How the media got the election completely wrong from the start
Now that Joe Biden has won the election, it’s worth examining the almost fictional manner in which the media covered Biden during the democratic primary race, in an attempt at generating higher TV ratings. Based on the numbers and demographics, Biden was the primary frontrunner the entire time. There was never much doubt he’d be the nominee. The other candidates simply had very poor numbers with Black voters. The race was always going to turn for Biden in South Carolina.
Biden was never in trouble during Iowa or New Hampshire. Those lily white states don’t determine who’s going to be the nominee anyway. But “frontrunner wins as expected” doesn’t make for good TV ratings, so they made up a fictional version of it instead. After Biden won South Carolina as he was always clearly going to do, the media needed cover for having spent months pretending Biden was washed up. So they insisted Biden somehow only won South Carolina due to Jim Clyburn. That’s not accurate at all.
The numbers and demographics made clear that Biden was already heading to a large victory in South Carolina. I could go back and break them down, but if you were reading Palmer Report at the time, you saw them back then, and – despite the baseless noise on MSNBC and CNN at the time – there was never any doubt that Biden would win South Carolina. Clyburn saw this and spoke up to help make it an even larger victory, so everyone would unite behind Biden more quickly. Clyburn’s endorsement is probably what prompted Pete and Amy to drop out more quickly, and for Biden to lock up the whole thing on Super Tuesday. Without Clyburn it might have taken longer. But Biden was always going to dominate Super Tuesday and then cement it all at some point.
I urge you to consider all of this not within the context of which candidate you wanted to win the primary, but within the context of the fact that Biden was always going to win the primary. The media flat out misled all of you for ratings, then tried to rewrite history after. Even if you were anti-Biden during primary, imagine if the media had accurately informed you of the fact thaHt he was overwhelmingly on track to be the nominee the entire time. Were you tricked into investing time and emotion into another candidate you were falsely told could win?
We’ve now gone through two democratic presidential primaries in a row in which the media spent the entire time just flat out lying about who was on track to win the nomination and who wasn’t, to try to gin up suspense and ratings. That doesn’t help any candidate or anyone. We can’t allow the media to jerk us around like this during the 2024 Democratic primary. Most of that comes down to doing our own research, seeing who’s actually on track to win, and letting the media know that we’re wise to what they’re trying to sell us.
