Appearing on NBC’s Today show Wednesday morning, the network’s resident Democratic Party shill and senior Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell was bewildered that President Trump, “who is deemed unacceptable,” could possibly be competitive in the still undecided election. Later on the show, Biden campaign surrogate and so-called “historian” Jon Meacham lamented that Trump voters refused to “change their minds.”
“And I think it leaves big questions about what is the future of the Democratic Party?...here’s a party that is running against a candidate who is deemed unacceptable by traditional democratic, you know, standards,” Mitchell fretted early in the 8:00 a.m. ET hour. In disbelief that the election could be so close, the leftist media veteran sputtered:
Hillary Clinton – I covered that whole campaign – she was giving speeches, you know, “He’s just unacceptable,” to say nothing of the “deplorables” comment. But the fact is, he was just not judged by the democratic establishment to be acceptable and look at all the norms he’s broken in the last four years, according to the intelligence community and, you know, military leaders, bipartisan leaders, you know, all of the former Republicans, the Lincoln Project. So what is it about our politics?
In the final minutes of the broadcast, co-host Savannah Guthrie eagerly turned to Meacham, who openly endorsed Joe Biden for president, to “put some things in perspective.” Predictably, the Democratic pundit delivered talking points on behalf of his party as he complained that Trump voters hadn’t backed Biden:
Division is part of the oxygen of democracy. If we all agreed on everything, it wouldn’t be a democracy. The difference is, and it’s a deeply troubling one, is that many people have set aside, it seems, their capacity to change their minds if circumstance suggests they should....Politically, interestingly, we tend to seem to have suspended that capacity. And it’s our team right or wrong, come hell or high water, and hell and high water may be coming.
After praising Meacham for providing “calm,” co-host Hoda Kotb worried: “So as you look out – we’re looking out at the streets boarded up. We are looking at people on edge. We’re wondering when the results are coming in. We’re preaching calm, but if you could fast forward a couple of days or a week, what do you see?”
Refusing to acknowledge that storefronts in America’s cities are boarded up for fear of left-wing violence, Meacham again went after Trump supporters:
A lot of this depends on how the President’s supporters react to the way the President is going to behave. And there are any number of reasons you could have voted for President Trump, and that’s your right. You can’t be for democracy for people you agree with and against it if you disagree. But there is a rule of law in the country. There is a process that has served us pretty well for two and a half centuries. And I think that a lot of folks need to use their own conscience here. They need to use their own heart and mind as they watch what’s going to be a close, close election. I’ve been watching Chuck and his map obsessively, which is a bad sign for all of us. We need to figure out a way to think, “You know what, I know the President may say this, but that’s not what I think.”
The fact that top figures in the left-wing media bubble are shocked by the tight election results shows just how out of touch they are with reality.
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Here are excerpts of the November 4 coverage:
8:09 AM ET
HODA KOTB: Alright, what do you say we bring in NBC’s senior Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell, who was just in a cot sleeping right over there, I think, a couple of minutes ago. Good morning, Andrea, how are you? Good to see you.
ANDREA MITCHELL: In the fetal position, I don’t know how you’re doing it, Savannah Guthrie, iron woman. Well, an incredible outcome or lack of outcome in Pennsylvania is so critical. We’ve been talking about it, Chuck’s been talking about it and Kasie. And what you see when you look at Pennsylvania is, first of all, some of the counties, Allegheny, a big Trump county, is not even going to start counting the mail-ins until 10:00 this morning. But you’ve got Philadelphia, they’ve only counted 22% in Philadelphia. Montgomery and Delaware, you know, Chester, the big collar counties around Philadelphia, which are largely Democratic, those suburbs. But also a lot of Trump areas, Luzerne and North Hampton. So it’s spotty, it’s all over the place, there are probably more Biden votes than Trump votes out there, but there’s 1.8 million votes that have not been counted. And this is going to take at least – well, probably up to the three days that they’ve been given by the U.S. Supreme Court.
GUTHRIE: Yeah, and we see a similar situation in Michigan and Wisconsin. I mean, it does feel – shadows of 2016 if it really does end up turning on these three states. These are the three states that brought Trump to the White House in 2016 and again it may well fall to these three states to determine the outcome of this election.
MITCHELL: And I think it leaves big questions about what is the future of the Democratic Party? Sure, you know, Joe Biden has a path, more paths than Donald Trump, to the White House, but here’s a party that is running against a candidate who is deemed unacceptable by traditional democratic, you know, standards. By Hillary Clinton – I covered that whole campaign – she was giving speeches, you know, “He’s just unacceptable,” to say nothing of the “deplorables” comment. But the fact is, he was just not judged by the democratic establishment to be acceptable and look at all the norms he’s broken in the last four years, according to the intelligence community and, you know, military leaders, bipartisan leaders, you know, all of the former Republicans, the Lincoln Project. So what is it about our politics? There is something that is not – our traditional politics are not reaching the discontent of half the American public. And the language isn’t there, the communication isn’t there, the strategy. And Democratic leaders who thought they were going to pick up seats in the House and, you know, likely regain the Senate have a really tough future.
CHUCK TODD: We’re living in two different political realities and that’s what happened. And neither understands the other ecosystem. And I think that’s what we’re staring at.
MITCHELL: And the fact is, it’s gotten worse over four years because now everyone is in their corners and everyone is in an echo chamber and no one’s talking to each other.
(...)
8:52 AM ET
GUTHRIE: Let’s kind of just, as we close this hour, take a moment, take a deep breath in and put some things in perspective. We’ve got John Meacham, he’s an NBC News contributor, a presidential historian, a Rogers Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University. That’s a new one, Jon, we gave your whole resumé here. So you know, we were just having this conversation all of us, about what this divided country and this divided government, no matter what the result is that Americans clearly have voted for, what that means for getting things done on behalf of the American people.
JON MEACHAM: It’s getting harder and harder. We’ve always been divided. We were divided between patriot and tory, and north and south, and agrarian and industrial, and isolationist and interventionist. Division is part of the oxygen of democracy. If we all agreed on everything, it wouldn’t be a democracy. The difference is, and it’s a deeply troubling one, is that many people have set aside, it seems, their capacity to change their minds if circumstance suggests they should. And we all do this in our own lives. We all live lives, hopefully, where we learn and grow and change. Politically, interestingly, we tend to seem to have suspended that capacity. And it’s our team right or wrong, come hell or high water, and hell and high water may be coming. My own view is that we should be calm, we should follow the law. Elections don’t end on the night that when people want to go off the air and go to bed. This is not unusual in that sense. So let’s just follow the evidence of our eyes and use common sense.
KOTB: Jon, I – you always make us calm, first of all. And I always kind of feel like you’re the flight attendant. If you panic, we panic. And if you’re okay, we’re okay. [Laughter] So as you look out – we’re looking out at the streets boarded up. We are looking at people on edge. We’re wondering when the results are coming in. We’re preaching calm, but if you could fast forward a couple of days or a week, what do you see?
MEACHAM: A lot of this depends on how the President’s supporters react to the way the President is going to behave. And there are any number of reasons you could have voted for President Trump, and that’s your right. You can’t be for democracy for people you agree with and against it if you disagree. But there is a rule of law in the country. There is a process that has served us pretty well for two and a half centuries. And I think that a lot of folks need to use their own conscience here. They need to use their own heart and mind as they watch what’s going to be a close, close election. I’ve been watching Chuck and his map obsessively, which is a bad sign for all of us. We need to figure out a way to think, “You know what, I know the President may say this, but that’s not what I think.” And I’d suggest that the path forward in this election, and arguably the path forward as a country, will come when enough folks think for themselves as opposed to reflexively following what their leader says.
(...)
