WILL BIDEN ONLY GET GOOD MEDIA COVERAGE WHEN HE TALKS ABOUT TRUMP AND DEMOCRACY?

At The Bulwark, Jonathan Last quotes Mark Halperin, of all people, on President Biden's Trump-bashing Valley Forge speech:

... perhaps the most telling way to view the time between now Election Day is this: Can Biden win enough news cycles to overcome Trump’s current lead?

The answer is that he definitely can, as Friday’s events, and the coverage of them, built around the 1/6 anniversary, demonstrate.

... the Dominant Media (definitely and decisively) and the general election electorate (unambiguously if not necessarily dispositively) are more with Joe Biden on this matter over Donald Trump than most anything else (besides abortion).

... talking about 1/6 and democracy gives Biden a chance to win a news cycle even when he is behind in the polls.

When Halperin refers to "the Dominant Media," he's talking about the mainstream press, which he's always regarded as having a liberal and pro-Democratic Party bias, though he struggles to square that view with the obvious evidence that the mainstream press given Biden very little positive coverage. Halperin writes, "It is VERY hard to win a news cycle when trailing," but Biden was losing news cycles long before the 2024 campaign began. Last writes:

... Halperin is directionally correct: Because Biden is trailing Trump, the media slant is always something like, “Unemployment is 3.9%; Here’s Why That’s Bad for Biden.”

But Biden's headlines have been like that for nearly two years, ever since the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Halperin ties himself in knots, arguing that the press is blatantly biased in Biden's favor but gives him negative coverage anyway:

Until and unless the incumbent goes ahead, even the Dominant Media, which will root hard for him to win until the very end, slants its coverage away from him.

That's preposterous.

Nevertheless, Halperin is on to something when he suggests that talking about Trump's threat to democracy will help Biden win some news cycles.

The mainstream press loathes Biden, for many reasons. He's low-drama and doesn't give good quote, which makes it hard to write zingy, eyeball-grabbing stories about him. Also, he's not a young, charismatic, mancrush-worthy neoliberal bro like Barack Obama or fall 1992 Bill Clinton (though their press coverage worsened as soon as they actually tried to do something for the non-rich, namely healthcare reform; Biden's surprising New Deal/Great Society/Bernie tendencies are even more offputting to the press).

But mainstream journalists pride themselves on loathing Donald Trump, too -- which is convenient, because negative coverage of Trump increased the media's revenues during Trump's presidential term. That's an excellent reason for Biden to keep hammering Trump: the press sees it as good copy.

The press likes having Trump to kick around, obviously, but journalists don't want him to win again. That doesn't mean the press prefers Biden. The press largely shares the viewpoint of mainstream plutocrats: that the ideal outcome this year would be a victory by Nikki Haley or whoever tops the No Labels ticket. But since Haley will drop out after losing the South Carolina primary and the No Labels ticket will likely be topped by Joe Manchin or someone even less inclined to attack Trump, Biden has a clear field as the only genuinely anti-Trump candidate in the race. So he probably should pound Trump as often as possible. He can win a lot of news cycles that way.