Some avid news watchers are taken aback by mainstream media's collective decision to begin lightly poking at some of Biden's policy failures. There are surface-level reasons this is happening:
1. There's nothing else to talk about.
2. Democrats are in charge of both branches of congress, so it's harder to blame Republicans.
3. The policy failures are reaching everyday Americans in such obvious ways, they can't avoid it.
4. Afghanistan opened the door.
All of these are true, but they're not the main reason the Jake Tappers and the Chuck Todds are willing to bring their rubber knives to the fight right now. The reason is purely:
1. Timing.
The midterms aren't until next year, and by then we will be discussing a whole new set of issues. Or, discussing the same issues like border solvency and inflation but through the backward binoculars, the media usually uses when it's in protection mode. These people are smart, and they know conservatives criticize them for being in Democrats' pockets. Right now, historically, is their opportunity to show some receipts, and claim that they DO criticize their own. Because they know that it costs them nothing to slap-fight internally at this spot in the four-year cycle.
So when you see approval ratings for Biden at historic presidential lows of roughly 38%, don't get too excited. The rubber knives will go back in their sheaths in time for election season 2022.
Instead, this can be viewed in a larger context as another example of the power the media has over America, and by extension, world consciousness. If they decide something to be a story, it's a story. If they decide something isn't a story, it's not. Right-wing media can talk about the border until it's blue in the face, but it doesn't become an issue worth addressing until "they" decide. If Jeff Zucker announced in his Monday CNN zoom meeting that the border crisis needed to be solved, the White House would respond next week. But they don't care about kids in bad situations anymore, because they never did.
Likewise, they do not care about the potency of natural immunity, the 75% higher murder rate in 2020 (5,325 more murders than 2019), or the 14,523 "kids in cages" the HHS has in custody. They'll talk about gas prices and unemployment, because they're easy, and progressives can use those numbers to push more government solutions.
Right now, they don't mind Biden having low approval ratings, but next year they will. And thereby, his approval rating will go back up in 2022 before the midterm election. Mark your calendar!
Ryan Wiggins is the author of the extremely serious and not funny robot novel, The Life of Human, and is a writer and producer of television shows. He is the host of Wiggins America on 97.1 FM Talk in St. Louis.
