EVERYONE IS WRONG

This, from Ryan Lizza and Eugene Daniels of Politico, seems glib, simplistic, and half-right at most:

Why Trump is the main character of 2022

... Trump still looms over everything in politics.

— He has transformed the Republican Party: A new NYT investigation reveals “that about 70 percent of Republicans running for Congress had questioned the election of President Biden” and “nearly two-thirds are favored to win their races, according to the Cook Political Report.”

— He is seemingly the only subject of top nonfiction books. MAGGIE HABERMAN’s “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” debuted at number one this week on the NYT best seller list. Just a few weeks ago, PETER BAKER and SUSAN GLASSER’s “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021” debuted at number two. And yet another blockbuster is out on Tuesday: “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by our own RACHAEL BADE and The Washington Post’s KAROUN DEMIRJIAN.

— And Trump once again this week dominates all political coverage. Yesterday, he was subpoenaed, his appeal to the Supreme Court in the Mar-a-Lago documents case was rejected, his former aides were spotted after testifying before a grand jury in the criminal investigation of Jan. 6, his name was prominently featured in text messages read aloud at the Oath Keepers trial, and his decision to form a new company was criticized by the NY attorney general who is suing him.

Trump is a big deal. He's a bigger deal than a lot of Very Smart People thought he'd be right now. His election denial is a big deal.

But election denialism has taken on a life of its own. The message from most Republican candidates isn't merely that the 2020 election was stolen -- it's that every election won by Democrats is stolen, and that there's Democratic fraud even in elections Republicans win. Beyond that, Republican candidates are talking about inflation, border crossers, trans people, crime in "Democrat cities," tech "censorship" ... The truth is that the main character of 2022 is the main character of most American elections in this century: Rupert Murdoch. Republican candidates are talking about what his employees talk about. And Democrats are defending themselves against Fox attacks.

Or, if you believe that the election will be won by waves of women angry about the Dobbs decision, many of them newly registered to vote, then maybe the central figure of the 2022 election is Samuel Alito, or Leonard Leo.

I don't agree with the Politico piece, but this critique of it, by National Review's Jim Geraghty, is over-the-top spittle-flecked rage:

... it is awfully convenient for the Democratic Party that publications such as Politico have decided that “Trump is the main character of 2022,” and not, say, the current president of the United States, or House speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer — you know, the people who have actually been running the government and shaping U.S. domestic and foreign policy for the past two years....

I suspect that a lot of mainstream-media reporters either A) really enjoy writing the latest version of “Republicans stink” or B) know their established audience is hungriest for the latest version of “Republicans stink” stories. A lot of people wake up with the attitude of, “I know my side is right; tell me why my side is right today.”

That’s why on any given day, you will see a lot of coverage of Trump, his family members, who’s rising and who’s falling in his inner circle, whatever crazy conspiracy theory Mike Lindell is talking up today, the trial of Alex Jones, and the latest antics of non-Left celebrities such as Elon Musk and Kanye West, with a healthy dose of “You won’t believe what Tucker Carlson just said” mixed in.

Yes, it's a vast left-wing conspiracy to distract voters with stories about ... um, the possible next president of the United States, who also happens to be an all-but-indicted criminal on multiple fronts, as well one of the most popular musicians in America, a tech billionaire who might succeed in buying an extremely popular social-media site, and a nationally famous broadcaster so vile he was just ordered to pay nearly a billion dollars in damages to people he maligned on the air -- all of whom not only are famous, but are attention addicts and highly skilled provocateurs. The media is covering people who are good copy! Must be a liberal plot!

The press is writing about Republicans because Republicans pursue lib-owning as tirelessly as sharks pursue food. Thry try to do something media-friendly and outrageous every day. Joe Biden, by contrast, is the Columbo of politcs -- even when he accomplishes a lot, he does it shambolically.

It's not clear whether any of the mainstream media's coverage choices will decide the election, but they're not a conspiracy.