NPR Reporter Amazed That College-Educated Voters Ever, Ever Supported GOP (Corrected)

October 9th, 2016 10:49 AM

CORRECTION: On Sunday afternoon, NPR reporter Tamara Keith tweeted NewsBusters wrongly identified her in this post: "Headline could also read: @newsbusters thinks all women sound the same. That wasn't even me! (Also missed the point entirely)." The reporter in question was instead Asma Khalid. 

They try, they really do, but those earnest sorts at state-run media known as National Public Radio can't hide their true colors.

This is especially true when the media outlet's reporters, editors and assorted hangers-on talk among themselves, as on the NPR Politics podcast on Thursday.

Such was the case in the most recent Weekly Roundup edition of the podcast featuring White House reporter Tamara Keith, political editor Domenico Montanaro, and campaign reporters Asma Khalid and Sam Sanders. If that last reporter's name strikes a chord, it might be because Sanders caught our attention last February after he was assigned to cover a Trump rally in Exeter, N.H. -- and traveled to Exeter, R.I., instead. Did I mention he's a Harvard grad?

Much of the discussion centered around shifting demographics, with Keith revealing how shocked she is by a specific upheaval she most assuredly didn't see coming --

MONTANARO: So the country is changing. We've seen that the Trump campaign in many respects is appealing to whites who are not growing as quickly as those other demographic groups and who are feeling in some respects a sense of white resentment toward those other groups changing, and what we're seeing is it's changing the face of both parties. The Republican Party has become much more reliant on white working-class voters with less than college degree who are shrinking piece of the electorate while Democrats, for the first time, they could win whites with a college degree. That has never happened before since polling began.

ASMA KHALID (interrupting): I know and it sounds like it's, and that's amazing to me, is that this has historically been a Republican voting bloc, white voters who have a college degree. And so if Hillary Clinton can tie that group or win them, that is really a historical first and I'll be really curious to see what it means for the Democratic Party going forward.

An especially annoying verbal tic in media these days -- "going forward" instead of "in the future." Please stop.
Ever get the impression that NPR scribes consider a college degree the sole measure of intelligence?