On MSNBC, a very unusual choice of words!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2024

Plus, a gloomy assessment from Edsall: We'll start with the gloomy assessment by Edsall, which appears in the New York Times.

Edsall is assessing the state of the Democratic Party in the wake of November's election. We're sorry to say that he and his sources see the apparent state of play in some of the same ways we do.

As usual, Edsall has spoken to quite a few sources. Here's how his assessment begins:

Democrats Don’t Have an Easy Way Out

The weakened condition of the Democratic Party leaves it ill prepared to defend itself against a Republican Party determined to eviscerate liberalism and the left.

Evidence of the fraught state of the party can be found everywhere...

Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a leading candidate to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged this erosion of political clout in a memo to party leaders:

"For the first time in modern history, the perception that Americans have of the two major political parties switched. The majority of Americans now believes that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and that the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites. It’s a damning indictment on our party brand."

Polling suggests that Trump is ideologically closer to the median voter than Kamala Harris. Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, conducted a post-election survey asking voters to place themselves, Harris and Trump on a scale ranging from zero (very liberal) to 10 (very conservative). The mean response for Harris was 2.45, for Trump 7.78 and for all voters 5.63.

Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, voiced serious doubts by email about the ability of the Democratic Party to compete successfully with the Republican Party.

"A party whose base consists of culturally liberal, largely well-educated white Americans and a shrinking share of voters of color is almost by definition going to find it impossible to defend American democracy. Every Democratic president from Franklin Roosevelt to Joe Biden won the White House by voicing the fears and defending the interests of the working and middle classes. Democrats cannot credibly claim to represent the ideals of American democracy and peel support away from Trump’s anti-elite, populist G.O.P. without reimagining what it stands for and who is in its coalition.

"The Democratic Party is perhaps more rudderless than at any time since Bill Clinton’s presidency. Its leadership is aging. The party seems culturally out of touch to many Americans. Its brand is associated with championing niche interests, and the party—despite some crucial electoral victories—has ultimately failed its overarching mission since 2015 of defeating and defanging the MAGA movement."

In addition, Dallek went on to say, the centrality of anti-establishment themes in the MAGA movement makes opposition to it all the more difficult.

"The Democratic Party faces a heavy burden: it has to defend democratic institutions in a time when these institutions are reviled by a large majority of the American electorate. Its message to the public that it is a bulwark of democracy failed to resonate with voters in November. In order to defend democracy, then, it must find ways to appeal to a majority of the American people on the bread-and-butter issues foremost in people’s lives."

The essay becomes even gloomier as it continues, and it continues at length. That said:

Concerning the Democratic Party's "culturally liberal, largely well-educated" base, consider a peculiar choice of words Alex Wagner made last night.

Wagner is a good, decent person. She spoke on her MSNBC program, Alex Wagner Tonight. Midway through the hour-long show, she teased an upcoming segment in the manner shown:

WAGNER (12/10/24): Coming up, two very public New York City murders are dividing the nation and leading some of the public to expressions of sympathy for the killers. We will discuss this particular American moment when I am joined by New York City's Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams.

"Two very public New York City murders?" Which "murders" could she mean?

Sure enough! When she spoke with Williams, Wagner was soon asking this question:

WAGNER: Do you think anything changes—I mean, do you think, anecdotally, or just as a human being who thinks about these things, and the public, and what best serves the public—do you think anything comes of either one of these things? I mean, just the brutality of Jordan Neely's murder? Does that change anything about the way the city manages and treats its homeless population?

A bit later on, she said it again:

WAGNER: I think the other thing that is so disturbing is the desensitization towards death, right? Murder! That murder is the recourse here. Murder the homeless guy!

"The brutality of Jordan Neely's murder?" By normal journalistic standards, that was a very unusual choice of words.

Full disclosure! On Monday, rightly or wrongly, a New York City jury acquitted Daniel Penny of the one remaining criminal charge in the death of Jordan Neely. Penny was found not guilty by a unanimous Gotham jury.

Penny was found not guilty, but he'd never been charged with murder. Instead, the jury had ruled that he was not guilty of a charge of criminally negligent homicide. Last Friday, a separate charge of second-degree manslaughter had been dismissed by the judge in the case.

This case had never been charged as a murder. The defendant had been acquitted—had been found not guilty—of the charges which had been brought. 

It's very unusual journalistic behavior to keep describing a death as a "murder" in some such circumstance. On a political basis, we'd suggest that this kind of presentation almost looks like one of the ways in which some of our tribunes in Blue America have almost seemed to be "earning our way out."

It wasn't alleged to have been a murder. A unanimous jury had then ruled "not guilty" with respect to the charge which was brought.

It remained a "murder" on Blue America's screens. Obviously, Wagner is entitled to her own assessments, but is this possibly one of the ways our "culturally liberal, largely well-educated elites" has been hard at work earning our tribe's way out?