Inept Pundit Wants to Create Rule That Criticizing Inept Punditry Is Wrong
By 
One of the main reasons that the media has invented a non-existent “tradition” that losing candidates vanish permanently from public life is that Clinton is pointing out that the media’s coverage of the 2016 campaign was dismal, and her argument is unassailably accurate. Behold Chris “EMAILS!” Cillizza:
There is, of course, truth in Clinton’s after-action report. There’s no question that Comey’s last-minute decision to re-open the investigation into her private email server played a negative factor for her [I’m curious what language this was written in before being run through Google translate –ed] in the final 10 days of the race. As the CIA and FBI have noted, the Russians actively meddled in the election to hurt Clinton and help Trump. And Clinton is even sort of right about the DNC and Wasserman Schultz, who was beset by problems even before the email hack that led to the WikiLeaks releases.
But that is the reality of all political campaigns. Stuff happens. Good luck and bad breaks occur.
Really, what candidate hasn’t been ratfucked by Russia and baselessly called a crook by the Director of the FBI less than two weeks before the election? Absolutely nothing unusual happened in the 2016 campaign, and certainly nothing that would indicate that Cillizza is bad at his job.
As a matter of fact, I think the nation would have been better served had Gore raised holy hell about what happened to him for as long as he possibly could. I think the nation would have been better served if some Democratic senator had stood with, say, John Lewis, to contest the results of the 2000 election. I think that Kerry should have hollered louder and longer about the shenanigans in Ohio that helped re-elect George W. Bush. Maybe if they had done this, the subsequent flood of voter-suppression laws, and the ensuing gerrymandering of various legislatures, which continues to rage through the political process today, could have been partially stemmed.
Frankly, I hope she continues to “frustrate” Democratic panjandrums and I hope she continues to make the likes of Ruth Marcus simper about how bitter she is. Right now, as far as I can see, HRC is the only one completely free to hammer away at the extraordinary events that conspired to put Donald Trump in the White House. As the investigations continue to accelerate, the country needs somebody outside of the Congress and outside of Department of Justice to keep the country at large focused on the real cost of having abided by the Clinton Rules while an election was hijacked from afar. Might as well be her.
There is some truth that Democrats in general decided to just let the awful media coverage and massive vote suppression and Supreme Court lawlessness of 2000 go. This was…a really bad idea that worked out really badly, and helped pave the road for Donald Trump! Republicans ignore this bullshit non-existent “tradition” for the very good reason that working the refs works, even when your complaints are not as eminently justified as the ones Democrats had after 2000 and 2016.
As Pareene observes with respect to another Cillizza emission, vapid “WHO WON THE LAST HOUR” quasi-journalism is absolutely crucial to a nihilist minority faction clinging to power. Shape of the Earth Views Differ coverage demonstrably reduces support for measures to address climate change, and a campaign covered with particularly false false equivalence led to a president justifying a critical anti-climate decision with surreal ramble of incoherent nonsense. Of course the media wants a permanent pass, but they shouldn’t get one.