What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[The Minsky Moment]

#1 Pod Save America is run by former Obama aides.  Lets call them left.
#2 is Steve Bannon.  Right
#3 is from Blaze (Glen Beck).  Looking at recent episodes - yup right.
#4 NPR.  Left.
#5 Candace Owens - right.

Focusing on 1 through 5; the three right wings podcasters are all fire breathing lunatics pushing far right agendas.  I don't know the Pod Save America people but if they are typical Obamaites they are not the left wing equivalent.  And the NPR is very epitome of bien pensant milquetoasty objectivity.    Based on this part of the list, the thesis that the left is bringing a plastic spork to a gunfight is supported.

[Berkut]

The idea that NPR is "left" in the same breath you say "Steve Bannon is right" and hence there is balance makes me want to hurl.

But hey, the media is all biased, right?

[PJL]

The idea that NPR is "left" in the same breath you say "Steve Bannon is right" and hence there is balance makes me want to hurl.

But hey, the media is all biased, right?

I'd argue they are equivalent, but not in the way you'd think. It's because the political spectrum is largely based on what the elite thinks is the political spectrum. However, the elite has an institutionalised liberal/left-wing bias that means that what they think is the centre is actually more like the centre-left to the public at large. So what is perceived as left-wing is in fact even more so, and what is right is less so.

[Barrister]

The idea that NPR is "left" in the same breath you say "Steve Bannon is right" and hence there is balance makes me want to hurl.

But hey, the media is all biased, right?

I don't know what you want me to say.

Is it true that Steve Bannon and Candace Owens are "fire-breathing lunatics" as Minsky put it, while NPR or 538 is not, then sure!  I totally agree.  I was just trying to comment that right wing voices do not solely dominate podcasting.

And classifying is hard!  The one podcast I do listen to, The Bulwark, came in at #11.  Where the hell would I put them?  It's mostly #NeverTrump Republicans.  But since in the end they do overtly support Biden I guess I'd call them centre-left, although guys like Bill Kristol would squirm at that description.

[Berkut]

I want you to say what you know to be true.

That NPR is NOT left, it is neutral. That 538 is neutral. 

#NeverTrumpRepublicans are rather obviously right. Just because they are not fucking crazy doesn't mean they are not right.

Mitt Romney is not centre left because he doesn't slob on Trump.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'd argue they are equivalent, but not in the way you'd think. It's because the political spectrum is largely based on what the elite thinks is the political spectrum. However, the elite has an institutionalised liberal/left-wing bias that means that what they think is the centre is actually more like the centre-left to the public at large. So what is perceived as left-wing is in fact even more so, and what is right is less so.

The national median voter voted for Obama twice, Clinton, and then Biden.  In each case pretty large margins.  So empirical reality indicates that the center is a hell of lot closer to Joe Biden than to Steve Bannon.

[Barrister]

I want you to say what you know to be true.

That NPR is NOT left, it is neutral. That 538 is neutral.

There might be an argument on 538, but not NPR.

Just because an outlet like NPR still adheres more to attempting to stick to the objective truth that a Bannon does not, does not mean they don't have an ideological bias.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I disagree with you Biscuit about the milk toastinesss of CNN.  In fact I think it's somewhat ridiculous how much time they spend on new revelations that Ivanka's hairdresser got emails about the coordinated attack on the Capitol.

The left has things like MSNBC and Bill Mayer, basically all the late night guys.

I'm willing to concede the possibility that the Democrats need Tamany Hall and need to repeat, ,repeat, repeat or whatever, but I think you should consider the possibility that outside a small shrill twitterati minority Democratic voters are just apathetic.  It explains things as well as your theory and is as consistent with the available facts.

I mean I frankly think you're off your rocker if you really think CNN is an effective part of the Democratic propaganda arm, I don't think they are anything close to it. Ivanka Trump was an appointed officer in the executive branch of government, holding one of the highest in terms of order of precedence positions you can hold in a White House. She was an entirely appropriate target of public scrutiny by a media outlet of any type. Given that right before CNN spent (what was frankly a small amount of time) on Ivanka during the Trump years, it spent dozens of hours a week talking about Hillary Clinton's emails...the idea that it is remotely a part of Democratic party strategy or combativeness is just asinine, and frankly stupid.

Note--as part of traditional media, I don't actually think CNN or the Washington Post should function as appendages of the Democratic party. While I think its influence is decreased and going to decrease even further, I do think there is residual value in some form of mainstream press that attempts some balance of appropriate journalistic impartiality (note that that never meant absolute neutrality at any point.) I'm saying that the Democrats think they can win, or at least score major victories, in the mainstream press and that convert to political success--I'm saying that isn't how it works any longer. The mainstream press has limited influence and isn't an effective warrior in your cause if you're a Democrat, nor is that really their function. The Democrats need their own media strategy and media ecosystem, they have virtually none at present.

The irony is that Sam Harris is a full on, total progressive left wing liberal. Same with Bill Maher.

It is the left that has demanded that he be defined otherwise. And he is has a huge following.

I mean that's factually incorrect, Maher does not describe himself that way and never has. Maher spent the majority of the last 30 years describing himself as a libertarian, and he shifted to using the word "liberal" sometime in the mid-2010s. Maher however, as I said, is useful to Republicans because he's a non-conservative that on certain axes of the cultural wars has conservative leanings on some topics--I was careful about my wording there. Rogan is harder to in down, but he endorsed Bernie Sanders and has occasionally shown an affinity for things like socialized medicine, is extremely socially liberal on many topics and etc. Harris is absolutely not a progressive--like Maher he describes himself as a liberal, came out in support of Clinton in 2016 specifically in opposition to Sanders. And as I mentioned--all of them have a number of topics in which their opinions are rapidly weaponized by the right.

All three are also fairly dishonest about a number of pet topics which is honestly a whole other thread. But Maher and Rogan have both promoted vaccine skepticism at different times in their career (Maher was very anti-influenza vaccines years ago), Harris has often promoted "controversial" guests and then never challenged him--the infamous author of the Bell Curve, Charles Murray being one of them. Harris values things like freedom to spread disinformation more than he values countering disinformation, as evidenced by his horrible interview with Murray in which he didn't challenge Murray at all.

Here is an interesting example of how these non-conservatives who have some overlap with the right get weaponized:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-joe-rogan-democrats-midterms-no-common-sense

I actually watched the Maher interview, Maher spends a decent portion of that interview talking about how Republicans are far too crazy and terrible to trust with government, but then criticizes Democratic strategy and performance. Fox News reports on his words verbatim but strips out all the comments negative to the GOP, which gives the impression that this somewhat centrist figure went on Joe Rogan to shit all over the Democrats. That is basic Republican media behavior 101. FWIW I am not blaming Maher for things like that, all I said is he's part of a cadre of figures who have value in being used by the GOP propaganda machine, in part because they are outside of the conservative ecosystem and have some views that overlap with the conservative voting base. I am not alleging these figures actively or intentionally coordinate with GOP propaganda.

[PJL]

I'd argue they are equivalent, but not in the way you'd think. It's because the political spectrum is largely based on what the elite thinks is the political spectrum. However, the elite has an institutionalised liberal/left-wing bias that means that what they think is the centre is actually more like the centre-left to the public at large. So what is perceived as left-wing is in fact even more so, and what is right is less so.

The national median voter voted for Obama twice, Clinton, and then Biden.  In each case pretty large margins.  So empirical reality indicates that the center is a hell of lot closer to Joe Biden than to Steve Bannon.

I said the public at large, not the national median voter. Two different things. Non-voters aren't necessarily moderate. If anything they are apathetic to democracy, and will be receptive to populists, particularly far right ones.

[OttoVonBismarck]

#1 Pod Save America is run by former Obama aides.  Lets call them left.
#2 is Steve Bannon.  Right
#3 is from Blaze (Glen Beck).  Looking at recent episodes - yup right.
#4 NPR.  Left.
#5 Candace Owens - right.
#6 Krystal ans Saagar.  Never heard of them.. Looking at recent episodes my best guess is centre-left.
#7 President's Daily Brief, attempting to summarize the days news in 20 minutes.  Centre
#8 Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.  Their blurb talks about border crisis and cancel culture.  Right.
#9 538.  Going to call it centre-left.
#10 Tim Pool (man this is more work than I thought).  Looks like a former lefty who is now Trump-sympathetic.  Right.

Seems like a fairly even distribution honestly...

Essentially none of the liberal podcasts are remotely equivalent to the sort of media that I'm talking about that the right has and that these huge right wing celebrities have. Pod Save America is basically a policy wonk show, it has virtually no social influence, and spends a lot of its time chatting about process issues. It doesn't spend all that much time at all attacking Republicans. Now, its hosts are absolutely liberals who hate Trump and Trumpism, but their audience is basically other liberals and talking about wonky policy shit and arguing about messaging that might help in winning campaigns. It isn't close to what propaganda is--propaganda is media designed to evoke emotions and inculcate acceptance of specific ideas. Pod Save America is a lefty pod but it isn't intended to persuade you to their side of the aisle, it is intended to more make other lefties focus on the process and strategy issues they think is important.

There is essentially no equivalent of a podcast like this for the far right because the far right podcasts are all polemicals that preach about America's heartland under sage, rapist minorities coming to rape their daughters, Christians being persecuted in America by socialist/communist Democratic officials and other things of that nature.

The FiveThirtyEight podcast its hosts are left-leaning but it is even less political than Pod Save America. NPR is not a political podcast, it is a straight news podcast.

Meanwhile several of those right wing podcasts are almost tailor made to generate short 5-10 minute sound bytes that can be disseminated around Twitter / Facebook and right wing social media circles to reinforce core Republican lies and myths about how our society works, to keep their people angry and upset. There is genuinely nothing like that on the left that has any appreciable influence or power.

[Admiral Yi]

I mean I frankly think you're off your rocker if you really think CNN is an effective part of the Democratic propaganda arm, I don't think they are anything close to it. Ivanka Trump was an appointed officer in the executive branch of government, holding one of the highest in terms of order of precedence positions you can hold in a White House. She was an entirely appropriate target of public scrutiny by a media outlet of any type. Given that right before CNN spent (what was frankly a small amount of time) on Ivanka during the Trump years, it spent dozens of hours a week talking about Hillary Clinton's emails...the idea that it is remotely a part of Democratic party strategy or combativeness is just asinine, and frankly stupid.

I didn't say CNN was an *effective* part of Democratic messaging, since if we define effective messaging as getting out enough votes to see off another Trump candidacy or hold back the upcoming midterm wave we all agree that whoever is doing it it is not effective.  Rather I disagreed with your description of CNN as a namby pamby straight news outfit with no editorial content.  I gave the fictitious example of Ivanka's hairdresser to point out how trivial they can get in their reporting of Trump's litany of misdeeds.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I mean I never said CNN had no editorial content, but they are not a propaganda outlet. There is a significant difference. Before the early 2000s news was dominated in both print, broadcast and cable forms by a few outlets that all tried to follow broadly understood rules of journalistic ethics, and who all tried to create a wall of separation between whatever editorial product they produced and their news coverage. Every one of these traditional media outlets had a bias, and most had a proclaimed editorial stance--like the old days when most towns had two newspapers--a Democrat and a Republican paper, but their news reporters were mostly apolitical. I labor to understand why I'm explaining what all of us know and have lived through, that is obviously not how most people get their news any longer. Traditional media is essentially gutted of importance, on the right it has been replaced by professional propaganda in the form of a many-headed hydra of a far right media network. The left has literally nothing like that, the left has a few lefty outlets that have virtually no cultural capital, no social media influence, etc. Then they have the legacy mainstream media--which because they still largely adhere to the old norms aren't really putting the thumbs on the scale that much for anyone.

[Valmy]

#1 Pod Save America is run by former Obama aides.  Lets call them left.
#2 is Steve Bannon.  Right
#3 is from Blaze (Glen Beck).  Looking at recent episodes - yup right.
#4 NPR.  Left.
#5 Candace Owens - right.
#6 Krystal ans Saagar.  Never heard of them.. Looking at recent episodes my best guess is centre-left.
#7 President's Daily Brief, attempting to summarize the days news in 20 minutes.  Centre
#8 Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.  Their blurb talks about border crisis and cancel culture.  Right.
#9 538.  Going to call it centre-left.
#10 Tim Pool (man this is more work than I thought).  Looks like a former lefty who is now Trump-sympathetic.  Right.

Seems like a fairly even distribution honestly...

Saagar is a right wing populist, Krystal is a left wing one. So it is supposed to be this anti-establishment show that attacks the establishment from both sides. Calling it center-left is hilarious.

All of those strike me as rather dull-ish news things and then extremist right wing propaganda. That makes your conclusions very misleading. If the list was full of Young Turks type left wing ideologues demanding socialized medicine or something and passionately taking down the right wing or some type of radical left wing culture war stuff then maybe I might call that balanced. We need to be fair and accurately describe these programs and what they intend to accomplish before just clumsily trying to place them on an ideological axis.

I mean sure both some staid Tory newspaper from the 1930s and Joseph Goebbels may both be right wing I guess but hardly the same kind of media with the same kind of impact on its audience. One is going to get people to flood the streets and smash Jewish shops...and the other is a nice thing to discuss at the gentlemen's club.

[Berkut]

Harris describes himself as a left wing progressive, and does so pretty regularly. He definitely considers himself to be on the left.

Your "evidence" that he is not is to just recite the litany of sins the identity politics radicals have labeled him with when THEY claim he is on the right. That doesn't make him on the right.

That is evidence that my point is correct - that there are those on the left who look at what happened with the GOP and want to emulate it.

[Grey Fox]

Harris is only US-left tho.