We have all known it to be true for as long as anyone can remember – almost to the point of writing it off as a fact of life. It was long denied by the perpetrators, then finally begrudgingly admitted, and ultimately worn as a badge of honor in the Donald Trump era.
Media bias. It has become as predictable as the sun rising in the east. But it’s one thing for everyday Americans to observe and acknowledge the ever more leftward slant of big corporate media – and quite another for the most powerful woman in Congress to publicly weaponize it. But that is exactly what Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has done by shaming her friends in the Fourth Estate for their insufficient commitment to propagandize on behalf of the “Build Back Better” agenda.
Nancy Pelosi
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
In her present desperation to put points on the legislative scoreboard by any means available before the walls likely close in around her in the midterm elections, Pelosi committed a Washington-style gaffe. She accidentally revealed the truth, in this case about her own beliefs. At a press conference Tuesday, October 12, where she conceded the political necessity to scale down the Democrats' proposed $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” spend-o-rama, Pelosi scolded her friends in the media, saying “Well I think you all could do a better job of selling it, to be very frank with you.”
Excuse me, what?
How naked has media bias become that the speaker of the House feels completely entitled to expect supposedly objective reporters to peddle her socialist dreams to the American people? Just as disturbing as the statement itself was the speaker’s total lack of hesitancy in expressing such disappointment, as if to say: “You in the media, of course, have been all but officially enlisted into the social justice movement. Now do your job.”
Talk about desperation. Blaming your failure on a media that has all but served as cheerleaders for Biden would be like Donald Trump blaming Sean Hannity for not expressing sufficient enthusiasm for his presidency. Patent absurdity. The Democrats have either badly misread the room (in this case, the country) or said damn the torpedoes as they continue their march to ram through trillions in spending on an agenda obviously well beyond what they presented to the voters in 2020.
The people voted for stability, and now they are receiving socialism. No wonder Speaker Pelosi is frustrated by a total lack of enthusiasm – anger even – among voters, who thought they were doing little more than removing Donald Trump and wound up with a threatened socialist uprising. The voters in no way supported the type of massive new entitlements stretching from birth to death incorporated into the boondoggle now being kicked about like a soccer ball on Capitol Hill. If they had, the Democrats would have nominated any of the two dozen progressive candidates perceived as further left than Joe Biden. Instead, they selected a supposedly harmless old geezer as the frontman for their redistributionist agenda – and then acted surprised when the voters behave as if they’ve been victims of a bait-and-switch on a massive scale.
Nevertheless, as Joe Biden sinks further into political quicksand – his approval has now fallen into the 30s – desperate for an end to the pandemic, rising inflation, his self-imposed border crisis, growing supply chain disruptions and of course the massive fallout from his devastating surrender in Afghanistan, Pelosi knows she is up against it. When the president and leader of your party is coming apart at the seams and you possess the thinnest of majorities in Congress, your room for error has been all but eliminated. And trying to enforce massive social change in such an environment is a sure formula for ultimate political disaster.
Could it be that this hard-won, ever-so-slender advantage the Democrats secured in the House and Senate has become a millstone around their necks? They are expected to produce results, but can not pass almost any new legislation absent the daunting task of getting every single Democrat marching in lockstep, or making massive concessions to win the one or two votes necessary for passage. And the exercise turns from difficult to almost impossible when you are peddling a bill of goods that most every observer believes will cost the Democrats dearly in 2022.
But conversely, it is perhaps the certainty of their defeat, even potentially ignominious defeat, next year that is causing Biden, Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and the rest to pull out every stop to force feed socialism to the American people. It may be that they have simply decided to get all they can while the getting is still good, while the political water is still warm, because it may well turn freezing cold in 2022.
~ Read more from Tim Donner.
