Despite Great Election For Democrats, Media Obsess Over 'Doom Narratives'

Cohn wasn’t alone in making that case, but:

It’s possible that 2024 will be the exception, but the pundits—even the data pundits like Cohn—arguing for that likelihood need to take the track record a little more seriously. Actually, this is no time for sarcastic understatement: Make that a lot more seriously.

Not to be outdone by the Times touting its own polls, CNN ran with a poll analysis that appears to have been written before the elections with the assumption that they would signal trouble for Democrats. It seems like it was then hastily tweaked. It opens: “A big night for Democrats Tuesday in state races only highlighted the struggles Joe Biden faces in 2024 following polls suggesting he’s far less popular than his party.” A few paragraphs later, the article’s author, Stephen Collinson, details some of Tuesday’s big wins and offers up this skeptical admission: “This could mean polls are underplaying Democrats’ resilience under Biden, as they did in last year’s midterms when a Republican red wave was averted.” But you know there’s a “but” coming. It is of course a classic traditional media piece, swinging from but to but and always landing most decisively where it started, which is with the bad news for Democrats the morning after a set of big wins.

This is all of a piece with recent media coverage of the economy: Even the best economic news is reported as a political issue in tones of doom for Biden. As the Center for Economic Policy and Research put it, those stories “take advantage of the obvious fact that tens of millions of families are struggling in this economy, as is always true in the United States. The point here is that we have a terribly weak welfare state.” When Democrats are in power, those struggles suddenly become much more interesting to reporters.

It’s true that Biden does not look like a historically strong candidate, but the election is almost a year away. Right now, the media has to decide what matters more, analytically speaking: the results of elections that have already happened, which show Democrats on a historic roll, or polls of a distant election in which almost anything could change. It’s telling that they’re going with the less reliable source.