On CNN’s The Situation Room, the assembled panel of Zuckerville citizens continued Tuesday to set the table for what could be years of uncritical coverage of Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) in a hypothetical Biden administration. Over the course of the two-hour show, she was called “barrier-breaking,” “fascinating,” “historic,” and a “trailblazer” possessing “energy,” “smarts,” and “vibrance.”
In contrast, they treated all critics (hypothetical and real) as mortal enemies, warning that Harris will face “powerful forces” of racism and sexism with the latter being “the most powerful force in this country ever” led by a President (and thus an entire side of the aisle) that uses “racially incendiary” and “sexist language.”
AC360 host Anderson Cooper was one participant, telling political director David Chalian that Harris was both a “fascinating” and “historic choice,” while Chalian tacked on “barrier-breaking.”
Chief political correspondent Dana Bash later applied “history-maker” and “trailblazer” to the open love letter, boasting that “this is a sign of [the] times” after “the whole country exploded and changed in a very good way after the murder of George Floyd.”
Amidst this circus, political analyst David Gregory emphasized that Harris “was a very safe choice” for Biden in that it “wasn’t surprising” because “[t]his was the conventional wisdom.”
For pointing out the obvious, political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson rebuked him as racially insensitive and refusing to acknowledge that racism and sexism are “very powerful forces in American history” seeing as how few black women are in positions of power.
Incredibly, Henderson’s hurling of the gender and race cards would have upset one Nia-Malika Henderson from the previous hour when she noted prognosticators had discussed a Biden/Harris ticket for years.
In hour two, Henderson expanded on the lack of belief or trust in the American people, painting a country controlled by racism and sexism and held back from improving (click “expand”):
I mean, I have said before, racism and sexism, very powerful forces in this country. Racism might be the most powerful force in this country ever and so it's still a big risk. It's still a big bet that you see Joe Biden making that this country is in a place where they feel comfortable elevating a black woman, Indian American woman to the second highest office of the land. Again, we'll see, again, obviously, Kamala Harris has navigated racism and sexism her entire life and won in California over and over again.
So if you want somebody who's navigated that kind of gauntlet successfully, she is of a pick, but the forces of racism and sexism, still very powerful and we shouldn’t ignore that and the bold choice that Joe Biden made in picking Kamala Harris and you can see this sort of energy, surprise and in many ways, sort of relief. It's about time, from a lot of people....Her rate of success, you know, has brought her to this moment.
After the President’s coronavirus press conference, the venomous anti-Trump rhetoric came out. Chalian excitedly said that Trump’s use of the word “nasty” and invoking Harris’s past attack of racism against Biden gave Democrats “a character contrast” of a forgiving Biden versus a bitter Trump.
The insufferable Jim Acosta was along too, grousing that Trump used “the term Pocahontas again, which is obviously a rationally offensive term, and...using that kind of rationally offensive language on the same day that Joe Biden is making history in selecting an African-American woman to be on his ticket.”
Acosta complained about how Trump’s “so often employed racially incendiary language,” but he was one-upped by Henderson adding: “sexist language.”
Henderson then emptied her thesaurus of words to describe her admiration for Harris against a President she deemed as having “sounded kind of lazy like his heart wasn’t in it” and extrapolated that to the rest of the campaign. She was joined by Bash in the sexism condemnations (click “expand”):
HENDERSON: If you think about what he just said, he was really fixated on Kamala Harris being nasty. She’s so mean. He often uses that kind of language to refer to women. One of the things that was noteworthy to me, I wasn’t — I could only hear it in my ear, I couldn't actually see the video, President Trump sounded kind of lazy like his heart wasn't really in it, almost like he had just gotten up from a nap and I think you're going to give a contrast, Kamala Harris’s vibrance, in energy, smarts, obviously, to with — with not only Donald Trump, but also Mike Pence. So, listen I think they're going to throw the kitchen sink at Kamala Harris, at this ticket. It will be laced with racism and sexism in the way we've come to see this President and understand this President over the last many years and we'll see if it works.
(....)
BASH: The one other thing I wanna say, Jim, is that — I just think we need to call out, again, the first adjective that President Trump used about Harris is nasty. I mean, this is exactly what the Biden campaign expect I'm sure, no matter if this was a woman of color or not. We knew it was going to be a woman. That's the word he uses to describe women when trying to demean them, but the other thing is that President Trump played right into the Biden message with this rollout, which is I can't believe he would choose somebody who was so nasty and mean to him. And the whole message from Team Biden is already, that’s exactly the point, that Joe Biden is such different person than Donald Trump cause Trump would never consider picking someone who was that “nasty” to him and Joe Biden is trying to get — is getting over — has gotten over it to the point where he gave the most important job and he made the most important decision on her of his candidacy so far.
After a focus on Harris, Acosta shifted things back to Biden, hailing his life as “quite a story” and “arc” while senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny added that, for all the talk about Harris, Biden wants to defeat Trump for his late son: “There is no one who is more of a present figure who is driving Joe Biden's decision to run for president and in his hope, defeat the sitting president, than Beau Biden. He is doing it for Beau[.]”
CNN’s lovefest for the Biden ticket and treating those opposed to the Democrats as unconscionable heathens was made possible by advertisers such as Norton Antivirus, Nutrisystem, and Swiffer. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
