PHONY MARIANNE-MANIA HAS BITTEN THE DUST

The latest Quinnipiac national poll of Democrats has been released, and look who -- shockingly -- didn't get a poll boost from the debates:



Marianne Williamson at zero in the Quinnipiac poll? But that's unpossible!!! Every mainstream-media pundit told me she won the debates!

Williamson is at 1% in a post-debate national poll from Morning Consult. She's at 0.6% in a post-debate New Hampshire poll from The Boston Globe and Suffolk University. She's at 0.4% in a post-debate Texas poll from the Dallas Morning News and Emerson.

And:

Note especially the Williamson -6. Despite the desperate media hype Dem voters don’t like her AT ALL. Theatre critic pundits aren’t even good at theater criticism. https://t.co/Amu5LQfUhb

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) August 6, 2019

I agree with Lemieux that too many journalists and pundits who cover elections subject them to theater criticism, but I don't think that's all that's going on when members of the MSM swoon over Williamson (which happened after each of the two rounds of debates). As I said last week, I think it's also because many of these media figures are culturally liberal but don't like actually existing liberalism, with its concrete ideas and policies (accompanied, in many cases, by upper-bracket taxes); Williamson's content-free oratory is liberalism without all that icky stuff. She also talks the way many pundits write: in big, windy generalizations with very few concrete nouns.

I'm glad the pundits had their little thrill. Now, however, Williamson needs to hit 2 percent in four qualifying polls to make next month's debate -- which means I think we've seen the last of her. Try to contain your grief, David Brooks.