"Bring It On, Baby!"

Mark Steyn cuts through the fog at Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 16:

This week I thought I'd say something about America's famous ''liberal media bias'':

Bring it on, baby!

That's the short version. The long version is that, as some readers may recall, after the midterm elections a year ago, I decided that ''liberal media bias'' was far more harmful to liberals than conservatives. In fact, if I were a Democrat, I'd be getting a little miffed at the recurring pattern: Throughout the election campaign, my newspaper produces a poll showing my guy way ahead; finds ''typical voters'' (choreographers of environmentalist dance companies, etc.) anxious to blame President Bush for the worst recession since Hoover; runs front-page features on how former President Bill Clinton has flown in to campaign with my man, exuding the rock-star glamor that so enthuses the base, etc.

And then the morning after Election Night, I wake up to discover that, in a stunning upset utterly predictable to everyone but the expert media analysts, the Democrat got hammered....

The American electorate is ''polarized'' in the sense that a seesaw would be with Kate Moss at one end and me at the other. The 50/50 nation of the 2000 election is gone. A small but significant sliver of the electorate shifted right after Sept. 11: we can argue about whether it's 4 percent or 12 percent, but not whether it exists. Who are these voters? They seem to be young, hitherto natural Democrats who aren't as hung up as their wrinkly parents on Vietnam nostalgia. A lot of them are female, which is why the so-called Republican gender gap the media like to harp on about was wiped out in 2002, while the Democrats' own gap with white male voters has widened to a chasm.

As for Bush merely solidifying his base, Kentucky hasn't elected a Republican governor since 1967, and Mississippi has only elected two in the last 125 years. Meanwhile, in the swing states, the change in voter identification since Sept. 11 is all in one direction....

See also Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode: Why?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 11/20/03 07:10:16 AM
Categorized as Political.