A friend recently praised the The Atlantic’s January/February 2024 edition for turning over an entire issue to 24 writers offering dystopian warnings about a second Trump presidency.
“In his first term, Trump’s corruption and brutality were mitigated by his ignorance and laziness, “ wrote David Frum. “In a second, Trump would arrive with a much better understanding of the system’s vulnerabilities, more willing enablers in tow, and a much more focused agenda of retaliation against his adversaries and impunity for himself.”
“Trump’s bullying of military leaders, journalists, and judges was never merely the ranting of an attention seeker, and that behavior—backed by the credible threat of violence from radicalized supporters—will likely become even more central to his governing style,” wrote Juliette Kayyem.
That should have a real impact on public discourse about Trump, my friend said.
Not likely.
The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Washington Monthly and multiple other elite liberal/progressive/left-leaning publications are preaching to the choir in covering politics and so much more of the cultural landscape. Far too often, their attention is on things the vast majority of Americans are simply not focusing on.
As former New York Times editor James Bennet wrote in The Economist, “The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.”
The New York Times illusions are reflected in its coverage of the HBO show “Succession”, described by one critic as “an amoral look at the stupidity of capitalism”. The paper droned on about the show interminably after its debut in June 2018.
“…time has hardly dulled the beige sheen of “Succession”, New York Times reporter Alexis Soloski effused in the paper’s Dec. 3, 2024 edition. “In January it will likely dominate the Emmy Awards — all of the main cast received nominations and Armstrong earned two, for writing and as an executive producer — and no other show has come to replace it in the cultural consciousness.”
But the fact is Succession was a niche show, not even on the radar of most Americans. Succession’s May 2023 finale drew 2.9 million viewers, a series high. Even counting delayed viewing, “Succession” averaged just 8.7 million viewers per episode in its fourth and final season.
That’s with a total U.S. population of 341 million, with just about every household having a television or computer screen for streaming.
That’s how it is with the New York Times. Even though it now has about 10 million subscribers, and still claims it runs “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, it’s not really talking to America.
According to the paper’s readership demographics, 91% of its readers identify as Democrats, only 7% of the readership doesn’t have a higher education degree and most of its readers are white and well-off.
In other words, most people who read the New York Times and other liberal-leaning publications do so because they already share the political sensibilities of these publications.
And frankly, there’s not much incentive for pundits to go off the beaten track. As Osita Nwaney put it in a Columbia Journalism Review article about political writing, “…What’s worth writing about and how? The morsels of rage and misery we offer might not have much political effect, but they do feed an online writing economy that rewards speed, quantity, and deference to algorithms designed for the profit of three or four tech companies—an economy that offers few incentives to generate writing that lingers in the mind longer than half a day or half an hour…The whole system is one of the bleakest forms of entertainment imaginable.”
Similar limiting factors are present with most “elite” news outlets in the United States.
Even television news and opinion shows reach a narrow audience. The days when Walter Cronkite dominated the scene, reaching an estimated 27-29 million viewers per night, when the nation’s population was just over 200 million, are long gone.
ABC World News Tonight with David Muir finished the week of November 27 at No. 1 in the evening news ratings race with an average of just 8.45 million viewers. That same week, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt averaged 7.075 million viewers and The CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell averaged 5.05 million total viewers. In other words, the combined viewership of all three top evening network news shows totaled 20.56 million, about one third fewer viewers than Cronkite alone reeled in more than 40 years ago when America’s population was much smaller.
The proliferation of liberal political comment on social media and in reams of political punditry also likely has less of an impact on the broad public than is often assumed.
This is likely one big reason why all the hand-wringing about Trump in progressive publications and network news shows, isn’t denting Trump’s support. He’s still crushing his GOP presidential primary opponents and surpassing President Biden in the polls, even in a poll pitting Trump against Biden, Kennedy, West and Stein.
Put simply, Trump’s supporters just aren’t listening.
ThinkingOregon 
