Our elitist media are so devoted to the Democratic Party that the only time you can be confident that a few questions might get tough is when there's a primary election. Once a candidate wins the primary, then all controversies are categorized as desperate Republican distractions and dismissed.
The networks haven't been paying much attention to Maine, where two Democrats want the nomination to oppose longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Gov. Janet Mills is facing oyster farmer Graham Platner. That's a woman who's been in public service for 50 years versus a rookie.
On the MS NOW show "The Weekend Primetime," co-host Elise Jordan pressed Mills firmly over her two stands on the ability of President Joe Biden to run for reelection.
Jordan noted that after Biden's "disastrous" 2024 debate, Mills put out a statement in July that said, "Over the next several months, and especially in the coming days, I look forward to the President demonstrating to the American people the same heart, determination, and vigor that he brought to our conversation this evening."
Then Mills told Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic that in that meeting with Biden and other Democrat governors, she "was among those who pleaded with him to step aside." Jordan asked, "So why should voters trust your judgment now when you had one opinion privately that was very impactful on the fate of our country in the grand scheme of things, and then now, when you're vouching for your own health, tell us why we should trust you?" That's a fine question. Mills uncomfortably chuckled.
"Listen, I wasn't going to kick the guy when he was down, honestly," Mills said. "But we had a meeting with the president just a few weeks or so after the horrible debate. And I was one of the people who spoke up and said, you know -- we, all the governors, Democratic governors -- called for this meeting in order to try to -- to try to dissuade him from running. That didn't work at that time. Eventually he did make the right decision."
The Democrats should still be pressed on their failure to pressure Biden out of the race in 2024, and that includes the Democrats in the media who were still accommodating Biden's increasing cognitive frailty. It's too bad Joe Scarborough isn't running for anything, so we could watch him on a tape loop endlessly boasting about the "best Biden ever."
This age issue is more relevant since, if Mills were elected, she would be a freshman senator at the age of 79, serving a six-year term. (Collins is 73. Platner is 41.)
MS NOW's Jordan performed the same function with Platner in January, pressing him on his Nazi chest tattoo, that this "Totenkopf" skull and crossbones image is "basically the worst one you could have." She said he claimed he didn't know what it was, but people documented him on Reddit talking about it. Platner denied discussing it.
Mills recently ran an ad featuring Platner's social-media strut in 2013 that people concerned about rape should not "get so f----d up they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to." The message was deleted.
Collins might be enjoying this battle, but the broadcast networks are generally terrible at covering the midterm elections -- unless they think they can ruin a Republican. In the summer of 2010, the networks energetically obsessed over clunky rape-and-abortion remarks made by GOP Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.
Platner knows that's unlikely to happen to him. If he loses, he won't be able to blame ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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