Some wonder why two-thirds of the American people think Democrats are out of touch.
The explanation is media coverage.
A good example occurred yesterday. Hillary Clinton made the point that many areas of rural America don’t have high-speed Internet and this could be a cause of slow growth in these areas. She went on to point out that some areas don’t even have cell phone coverage.
As Dave Weigel pointed out in the Washington Post the flood gates of criticism then opened, the gist of which is that she is an out-of-touch elitist. The fact is, her campaign had detailed policies for improving broadband coverage, an issue on which Trump, predictably, is clueless.
Clinton was anything but out-of-touch.
But the media narrative overwhelmed the truth. As Weigel wrote:
“And the firmly established narrative of Clinton and Trump is that she couldn't connect to rural voters, whereas he was a “blue-collar billionaire” who made surprising emotional connections. Trump may be the first president whose plunge to 40 percent approval was marked by stories about the voters who still loved him. And Clinton may be the only politician who can talk about the need for rural broadband — at this point, an almost banal priority of rural politicians — and be accused of snobbery.”
And the media still calls Trump a “populist” after he tried to take healthcare coverage away from 24 million people and is actively attempting to engineer massive tax cuts for the super-rich.
Many may believe that this is a one-time problem that applies only to Clinton. But it’s not. Gore was “stiff” and “not comfortable in his own skin” unlike Bush who was characterized as a folksy man of the people, somebody with whom you’d want to have a beer. Kerry was a massively rich elitist who enjoyed sail boarding, of all silly things. Obama was ‘aloof” and couldn’t connect to average people, who he said “cling to guns and religion.”
This media narrative will be attached to any Democratic nominee for president. The truth is, anybody who gets to that position will have a net worth far greater than the average person, thereby making them an easy target. Whenever the candidate talks about helping average people, the media will attack him for being a hypocrite because he’s not poor himself. So, you get a dual attack of elitism plus hypocrisy.
How do you beat the false narrative? A good first step would be for Democrats to refuse to join in. In 2016, Clinton got slammed for being an out-of-touch elitist as much by the left as by the right and it was a phony charge no matter who was making it. Maybe a little less of the circular firing squad would be helpful in the future.
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