Nothing about 2020 is normal -- including, it turns out, the Republican National Convention. After weeks of trying to make the event work, the president surprised people on Thursday with the announcement that he was canceling the Jacksonville celebration. Worried about the spike in coronavirus cases, especially in Florida, President Trump decided "to have a big convention is not the right time. I have to protect the American people."
Of course, the media, which for months has been bashing the president for even considering moving forward, was just as critical that he pulled the plug. "Reopen schools, but no GOP convention?" Politico jabbed. This, they insisted, "was a stunning reversal for an optics-obsessed president, who'd been so adamant about a massive convention that he moved it from Charlotte, N.C. to Florida to ensure it would happen."
On the flip side, if the president had gone ahead and hosted the convention, he'd have been slammed as an irresponsible narcissist exposing thousands to coronavirus. He can't win. As Tim Graham points out, just when you thought the media couldn't hate a president more, "the coronavirus pandemic did what some might have thought was impossible: it made Trump coverage even more negative." According Media Research Center, which tallied up all the evening news coverage on the major networks, it was 99.5 percent hostile to the president by May -- an all-time low.
Meanwhile, MRC shakes its head, the media's love fest with Joe Biden continues. "... ABC, CBS, and NBC could barely muster three minutes of airtime on how Biden told black voters that 'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.' NBC gave it a few seconds. ABC and CBS both rushed to 'balance' the story with negative Trump news. CBS showed Biden was leading among black voters, 90 percent to 3 percent." Other scandals, gaffes, and missteps have either been explained away -- or ignored altogether.
"This is not journalism," Graham argues. "This is badly disguised campaign advertising." But even the media may not be able to help Joe out of the mess he's made of the Democratic platform. Things like socialism, infanticide, reparations, open borders, climate change, and gender-free bathrooms may play well at leftist fundraisers, but -- as Hillary Clinton learned the hard way in 2016 -- they're a bust with everyday Americans. The New York Post's Miranda Devine is so convinced that the Biden-Sanders platform will come back to haunt Democrats that she wrote, "Joe Biden signed the death warrant for his campaign last week, even if he doesn't know it."
"Well-meaning people might stick their fingers in their ears and vote for Biden out of nostalgia for a Democratic Party that no longer exists or out of exhaustion at the relentless anti-Trump barrage. But with his 'Unity Task Forces' document, Biden has proven only that he is an empty husk. Old Joe, who was for police and working people and law and order, is long gone. His body is there but, like his party, it has been invaded by the socialist Left."
"... No matter how many New York Times columnists try to craft Biden an image as 'working class Joe' from Scranton, 'a man who is not ideological,' or dream up excuses for him not to debate President Trump, the charade is unsustainable."
The mask has already slipped. And even Democrats are up in arms about how out of step their candidate is with mainstream America. In an open letter to the DNC platform committee, 115 faith leaders joined Democrats for Life in opposing the party's wild extremism on an issue that most voters struggle to justify. "We urge the Democratic Party to embrace policies that protect both women and children: legal protection for pre-born children, improved prenatal care for women in need -- especially women of color -- alternatives to abortion, and a comprehensive culture of life free from violence, poverty, and racism. We call upon you to recognize the inviolable human dignity of the child, before and after birth. We urge you to reject a litmus test on pro-life people of faith seeking office in the Democratic Party."
They call on Biden and the DNC to end their "explicit" support for taxpayer-funded abortion in America and overseas, "opposed by 60 percent and 76 percent of voters." Seventy-nine percent of voters, they point out, also oppose elective abortion on demand, including, but not limited to, many people of faith. "They deserve a home in the Democratic Party."
