The Bubble...

These guys just don’t understand why voters failed to fall in line and support this woman they deemed the “most qualified” and “the smartest” candidate in the history of the world.

Patriot Retort

After Richard Nixon won reelection in 1972, New York writer and critic Pauline Kael acknowledged that she lived in a bubble.

“I live in a rather special world,” Kael told the Modern Language Association. “I only know one person who voted for Nixon.  Where they are, I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater, I can feel them.”

Well, nearly fifty years later, that bubble has yet to burst.

If anything, it’s only grown a thicker skin.

Since Elizabeth Warren ended her quixotic campaign, the bubble-dwellers have been inconsolable.

So certain were they that Warren would win the nomination, they simply cannot accept that their certainty had very little to do with reality.

But they aren’t the only ones living in the bubble.

Elizabeth Warren is right there with them too.  She went into Iowa and New Hampshire convinced of her own inevitable victory.  And after her humiliating distant fourth place finish in New Hampshire, Liz lashed out at the very people who were artificially keeping her in the race.

In an email to supporters, Warren bemoaned the lack of “fairness” her campaign was receiving from the media.

Elizabeth knows what it’s like to be counted out early, because it’s happened before. But right now, 55 states and territories have still yet to vote. 98% of delegates are still up for grabs. We can’t count on the media to cover our campaign fairly, so we’re taking our case directly to the voters. [original bold emphasis]

I wrote at the time:

But here’s the thing. Elizabeth Warren’s problems began when she first started “taking our case directly to the voters.”

When face-to-face with actual human beings, the media-created Warren Buzz sputters out like a wet fart.

As I said yesterday, Warren made the exact same mistake Hillary made in 2016.  She believed what was said about her inside the media bubble.

She believed it because the bubble believed it.

It isn’t as if we need more proof that those in the media are out of touch with the rest of the country.  Fact is, we get examples of that every single day.

And rather than taking the time to venture out from the confines of their hermetically-sealed, like-minded cocoon to find out what actual voters think, these bubble-dwellers think perusing Twitter is the way to get their finger on the pulse of the electorate.

But Twitter is not real life.  If anything, it is just another bubble.

So when the rubber met the road and actual voters had a chance to make their feelings known, these bubble-dwellers were gobsmacked.

Most of the mourning is coming from within the bubble.  These guys just don’t understand why voters failed to fall in line and support this woman they deemed the “most qualified” and “the smartest” candidate in the history of the world.

At least Pauline Kael had enough self-awareness to know she lived in a bubble.

These guys have no idea.

I know what you’re thinking.  “What planet does this idiot live on?!”

She’s here on Earth, in America.  But she lives in the bubble.

How else could she conclude that a woman who lied about her own personal history time and time again has no baggage (fired for being visibly pregnant!Kids went to public schools! I’m and Indian and this DNA test proves it!)?

“A fantastic campaigner?”

That must be why voters rallied to her in droves to hand her victories in …

… wait.

The only thing Liz was fantastic at was making us cringe … repeatedly.

Naturally they cannot comprehend why, after Warren opened fire at Mike Bloomberg, she didn’t rise in the polls.

But anyone outside of the bubble could explain that.  Because outside of the bubble we acknowledge history.

And if history tells us anything, it’s that candidates who go scorched earth on another candidate not only harm their target; they harm themselves.

Warren’s scorched earth debate strategy succeeded in kneecapping Bloomberg. But in doing so, Liz kneecapped herself. She came off as shrill, vicious and mean.

If she was, in fact, a “fantastic campaigner,” Warren would have known that such a full-frontal attack during a debate would also blow back on her. 

But she didn’t know it.  Even after it was over, it didn’t dawn on her because everyone in the bubble was orgasming over what she did.  And because Liz exists in that same bubble, she thought it was a resounding success.

In the end, because the media is oblivious to world outside of their bubble, the only explanation they can give for Warren failing to connect with voters is sexism.

It’s your fault, Democrat primary voters.  You’re to blame.

You are all sexist, misogynistic assholes who don’t deserve such an eminently qualified, brilliant candidate with no “baggage” and a “fantastic campaigner.”

In other words, the bubble-dwellers have learned nothing.

When the world at large does not comport with life within the bubble, they blame the world at large.

Back in January 2017, the New York Times interviewed Stephen Bannon and he explained that the media’s disconnect from the rest of the country was the reason they didn’t see Trump coming. 

He said, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

Rather than take to heart what he was saying, these bubble-dwelling prats worked themselves into a lather and accused Bannon of trying to “silence the free press.”

Just like dictators do!!!!

As I said back then, they are too in love with the sound of their own voices to shut the hell up and find out what people out here in the real world think.

Well, here we are three years later, and they still won’t listen.  Nothing has changed.

Elizabeth Warren was never going to get the nomination.

She is just too unlikeable.

Nobody likes a know-it-all bossy Betty who wants to lord over us while pretending she’s a Victim. It just isn’t appealing.

Besides which, Warren ran what can only be described as a boutique campaign. A trans kid will pick her Education Secretary? Come on! She was not seeking to appeal to a broad base of voters.

Over at Reason, in her column “Sexism Didn’t Kill the Warren Campaign. The Warren Campaign Killed the Warren Campaign,” Katie Herzog explains it this way:

Warren’s followers are both primed to see sexism everywhere and so enamored with their candidate—so sure of her (and their own) righteousness—that they are unable to see any of the flaws that are so apparent to anyone outside their bubble.

Ironically, this tendency to blame all of Warren’s failings on sexism comes across as somewhat…sexist. Every time she loses, she is portrayed by some of her most ardent defenders as a victim, as though she has no control over her own campaign or her own choices. It’s not just infantilizing and patronizing, but it also removes agency and responsibility from the candidate herself. And yet, claims that “sexism did it” are repeated so often they’re taken as a fact, even when no evidence is offered to support them.

This part nails it:

She’s out of touch—or at least, her advisers are—and there aren’t enough Oberlin grads for her to win Ohio, much less the swing states that will likely determine the outcome of the 2020 race.

But don’t tell the bubble-dwellers that.  They don’t want to hear it.  For them, Elizabeth Warren was perfect; we’re the ones who suck.

We are the problem, not her.  We are unlikeable, not her.

And we’re just too stupid and flawed to recognize perfection when she deigns to leave the bubble and walk among us.