Revisiting the Fox News Fallacy
It Seems To Be Alive and Well
https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p...web&utm_source=
Ruy Teixeira
Nov 10


Three months ago, I wrote a piece on the Fox News Fallacy. As I explained in that piece:

This is the idea that if Fox News (substitute here the conservative bête noire of your choice if you prefer) criticizes the Democrats for X then there must be absolutely nothing to X and the job of Democrats is to assert that loudly and often. The problem is that an issue is not necessarily completely invalid just because Fox News mentions it. That depends on the issue. If there is something to the issue and persuadable voters have real concerns, you will not allay those concerns by embracing the Fox News Fallacy. In fact, you'll probably intensify them by giving such voters the impression that Democrats simply don't care about their concerns and will do nothing to address them. That will undermine the Democrats’ ability to respond to predictable attacks against their candidates….and raise the likelihood of a midterm debacle.

In light of the Democrats’ dreadful performance in last week’s election, I thought it would be useful to revisit this analysis and see if it still applies. In the original piece, I looked at three issues: crime, immigration and “critical race theory” (CRT). The latter is particularly apropos given the role of this issue in Republican Glenn Youngkin’s surprise defeat of Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial contest.

Start with crime. Initially dismissed as simply an artifact of the Covid shutdown that was being vastly exaggerated by Fox News and the like for their nefarious purposes, it is now apparent that the spike in violent crime is quite real and that voters are very, very concerned about it. This very definitely includes black and Hispanic voters, as indicated by polling data and confirmed by Eric Adams’ support base in the New York mayoral contest. No wonder more and more Democratic politicians are running as fast as they can away from any hint of “defund the police”, the slogan beloved of the activist left that was actually put on the ballot in Minneapolis…and soundly defeated, especially by black voters. Consistent with this, a recent Pew poll found that black and Hispanic Democrats are significantly more likely than white Democrats to favor more police funding in their area.

And yet….Democrats still seem very far from former UK prime minister Tony Blair’s felicitous slogan: “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Fox News may exaggerate but voters really do want law and order—done fairly and humanely, but law and order just the same. Democrats, with some exceptions like Eric Adams, still seem reluctant to highlight their commitment to cracking down on crime and criminals because that is something that, well, Fox News would say. Given this, it is no surprise Republicans, according to a recent NBC poll are favored over Democrats on the crime issue by 22 points.

Another example of the Fox News Fallacy, I argued in my piece, is the immigration issue. The Biden administration initially insisted that the surge at the border would go away on its own as the hot weather season arrived, a line most Democrats echoed, invoking the idea that the issue was more a Fox News talking point than a real problem.-- excerpt, rest at link above --