Perhaps she should stop focusing so much of her attention on attempts to make others feel sorry for her.
Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is now griping about what they see as an unfair lack of media coverage about their candidate — a claim that is as laughable as it is predictable.
“Elizabeth hasn’t been getting the same kind of media coverage as candidates she outperformed,” a recent fundraising email stated, according to the Chicago Tribune. “We can’t count on the media to cover our campaign fairly, so we’re taking our case directly to voters.”
Honestly, the only unfair thing about the media coverage of Warren throughout her campaign would probably be the inordinate amount of a**-kissing that they’ve been giving her until now.
In a piece published Wednesday, the Washington Post referred to “the fawning coverage from the media” that Warren had received in the past, and that couldn’t be more spot-on. According to an In These Times analysis comparing Warren’s, Biden’s, and Sanders’s media coverage on MSNBC in August and September of last year, “Warren had the lowest proportion of negative coverage of all three candidates (just 7.9% of all her mentions) and the highest proportion of positive mentions (30.6%).” She was also, of course, endorsed (along with Amy Klobuchar) by the country’s most famous and respected newspaper, the New York Times.
Oh, and just check out some of these past headlines: “My dream candidate exists — and her name is Elizabeth Warren” (The Guardian, December 2019). “Elizabeth Warren Deserves Your Undivided Attention” (GQ, May 2019). “Unbelievable: Failed smears only make Elizabeth Warren stronger as new Dem front-runner” (the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 2019). “Elizabeth Warren’s Skin Care Routine Has Created a Whole New Debate” (the Huffington Post, January 2020). “Elizabeth Warren is the intellectual powerhouse of the Democratic party” (The Guardian, April 2019). “Elizabeth Warren Has Made Her Story America’s Story” (The Nation, July 2019). “Can Elizabeth Warren turn a supposed weakness into a strength?” (Salon, September 2019).
I could keep going, but I’m getting nauseous, and I don’t think that’s just the giant burrito I ate for lunch. Throughout her campaign, Elizabeth Warren has enjoyed more blindly positive media coverage than anyone in recent memory (perhaps with the exception of Jussie Smollett, before it became clear that he had actually orchestrated that racist, homophobic attack on himself), and anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock knows that.
What’s more, her documented tenure as the apple of the media’s eye isn’t the only reason her campaign’s complaints are such a joke. After all, an article published Tuesday in The Wrap discussing those grievances also contained the following:
Warren’s own representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment on media coverage of the campaign as it heads into Tuesday’s Nevada caucus.
So, in other words, Warren’s team is whining that the media won’t cover her but has also been ignoring attempts to do so? It’s really, truly absurd.
Now, I’m not saying that it would be wrong to say that the media have been covering Warren less. They certainly have been, but that’s actually not because they’re unfair, or because she’s a woman (of color?), or for any other reason except for the fact that she is blowing it.
It’s true: Despite having enjoyed so much of their favor for so long, the only real story that the media could cover when it comes to her these days would be that of her staggering decline. Now, some might argue that this isn’t true, that the media aren’t being fair, and that the proof of this is in the fact that it is increasingly covering Klobuchar — despite the fact that Amy is currently one delegate behind Warren. (This fact was, most likely, what Warren’s campaign email was talking about when it mentioned that Warren wasn’t receiving “the same kind of media coverage as candidates she outperformed.”)
That is, of course, the wrong way to look at it. After all, the fact that the media’s choice candidate is now only one delegate ahead of the candidate who, until very recently, no one knew a damn thing about other than the fact that she’d once eaten egg salad off of a comb, is hardly a viable defense of Warren. In fact, it’s actually quite clearly evidence of Warren’s astonishing fall.
The truth is, the media had hyped up Warren so much that I myself am surprised to see that she’s now just one delegate behind Amy Egg Salad, that she’s polling at 9 percent in South Carolina, or that she’s polling at 5 percent in Virginia.
What isn’t shocking to me, though, is how her campaign is handling it: by blaming someone else and painting Warren as the victim.
Warren, after all, loves to be the victim. As a piece in the Boston Globe details, Warren and her team are quite fond of crying “sexism!” whenever they’re faced with even the slightest of critiques. Oh, and let’s not forget how Warren also spent decades of her life falsely claiming to be a member of a marginalized community, perhaps just so she could tell stories about how she (poor Liz!) had had to endure racism and discrimination in her own family.
I don’t know the future of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, because I don’t have those kinds of powers. I do know, though, that it doesn’t seem to be looking good, and I’m also guessing that perhaps she should stop focusing so much of her attention on attempts to make others feel sorry for her. It didn’t work for Hillary Clinton — and it doesn’t seem to be working too well for her, either.