Thread by @whstancil

Media, hot off years of self-flagellation over supposedly missing the story of 2016 election, is missing the story of the 2020 election, which is not about any horse race, but the rapid turn towards violent conspiratorial totalitarianism in Trump's millions-strong base.

Journalists are so addicted to the "Who's up in Florida? What's fundraising look like?" style of coverage, that they're continuing to obsess over it while prominent allies of the president call for violent purges and the seizing of ballot boxes.

Trump himself is echoing this rhetoric, saying he can't lose without fraud, talking about "insurrection." It's dismissed as unserious chatter because it doesn't fit into the horse-race frame. If you reduce all of politics to a 538 poll model, this stuff looks like so much noise.

America's political punditry industrial complex has been a dead weight on journalism for many years, slowly taking over newsrooms.

But now, its inability to comprehend any information that doesn't affect swing-state polling is actively blinding us to an impending disaster.

To put it very bluntly, here's how our media works right now:

Trump: "I can't legitimately lose the election. Anyone who opposes this is an insurrectionist. Retribution killings are necessary. "

Media: "Is this important? That depends on how Florida swing voters react to it."

The election does not supersede all other questions of law or morality or society. It's just a process conducted by our government, as one part of that government. It's totally backwards to ignore attacks on the whole system in favor of focusing on the minutiae of the election.

There is no rational justification for the journalistic primacy of election coverage.

What's happening is that a lot of our pundits are, essentially, sports fans. And the sport they are fans of is "elections." And like a lot of sports fans, they've totally lost perspective.