The Daily Dose: Bad Press

The Democrats do not realize their own power.

Earlier today, Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was tackled to the ground and handcuffed by FBI agents after challenging Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference in Los Angeles.

Needless to say, the sight of government jackboots manhandling a sitting US Senator is not a common one. It also represents a dramatic escalation in the police-state tactics of an autocratic president.

At the same time, it will inevitably fail to elicit the sustained media attention that it warrants—not because the public has become inured to such displays but rather because the Democrats will not make an issue out of it.

On any given day, social media is full of indignation at mainstream news outlets for not giving Trump’s outrageous conduct the spotlight it deserves. This anger, while understandable, is misplaced. Yes, we should hold news organizations accountable for their editorial decisions. But as much as the media makes the news, they follow it, too. And if the Democrats are not drawing attention to something, the press can ignore it.

The reason why the news media tends to follow the GOP line when framing events is because Republicans are experts at manufacturing scandals which implicate their opponents.

The examples are legion. But one that comes to mind took place in March 2021. At the time, America was experiencing a post-pandemic surge in border crossings. The increase, while notable, hardly constituted a crisis. A country of 340 million people is perfectly capable of handling a sudden influx of a few hundred thousand migrants.

Yet, it still became a massive story because Republicans started screaming about it—nonstop and in unison. They held staged media events calling attention to Biden’s “open borders.” They sought out anyone who would listen and hammer the Democrats on immigration. Any question posed to them, regardless of the topic, received an answer on the demographic catastrophe the Biden administration had unleashed on the country.

Predictably, the media took the bait, providing ubiquitous coverage that accepted the Republicans’ “crisis” narrative. NBC's Meet the Press did a whole-ass episode at the Southern border. So alarmed was Biden at the bad press that he put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of the addressing the non-existent problem, as if she was supposed to do something about it.

If the Republicans can invent a fake crisis, imagine what the Democrats could do with a real one—such as, say, the manhandling and arrest of a US Senator for the crime of asking a question. If the entire party did as the Republicans do and flooded the zone with righteous fury, news organizations would cover it. They might not want to cover it, but they would have no choice; if Padilla’s lawless arrest were the only thing that any Democrat talked about for a week, the media could not very well pretend that it was not happening.

But if all the Democrats do is issue cursory, milquetoast statements, then, yes, the media can treat it like a non-story, as they are likely to do now.

Shocking as it is, Padilla’s treatment is not particularly noteworthy in light of the tyrannical conduct that the Trump administration engages in on a daily basis. But it is egregious enough that the Democrats could turn it into a media-saturation event if they wanted to. They need only do things that call attention to it—things like shutting down Senate business or flying the entire Democratic Senate delegation to Los Angeles and challenging Noem to arrest them all. These are the sorts of displays that could capture attention and gain lasting resonance in the public imagination.

Indeed, they could have done the same for any of Trump's other abuses, whether his pardons of the January 6^th insurrectionists, the detentions of people on speech grounds, the deportations without due process, the arrest and prosecution of a sitting federal judge, etc., etc. With a little effort and coordination, any one of these affronts to Constitution and country could have garnered nonstop coverage that stuck in the public mind and eroded Trump's legitimacy.

But it cannot happen when the only opposition party in an authoritarian country believes that it is powerless to shape public perceptions.