They dominate the news media, Hollywood and academia. They teach us, tell us the news, show us their documentaries, television programs and movies. And yet, they can't get us to vote for their guy, the Democrat.

Why not?

First, for any doubting Thomases, let's demonstrate that liberals, progressives, Democrats, whatever-you-call 'em, control these institutions of mass instruction. Survey after survey of the media shows its leaders and workers are overwhelmingly liberal and vote for Democrats, often diametrically opposite the public's majority viewpoint:

• A Pew Research Center survey of journalists and media executives conducted earlier this year found journalists identify themselves as liberals as opposed to conservatives by a five-to-one margin.
  
• In a 1997 poll for the Center for Media & Public Affairs, 66 percent of respondents agreed that news media "favor a liberal point of view."
  
• A Freedom Forum survey found that 89 percent of the Washington press corps voted for Bill Clinton over George Herbert Walker Bush and Ross Perot in 1992, while Clinton garnered only 43 percent of the popular vote.

And none of this is new.

In 1984, when Ronald Reagan was rolling up the biggest landslide in modern history, an extensive poll of journalists found they voted for Walter Mondale and his tax-increase promise by a two-to-one margin. In 1972, when Richard Nixon was walloping George McGovern in every state except Massachusetts (including McGovern's home state of South Dakota), 81 percent of the nation's media elite voted for McGovern.

As for a liberal slant in Hollywood, well, Hollywood has "progressed" even beyond most progressives. And those who doubt the slant need only turn on their TV set or go to a movie.

Consider the spate of movies in recent years ? as well as TV's The West Wing ? showcasing a liberal president as the hero and conservatives as the "bad guys." When the very first drama comes out presenting a conservative as the hero and a liberal as the bad guy, get back to me and I'll reconsider my comments.

I won't hold my breath.

As for our nation's education establishment, the teachers' unions have become the most powerful element in the Democratic base and "education" drives the insatiable appetite of government for more of our money. Nonetheless, it never seems reflected in student performance.

Furthermore, in higher education, the liberal bias is even greater. In a recent column, entitled "The Left's last paradise," George Will writes, "One study of 1,000 professors finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That imbalance, more than double what it was three decades ago, is intensifying because younger professors are more uniformly liberal than the older cohort that is retiring."

Now, if space aliens approaching our planet were informed that liberals ? supportive of Democrats and hostile to Republicans ? control the media, academia and the entertainment industry, the aliens might reasonably expect Democrats to be popular and in power.

They would be badly mistaken, of course. But why? What has allowed conservative Republicans to overcome so much public chattering against them? Republicans are on the ascendancy and now control all three branches of the federal government. Continued...