Don's Tuesday Column

            THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   11/10/2015

        News media, Democrat narratives

The second column in November always falls close to Veterans Day, on the 11^th. Those who have worn the uniforms of, in no special order, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the Army or the Coast Guard deserve, and are assured of, the respect and gratitude of a nation composed primarily of civilians. Due to the uncertainty and unpredictability of ever-present disagreements and disputes, otherwise peacetime service can be only a hair trigger away from wartime service—all are to be commended for putting country first. Thank you, veterans.

Over the last week, elections have sent messages, candidates have honed their messages and members of the news media have exercised shameless manipulation and attempted control of the messages. In a “move along—nothing to see here” moment, voters delivered numerous body blows to the Democrat paradigm of progressive inevitability. In “Republican Victories Highlight 2016 Stakes,” a writer at The American Interest wrote, “Last night was a banner night for conservatives, who defeated a number of measures in liberal strongholds, including a transgender bathroom ordinance in Houston, a $15 minimum wage ordinance in Portland, Maine, and a proposed law restricting AirBnB rentals in San Francisco.

“But the most consequential GOP victory came in Kentucky—a deep red state in presidential elections that has nonetheless had Democratic governors for 40 out of the last 44 years—where the conservative populist insurgent Matt Bevin won the statehouse for Republicans by an almost nine point margin.” Democrat deep pockets also failed to sway voters in nearby Virginia, where Clinton-ista Governor Terry McAuliffe put it all on the line to gain his party’s control over the legislature. However, Democrat money prevailed in Pennsylvania Supreme Court contests, illustrating the priority the left gives to having the black-robed judicial branch in their corner.

Conservative electoral gains must be tempered by the reality of leftist/liberal dominance in entertainment, secondary and higher education, the regulatory branch, Obama’s appointed judges, among government employees, their unions—and the journalist class. News media leans left and left-er depending on proximity to local markets, with the major metropolitan broadcast, cable and print outlets—particularly the New York/Washington, D.C. beltway elite—being dominated by Democrats.

It’s not really disputable; “Republicans’ media bias claims boosted by scarcity of right-leaning journalists,” by Kelly Riddell, illustrated as much in the Washington Times. Party identification, voting patterns, positions on issues and contributions lean, at the minimum, 3 or 4 to 1 in favor of the Democrat left, and up to 9 to 1 among the beltway media elites.

Of citizen-elected representatives, the local and state levels have seen a massive diminishment of Democrat-held seats, legislatures and governors while Obama has held the presidency. “This creates an interesting dynamic. Because the Democrats’ ranks have been eviscerated at lower levels of office, the stakes for winning the White House couldn’t be higher. If the party loses the White House in 2016, it will have almost nothing left.

“The prospect of losing everything creates an incentive for Democrats to double down even further on their presidential coalition (i.e. Hillary endorsed the Houston transgender ordinance). But this strategy—of appealing more and more strongly to the national base rather than reaching out to new segments of voters—makes them even less competitive in off-year and state-level elections.”

It might be a rhetorical question, by Jazz Shaw, in “Has the liberal wing of the Democrats finally pushed the party too far?” but if you look it up, you’ll find an insightful read with quotes from The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. He explores the question of “whether or not the ascendant, hard left, liberal wing of the Democrats has finally pushed their party to a tipping point in the run-up to the next presidential election.” Guns and race are prominent in this analysis.

Even casual observers can’t have missed the gun control/safety/background check rhetoric—even thinly veiled references to confiscation. Hillary promises using executive power in furtherance of the issue. California’s gun-grabbers are cheering Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ballot measures outlawing “large capacity,” but otherwise standard, magazines; requiring background checks for all ammunition purchases; and mandating reporting of lost or stolen guns.

San Franciscans cheer the departure of its last gun store over required photographing of customers. Los Angeles has outlawed widely owned handguns from even being transported through the city. A map I saw showed it to be physically impossible to leave some municipalities without driving through LA; ordinary travel in SoCal is close to impossible with such guns.

Most of us immediately reject the racialist sloganeering of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. It reeks of race-grievance mongering. We are inclined to dismiss the obsessive skin-pigment, “social justice warrior” fanaticism as yet another permutation of the reparations crowd.

In “6 Things We Learned About the Democrats,” Robert Tranciski itemized a few outtakes from their debate: 1) The era of big government is back, 2) Utopian transformation/socialism lives, 3) They have no plans for the economy beyond taxing “the rich”, 4) They have no concept of national security, 5) Democrats are defined by who they hate, and 6) The conservative Democrat is a dinosaur.