This makes the most egregious tactics a dangerous game to play, capable of alienating our party's own supporters, so it isn't necessarily a sound approach. That doesn't mean we aren't capable of getting dirty if we think we can get away with it. The problem is that if the media doesn't want us to, we won't, and there is no chance of an equal standard when it comes to reporting.
There's one way in which we absolutely are too "nice," but I think that's because we still think we can schmooze our way into seats of power. The reality is that this is getting less and less likely with a media that has become entirely untethered to any kind of universal code of conduct, or standards of quality. Democrats, as the "conscientious" pro-corporate party, are increasingly losing our usefulness in a system that has already been so coopted--whether from media consolidation under mega-corporations, campaign finance run amok, voter suppression, erosion of education, or an increasing economic uncertainty that is making people stupid. We are truly dinosaurs.
Actually, that's going too far. We do continue to be useful as an alternative...the one that is always inches from being in power but never quite gets there. Occasionally we get to win the White House and get blamed for gridlock.
Taking on the GOP is fighting against the proxy, not the institution itself. If we as a party, continue to pretend as if the corporations aren't calling the shots, when they literally own the media that gave us Trump and gave us all of the shit I mentioned above, and if we continue to try to be cozy with these very corporations, we're going to continue to be the pinch-hitters that never get a spot in the lineup. We have got to quit pretending that the news doesn't have an agenda. We have got to quit pretending to ourselves that we can convince corporate interests that they just need to be a little nicer for their own sakes, if we don't actually start handing out the pitch-forks and the torches.
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