The media are so invested in supporting the Democratic Party that they treat every election lost by a Democrat as a violation of the laws of nature. The networks believe that truth and reality so align with the views of the Left that their rejection constitutes an assault on democracy, fueled by “big money” or foreign disinformation.
It makes no difference whether voters repudiated the candidate’s far-Left agenda or if the incumbent left office under a cloud of sex scandals and corruption. Whenever a Democrat is forced out of office, legacy news outlets keep them visible, viable, and employed until they can reclaim their rightful place in the halls of power.
The legacy media have done this three times in the last week alone:
Fmr. Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA)
For most of her career, the media lavished Katie Hill with positive coverage for two reasons: She flipped a Republican seat blue, and she was the first openly bisexual woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Then, her scandalous relationship with a young staffer became public, Hill resigned, and Republican Mike Garcia reclaimed the district for the GOP.
In the media’s universe, this cannot be allowed to continue — so CNN urged Hill to run for Congress again on Monday.
CNN’s “New Day” putatively invited Hill to comment on the president spying on members of Congress. (They could have asked members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who were spied on by the Obama administration.)
Along the way, Brianna Keilar sidestepped a series of sexual harassment landmines. Mediaite reported that CNN left out the fact that then-Congresswoman “Katie Hill and her husband had an inappropriate and possibly abusive sexual relationship with a very young female employee, as well as an affair with a male staffer and, after the affairs were exposed, it was also revealed that she was dating a Playboy journalist who was leading the media charge against the blog RedState, which broke the story, and British tabloid Daily Mail and two of its reporters over their reporting.” Keilar “mentioned #MeToo without the context (CNN is big on context) that former staffers for Katie Hill took over her Twitter account just a few months ago to expose what they referred to as a ‘toxic’ environment and ‘workplace abuse’ under Hill, specifically citing the #MeToo movement among the many charges.”
Keilar concluded the interview with numerous prompts to please return to public life.
“Before I let you go, will you run again?” she asked. When Hill replied with less than full agreement, Keilar pressed whether her interest in public policy “make[s] you want to get back in the arena?” When Hill remained non-committal, Keilar closed, “We will keep asking.” Co-host John Berman smiled as he noted Hill’s answer was “not a no.”
Fmr. Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (D-TX)
Republicans have had a hammerlock on once-blue Texas since the late Ann Richards left the governor’s office in 1995. But with positive media coverage and a record-breaking $80 million in campaign cash, Beto O’Rourke came tantalizingly close to winning Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in 2018. He then failed to gain traction in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, despite endorsing the confiscation of all AR-15s, the nation’s most popular rifle.
On Sunday, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan asked O’Rourke, “Will you be running for governor of Texas, as a lot of reports suggest, against Greg Abbott next year?” O’Rourke responded, “I’m going to see this fight through to the finish, and then after that I’m going to see how I can serve Texas, either as a candidate or supporting candidates. One way or the other, I’m in for the finish for Texas.”
Me: "Will you be running for governor of Texas against Greg Abbott next year?" @BetoORourke: "I'm going to see this fight through to the finish and then after that I'm going to see how I can serve Texas, either as a candidate or supporting candidates. "pic.twitter.com/1Ifgm616nr
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 14, 2021
Hasan did not point out that O’Rourke is free to run for office because President Joe Biden broke an apparent campaign promise to appoint him to a federal office. After O’Rourke endorsed Biden, the future president promised him, “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort.”
If Beto O’Rourke runs and loses, he’ll have completed a rare trifecta: losing races for U.S. Senate, governor, and president.
Stacey Abrams
Since refusing to concede that she lost her race for governor of Georgia in 2018, Stacey Abrams has failed upward into consideration as Joe Biden’s running mate and a host of other offices. She has also become a fixture on legacy media networks.
On Monday, MSNBC’s Joy Reid invited Abrams to discuss her support of H.R. 1 on “The ReidOut.” On Thursday morning, she was on CNN’s “New Day” to discuss Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and to assail Republicans “who refuse to acknowledge the truth of our eyes.” Late last month, Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed Abrams while promoting her newest novel, While Justice Sleeps.
None of the reporters asked Abrams about her plans to run for office — because she has never left any doubt about her national ambition. CBS News floated the idea of President Abrams just last month.
“Ensuring that right to vote may someday help Abrams achieve her greatest dream: running for president,” said Erin Moriarty on the May 9 episode of “CBS Sunday Morning.” Abrams replied, “When someone asks me if that’s my ambition, I have a responsibility to say yes for every young woman, every person of color, every young person of color who sees me and decides what they are capable of based on what I think I’m capable of.”
That was a step up from Gayle King, who let Abrams put out a call for possible dates to please “drop me a note.”
So, here's what Gayle King ACTUALLY asked Stacey Abrams. A bit of context: Gayle began by asking Stacey about writing romance novels (she's penned 8), her new book, her writing process, and her recent CBS Sunday Morning interview in which Abrams discussed dating pre-pandemic. pic.twitter.com/wKkEkZi57l
— Britni Danielle (@BritniDWrites) May 11, 2021
These three are hardly the only perpetual candidates and also-rans the media long to shove down their audiences’ collective throat. Left-leaning cable news networks are well into their second year of rehabilitating former Senator Al Franken (D-MN). Reporters routinely genuflected to non-candidate Chelsea Clinton for years, until her mother’s 2016 presidential loss reduced the members of the Clinton political dynasty to one. The legacy media enthused over another Texas Democratic loser, Wendy Davis, the abortion extremist who lost a Texas two-step by basing her respective campaigns for governor and Congress on her filibuster to preserve late-term abortion. (This was apparently before the filibuster was racist and sinful.) And Geraldine Ferraro rode her 49-state blowout in the 1984 presidential election to a media career.
The legacy media, which refuses to accept any Democratic loss, acts as a holding tank for the party’s losers to recover between innings.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.