I think there's two things at play:

one, mainstream corporate media is afraid of Republicans for financial/ownership reasons and has been generationally bullied into fecklessness

two, some kind of normalization bias optimism by people who want to believe the public isn't so easily manipulable

the U.S. politics and polling punditry press simply acts as if propaganda doesn't exist when discussing electoral voting habits. This country's entire information system is an open sewer, agitprop saturates everything, informed consensus is under assault -- yet this just doesn't get a mention.

If you're a major outlet honest about the fact that Republicans are extremists who lied repeatedly and systemically to fool these communities about their actual policies, you might upset a Republican source, advertiser, reader, or owner, so it's best to leave that part out of your story

@unroll.skywriter.blue, unroll, please.

The history of British patriotism is longer but no better than American Patriotism.

The thing is that national chauvinism is something that inherently flatters the homeland of everyone who believes in it and gives excuses to deny anything bad about where you're from and your culture.

This is such a widespread sickness among pundits. Pointing out that Republicans are lying about welfare fraud — and have been for decades — doesn't qualify as a publishable take.

So you get this bizarre fixation on optics and this amorphous demand for Dems to "admit" something they admit already.

Heck no!

For a preview of this, all Collins and Schumer and Jeffries and the rest need to do is look at what Europeans are saying about them. Right now.

Our moment has far more video and digital documentation about their every move than people in the past ever got.