“Trump supporters like Donald Trump” is not actually newsworthy

Get a load of this from Chris Licht:

there is something to write about how folks like licht insist on transmogrifying the trump base — a distinct minority of americans — into something like a majority https://t.co/TbixCteVUH— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) May 11, 2023

There is, admittedly, a good deal of purchase in the idea that the media didn’t take Trump seriously as a presidential candidate, which definitely affected coverage of the 2016 election, almost entirely for the worse. But taking from this the “lesson” that “we need to confirm that people who like Donald Trump like Donald Trump” is a way of avoiding reflection about these choices, in a way that can also be quite profitable.

Some of the actual lessons of 2016 will go permanently unlearned because not only might they suggest that angry white reactionaries aren’t a majority, they might suggest that something is wrong with the American constitutional order:

the main lesson of the election from the facts is that the electoral college can distort the popular vote pretty significantly by its current design.— Julia Azari (@julia_azari) May 11, 2023

everyone's voice matters in a democracy, but both the electoral college and the social process of interpreting elections mean that some are amplified, and we should be more aware of that and try to replicate mistakes— Julia Azari (@julia_azari) May 11, 2023

In addition to this, there’s a lesson in the coverage election that ended Roe v. Wade being dominated by a minor and stupefyingly dull story about email server management but we all know that’s never going to be learned.