JohnT
April 23, 2024, 6:23pm
1308
Blood is in the water. The sharks… being sharks… are going to do what sharks do.
That’s effectively my take from Aaron Rupar’s interview with Hopium’s Simon Rosenberg. Usually paywalled, Aaron decided to open this one to the public and I thought it worth sharing. It’s an opinion piece… as most of these things are… but it captures what I’ve been seeing ‘out there’.
What’s happening in national media right now is there’s a growing sense that the orange emperor has no clothes. Where the media narrative started shifting on this race was when it became clear that Trump was having fundraising problems and Republicans are struggling with money. At that point it started dawning on people that maybe he’s actually naked.
Trump’s positive polls were a big factor preventing us from having an accurate understanding of the true nature of this race. If those evaporated, then what was going to be left is a really ugly thing underneath. That’s in the process of happening now.
I do think the polls are changing. The media is becoming more open to the idea that Trump really is a historically terrible figure. These were things that couldn’t be spoken a few months ago, but they can now.
emphasis mine.
The election is now slowly moving from being a referendum on Biden to a referendum on Trump. And when it becomes a referendum on Trump they’re not going to win because of his historic awfulness. The election is actually changing now, but I also think the media narrative is changing. The media narrative will always trail reality by weeks or months, but you’re beginning to see a shift.
In my post today I referenced an article from Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire about Trump no longer being ahead and how the media narrative needs to change. Taegan Goddard is a consolidator of conventional wisdom in Washington. The problem for Trump is that if an understanding emerges that Biden is slightly ahead and they’re struggling to raise money and he loses his court case over the next few weeks, Trump’s going to go from being strong to being weak, a loser, and just not ready for primetime. We’re closer to that happening than I think people really understand.