Matt Taibbi: In the Age of Trump, Will Democrats Sell Out More, Or Less?

[beam me up scottie]

1. "It's not an accident that The Daily Show turned into the most trusted political news program"

Since the Republicans got really crazy, life in some ways got easier for the Democrats. All they've had to do to keep 90 percent of their support every election season is point at crazy John Ashcroft and his fear of stone boobs, or human SNL skit Sarah Palin, or Rapture prognosticator Michele Bachmann, and a lot of their voters have been ready to run to the ballot box to vote blue, if only to keep the Supreme Court away from such people.

Everything became about beating Republicans. If you inhabit the dreary world of lefty media, you can't help but be familiar with the phenomenon, because in the last decade or so it's changed countless careers and taken over whole publications and TV channels.

A lot of media outlets became thinly-veiled proxies for the Democratic Party. They hammered Republicans for goofball transgressions large and small but soft-pedaled the darker developments on the Democratic side, like for instance the worsening surveillance issue or the failure to fight Wall Street corruption.

It's not an accident that The Daily Show turned into the most trusted political news program in America during the Bush years. When the traditional lefty media became so convinced by the "lesser evil" argument that it lost its sense of humor about the Democratic Party, people had to flee to comedy shows for objective news.

Even worse, a lot of Democratic-leaning campaign reporters are to this day so convinced by the lesser evil argument that they go out of their way to sabotage/ridicule candidates who don't fit their idea of a "credible" opponent for Republicans.

You see that here too, on a daily basis.