite legacy media. We have an opportunity to break the spell. Perhaps for the first time in their arrogant sequestered self-serving lives, corporate media may be brought to heel. Maybe.
Swimming in arrogance, perhaps they will realize that if they wish to continue their tony existence, they’d better return to a time of Walter Cronkite, rather than the current Andrea Mitchell/Chuck Todd/Katy Tur disaster, forcing speculation, biased framing and empty clickbait down the American gullet.
As voters, we can help. Don’t let them get away with anything. Keep calling news organizations out on social media for unfair reporting or misleading headlines. Your outrage (and showering them with ridicule) does work. It also has another advantage: the more you call them out, and as they see their subscription numbers and ratings tumbling, they have to keep defending themselves. The more time they spend correcting any shoddy work, the less time they have to trash candidates who are actually working on behalf of the American people. There are still great reporters out there. Perhaps we might get back to featuring them instead of what passes for news today. How refreshing.
And remember to check your voter registration.
And VOTE!!!
Thank you so much for your support.