I see a pattern here.
Party wins majority of one (or both) houses of Congress.
Media shifts to highlighting and analyzing purported splits within majority coalition.
Media speculates on whether the splits will lead to collapse of majority.
Majority party loses election. Another party wins majority.
Repeat cycle from second sentence.
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This does happen quite often in recent times. Darn that First Amendment and its freedom of the press! I’m just kidding about the First Amendment thing, but members of the press/media should exercise some restraint. It would be refreshing if they would just report the events and let viewers/readers decide…C-SPAN for all!
I agree. The press should be lambasted for their inability to objectively report facts, and constantly – until they learn to do better.
I think part of the problem is that our political parties feed off of the imaginary conflict; i.e., they get to raise money off of imaginary issues and score cheap points off the other party because the media either doesn’t take the time to explain it fully to the public, or worse, the public doesn’t care to understand. Our elected officaials don’t seem to want to change it; they prefer grandstanding to actual problem solving. I have a wordpress blog and I wrote a post a couple months ago about improving Congress. You can check it out here:
http://discourseamerica.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/thoughts-on-improving-congress/