Establishment Canaries in the Media Coal Mine Pass Out After Last Night's Democratic Debate.

I got time to kill, so I have been watching and reading the responses from the typical media establishment members and pundits to last night’s Democratic presidential debate.  And spoiler alert:  there is panic about Joe Biden’s performance.  

First up, there is the guy who helped Trump get to the White House — Joe Scarborough — complaining that he hoped NO ONE watched last night’s debate.

“Last night was a disaster for the Democratic Party. My only hope is people were not watching and I will tell you why,” he said Friday morning. “First on policy — let’s talk about the goal which every Democrat believes, which is we have to beat Donald Trump. Right? So they’re lined up in trench warfare, ready to get out of the trenches and charge and fight Donald Trump. Instead, they all turn their guns on each other and shoot each other. And everybody is yelling at each other all night.”

This from the guy who let Trump have call in interviews on his show.  Multiple times.  And Scarborough advised Trump when he first came to the White House.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I seriously doubt that Scarborough has the best of intentions toward Democrats and their agenda.

But Scarborough is supposedly anti-Trump NOW, so we are supposed to let that slide.

So who might Scarborough be for if not Trump?  All reports are that he and his panel on Morning Joe love them some Joe Biden.  But  Joe Scarborough thinks it was a “disaster” for Democrats last night.  Well, Joe Biden was on the stage last night.  The same stage wehre the “disaster” took place.   This sounds like Scarborough knows that Biden performed poorly, and he is throwing shade at all the Democrats to cover up for Biden.

Next up, Chris Jansing of MSNBC decided to go to an oh so serious person in the media establishment for his view on the debate:  David Brooks.

Let that sink in for a second or two.  

She did a dramatic reading from his latest column where he was lamenting that Democrats have moved so far left that they have left moderates like him “homeless.”

David Brooks.  Claiming he is a moderate.  A NYC neoconservative elitist in moderate sheep clothing.  

When you have lost David Brooks, what is any Democrat to do, especially if you are an establishment Democrat like Joe Biden?

And the pummeling of Biden’s debate performance did not stop there.  Last night, Tweety Bird all but  declared that Biden had been mortally wounded by his fight with Harris.  This is the same Chris Matthews who ritually reminds us that Joe Biden can pull in all those disaffected white working class men in PA and the Midwest that Hillary Clinton lost.  

And the hits just kept on coming.   Andrea Mitchell and her panel today were not sugar coating what happened to Biden last night.  I could not believe I was watching Andrea Mitchell report that Joe Biden essentially lied about his anti-busing efforts.  

Yes, Biden lied about that.  Biden claimed that he was fighting federal government mandated busing from the Education Department.  Biden wanted to leave it to the local and state governments to enforce busing.  But as Mitchell pointed out, local and state governments had been ignoring the SCOTUS Brown decision for years.

This is true.  It wasn’t until a federal judge ordered busing for desegregation in the Louisville, Kentucky area that busing occured in 1974.  I was in school back then, and there were riots about busing.  Many families moved to the neighboring county where busing was still not done, and it is known as “White Flight” among Kentucky educators.

Anyway, Mitchell was also glad to report that Biden is stubborn and refused to listen to his aides about debate prep.  And either Democrat Joe Crowley or Republican Mike Murphy called that “political malpratice.”  Both admitted that Biden had to know that this attack was going to come, but Biden did not prepare for it.  I don’t have the transcript yet, but no one on the panel thought that Biden had a good night.

And these are the reviews from people who are not progressives.

To me, it looks like several establishment canaries have passed out from the fumes of Biden’s debate performance.