Nate Silver: Progressive Media Critics Ignoring Reality By Creating A Pro-Biden Echo Chamber

Pollster Nate Silver dismantled the notion that the media’s portrayal of President Joe Biden is to blame for the current turmoil within the Democratic ranks in a late Sunday blog while accusing Biden-loyal media critics of maintaining an ideological echo chamber and behaving “like the dog who caught the car.”

The article comes just after Silver called for Biden to resign from the presidential race after watching his Friday interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.

Tweeting that he was pushing the article a day early, given the fast evolving “Biden crisis”, Silver shared the piece which opened with a quote from a 2004 New York Times Magazine piece, attributed to former Bush Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” This sentiment, Silver argued, once epitomized the Republican detachment from empiricism. Yet now, it has found a home among Democrats as the political winds shift.

Silver’s take followed that age-related concerns in relation to Biden, while evident, had been, largely, inadequately addressed by the media.

As someone who was an early proponent of the theory that Biden’s age was in fact a huge liability for him, I have complicated feelings about how the media has covered the story both before and after the debate. On the one hand, the coverage before was clearly inadequate — and it centered too much on the electoral implications and not the even more fundamental question of Biden’s fitness for office. On the other hand, the coverage wasn’t zero by any means: the Wall Street Journal, in particular, had taken the issue seriously, and Biden’s age and mental acuity was the subject of several weeks of sustained coverage following Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s finding in February that Biden was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who had “diminished faculties in advancing age… many liberals are in touch with reality: there is an impressively wide array of pundits, analysts and public intellectuals who share my concerns about Biden.

However, his frustrations were aimed more directly at progressive media critics who, in their attempts to shield Biden, have inadvertently made the media appear disconnected from observable realities in a bid to prevent coverage from “boiling over.”

Progressive media scolds are like the dog who caught the car. They succeeded in getting the media to frame the issue gingerly.

But having caught the car, the critics aren’t sure what to do with it. Because the car was a lemon. In hunting down bad vibes, the critics didn’t change the underlying reality — they only made the media seem out of touch. Vibes theory, the postmodernist strain that began with Rove but has now has a through-line to progressive media critics, fails when it comes to things the public can see with its own eyes, like Biden’s obviously deteriorating condition or the fact that prices are much higher than they were when Biden took office. Instead, the Democratic Party now finds itself in a state of crisis.

The real kicker, according to Silver, is the Democrats’ epistemic closure – a refusal to confront new and uncomfortable truths. This, he argued, mirrors the Republican behavior they once derided. He highlights how Biden’s approval ratings, languishing at 37 percent, and his age, potentially 86 at the end of a second term, paint a stark picture. Yet, senior staffers and Biden himself dismiss these objective measures, retreating into a bubble of selective belief.

The critique extends to how progressive media scolds have achieved a Pyrrhic victory – a win tantamount to defeat. They have muted critical coverage but at the cost of credibility. By framing legitimate concerns about Biden’s health as “misinformation” or “cheap fakes,” they have alienated the public, which they evidence with what they can see with their own eyes.

With that in mind, Silver argued that this self-inflicted media strategy could pave the way for former President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

The pollster wrote: “Senior staffers, and Biden himself, have come to distrust the polls and other attempts to objectively measure public opinion. The reality can be boiled down to these two numbers: 37 (percent), Biden’s approval rating, and 86, the age he’d be at the end of his second term.”

He concluded: “But the human mind is an incredibly effective reality-distortion device. It can work its way even around cold, hard facts by cherry-picking polls or lashing out at critics or engaging in all manner of conspiracy theories.”

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