The fact that the Los Angeles Times endorsed California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) for reelection this week without referring to energy, water, fire, crime, gas prices, or the economy highlights a glaring double standard in how our media judge politicians.
Democrats are excused from any of the basic responsibilities of governing; they are supported because they have the “correct” ideological views on abortion, diversity, transgenderism, and climate change, regardless of the consequences of their policies.
This phenomenon illustrates what the late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh once called his “theorem” about the Obama administration: that despite the fact Barack Obama was in office, he would not be held accountable for anything that happened.
President Joe Biden benefits from the same deference — though that is more because it became obvious, early in his term, that he lacks the ability to run his own administration and that most important tasks and decisions are being handled by other people.
It turns out the Limbaugh Theorem applies to Democrats more generally. The media do not judge them by their ability (or lack thereof) to keep the lights on, the streets safe, or the schools open. Nor do Democrats expect themselves to carry out the basic requirements of whatever elected offices they hold.
Rather, they are judged by the extent to which they agree with a utopian “progressive” vision, and their success in casting Republicans as the racist, homophobic, theocratic opponents of that vision.
The Limbaugh Theorem helps to explain why American politics seems so divided. The problem is not that politics has become a zero-sum game. Rather, the two parties are simply talking past one another.
One party, the Republicans, is expected to run the functions of government, regardless of its belief that government power should be limited. The other party, the Democrats, is celebrated for the ideals it professes, regardless of its performance in office, which is shockingly poor in its own strongholds.
Under Trump, for example, every death from COVID-19 was his fault; more people have died under Biden, but he is excused. Trump pushed for a vaccine, but is given little credit; Biden’s failing policy of mandatory vaccinations is hailed as “science.”
Put another way, Republicans are judged by an adult standard: “What are you doing?” Democrats are judged by a child standard: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
That is not to say that aspirations, and values, are irrelevant to politics. They are crucial, in fact. We should all want leaders who exemplify values of tolerance and inclusion; who are sensitive to the complex moral choices involved in issues like abortion; who can think about the bigger — yes, global — picture, and not just short-term self-interest.
The problem is that Democrats, and the media who support them, refuse to understand that their high-minded aspirations have practical costs and consequences.
For example, including transgender athletes on their own terms necessarily means displacing female competitors. Framing abortion as a “right” without any limit means that viable babies are going to be killed in the womb. Mandating “zero emissions” means imposing energy shortages, while subsidizing the rich elite and cutting jobs for the working class.
Worse yet, Democrats and their scribes refuse to accept that there may be more than one answer to what are fundamentally moral questions. They reject anything that conflicts with today’s orthodoxy on social issues, even if they themselves held more nuanced positions within recent memory.
Obama campaigned in 2008 on the idea that marriage was defined by his Christian beliefs as one man, one woman; by 2012, prodded by Biden, he campaigned on the idea that “love is love” and only bigots would say otherwise.
The irony is that Democrats are more racist, in practice, than the Republicans they demonize: look at the Los Angeles City Council, where Democrats were caught on tape this week using racist rhetoric as they conspired to dilute the political power of black voters.
But the even bigger problem is that our media are failing to hold politicians accountable in the biggest cities and most populous states, which almost always elect Democrats.
California is becoming a Third World state in which a wealthy minority live at a remove from the reality they impose on everyone else. The poor become poorer, the middle class emigrate, and the infrastructure crumbles — except for those rich enough to pay for their own private services, or to bribe officials to fix their own little fiefdoms.
Like many failing states, California is obsessed with cultural issues and ethnic rivalries rather than the task of creating a better life for its citizens. Its intellectual elite occupies itself with high-minded policies such as “climate change” that impose direct costs on ordinary people while yielding benefits that are abstract, at best.
The only time our media focus on the actual job of governing is when a Republican is in office — but they are determined to prevent that, and will likely succeed. At least in California, this time.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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