Journalists are panicking

John Nolte reported, “Joe Biden’s campaign chairwoman, Jen O’Malley Dillon, has already conceded Florida’s 30 electoral votes to former President Donald Trump.

“During a podcast interview with the far-left Puck, she was asked if the campaign considered Florida a legitimate battleground state His Fraudulency would contest in the coming months. Her answer was a flat, No.”

The woman’s statement makes sense. Why blow resources on a state Democrats cannot win.

Trump has carried the state twice. He made DeSantis governor in 2018, outcampaigning BO in the general election. In 2020, Democrats still led Republicans in voter registration since the state joined the union in 1845.

Today, Republicans lead Democrats by a million voters.

Mary Ellen Klas is a media expert on Florida politics. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.

So what did she write in her new gig as a columnist for Bloomberg?

“Trump Could Actually Lose Florida. Here’s Why.

“After two years of Governor Ron DeSantis pushing his extremist agenda, there’s a case to be made that voters have had enough of the Republican Party’s obsession with culture wars.”

DeSantis carried the state by 19 points in his re-election run in 2022 after he signed into law the Don’t Say Gay To Kindergarteners bill and took on Disney (the state’s largest employer) and won.

Nevertheless, she persisted:

Could the odds be in Democrats’ favor in 2024? Few pundits consider Florida a true swing state. But after two years of Governor Ron DeSantis pushing his extremist agenda, including one of the toughest abortion bans in the country, and policies curtailing the teaching of Black history and gender identity, there’s a case to be made that Florida voters have had enough of the Republican Party’s obsession with culture wars. That may pay off for Democrats at the ballot box.

A recent Fox News poll found, for example, that DeSantis and Republicans are widely out of sync with voters’ views on abortion. According to the poll, 69% of those surveyed said they support an amendment to the state’s constitution that would establish the right to an abortion up until fetal viability, or to protect the patient’s health. It’s a resounding rejection of the six-week ban rammed into law by DeSantis and the Republican-dominated legislature last year.

DeSantis’ popularity also has plummeted since his failed presidential campaign. An April Morning Consult poll found the governor had a disapproval rating of 44%, one of the highest of any state leader in the nation.

And Florida legislators this year abandoned several bills sought by party officials — from prohibiting cities from removing Confederate monuments or putting up Pride flags to requiring driver licenses to display a person’s gender at birth. In a rare gesture of rebellion, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo declared: “Our bill process is not the Republican Party of Florida.”

Florida voters, many of them transplants from other places, are traditionally independent thinkers. They have a long history of splitting their ballots between personality politics and issue-oriented policies. In the last 20 years, voters have repeatedly elected conservative Republicans for governor while also voting for liberal-leaning constitutional amendments that raised the minimum wage, provided for environmental conservation, limited class size, legalized medical marijuana and banned oil drilling.

Klas cited the 1992 presidential election in which Democrats held a huge voter registration lead and Bush 41 carried the state.

She failed to note that despite a huge voter registration disadvantage, Republicans had won Florida in 9 of the previous 11 presidential elections from 1952 to 1988 — and 1992 was part of a 40-state landslide for Bush 41.

Hers is wishful thinking, something I try to guard against. Today’s journalists seek no such guard as they push their agenda.

I will give another example. For years, journalists have insisted that even though Nazis were socialists, they are part of what Hillary called the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

But now that the communist left is openly anti-Semitic in its support of Hamas, the press defends it.

Taylor Lorenz, a hack for Jeff Bezos and his Washington Post, tweeted a defense of Hamas backers attacking Jews at a synagogue in LA.

The Washington Free Beacon reported, “‘Al Jazeera on the Potomac’: WaPo Reporter Taylor Lorenz Boosts Defenses of Los Angeles Synagogue Protest.

“Taylor Lorenz pushed false claim LA synagogue was auctioning Palestinian land.”

One would expect a social media monitor to call out lies on Twitter. Instead, the one at the Bezos Post promotes them.

Another example of wishful reporting at the Bezos Post came from Philip Bump, who wrote, “No, Biden won’t be on performance-enhancing drugs for the debate

“Experts on the subject note that there is no drug that will temporarily mask cognitive decline.”

The Mayo Clinic begs to disagree:

The following are used to temporarily improve dementia symptoms.

Cholinesterase inhibitors. These medicines work by boosting levels of a chemical messenger involved in memory and judgment. They include donepezil (Aricept, Adlarity), rivastigmine (Exelon) and galantamine (Razadyne ER).

Memantine. Memantine (Namenda) works by regulating the activity of glutamate. Glutamate is another chemical messenger involved in brain functions such as learning and memory. Memantine is sometimes prescribed with a cholinesterase inhibitor.

A common side effect of memantine is dizziness.

Other medicines. You might take other medicines to treat symptoms or other conditions. You may need treatment for depression, sleep problems, hallucinations, parkinsonism or agitation.

In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved lecanemab (Leqembi) for people with mild Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease.

But what would the Mayo Clinic know about medicine?

Bump is an expert on everything. His essay mocking ivermectin as a treatment for covid is a classic worthy of journalism’s Hall of Shame.

On a lighter note, the Media Research Center, reported, “Snowflake? The View’s Whoopi Goldberg Spits After Saying Trump’s Name.”

Granny Goldberg must be unaware of the meaning of Hawk Tuah.

Unaware explains many a media report. But they are aware of something. The pendulum is swinging back toward normal. That scares them.