{"id":2334190,"date":"2024-11-12T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/?p=2334190"},"modified":"2024-11-12T15:53:11","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T20:53:11","slug":"long-island-rejects-the-cnn-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/2024\/11\/12\/long-island-rejects-the-cnn-candidate\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Island Rejects The CNN Candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/articles\/long-island-rejects-the-cnn-candidate\/\">Long Island Rejects The CNN Candidate<\/a><br \/>\nby <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/author\/brownstone\/\">Brownstone Institute<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\">Brownstone Institute<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">On Tuesday, voters across the country overwhelmingly rejected the incumbent administration and the advocacy of the media. Perhaps no House race better encompassed that phenomenon than New York\u2019s First Congressional District, where former CNN anchor John Avlon lost by over ten percentage points to Republican Nick LaLota despite a concerted media effort to foist him into government.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Avlon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/races\/summary?cycle=2024&amp;id=NY01\">outraised<\/a> his opponent by nearly 20% with donors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, and former HBO CEO Richard Plepler. Throughout the campaign, he received endorsements from <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/house\/4936795-cheney-endorses-democrats-house-races\/\">Liz Cheney<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TeamAvlonNY\/status\/1852042618642768158\">Billy Joel<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JohnAvlon\/status\/1853904522151661667%20%20Don%20Lemon:%20%E2%80%9CYou%20can%20trust%20him.%E2%80%9D%20%E2%80%9CJohn%20Avlon%20believ\">Don Lemon<\/a>. \u201cYou can trust him,\u201d Lemon insisted.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For months, the media establishment fawned over their chosen avatar. \u201cHe was well-dressed, articulate, and telegenic,\u201d <em>Slate <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2024\/11\/trump-harris-election-new-york-cnn-avlon-lalota-long-island.html\">gushed<\/a>. In <a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/john-avlon-district-1-ny.html\"><em>New York Magazine<\/em><\/a>, Avlon compared himself \u201cto a Norman Rockwell painting \u2026 the guy standing up in a town hall.\u201d Just one day before the election, ABC News <a href=\"https:\/\/abc7ny.com\/post\/democrats-looking-flip-new-yorks-congressional-district-race-tightens\/15489611\/\">insisted<\/a> that his race was \u201crazor thin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their enthusiasm was understandable as he parroted the media class\u2019s most familiar talking points. He insisted defeating Trump was necessary to \u201cdefend our democracy\u201d yet called for the former President to be banned from ballots for \u201cinsurrection.\u201d He staunchly supported US funding for the war in Ukraine. And during the Covid response, he embraced every destruction of American liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the onset of the pandemic, he criticized what he deemed to be insufficient crackdowns on civil liberties during lockdowns, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/07\/24\/world\/coronavirus-response-resurgence-wave-intl\/index.html\">lamenting<\/a> \u201cthe lack of strict nationwide measures to contain the outbreak.\u201d He called Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan \u201cgold standards\u201d in their responses, as their citizens were jailed for leaving their homes. As a CNN pundit, DHS considered him an \u201cessential worker,\u201d and he became a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/03\/24\/opinions\/coronavirus-overcome-past-pandemics-john-avlon-opinion\/index.html\">pro-mask<\/a> zealot as he derided all critics.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then, he championed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/videos\/politics\/2021\/10\/13\/covid-19-vaccine-mandates-reality-check-avlon-newday-vpx.cnn\">vaccine mandates<\/a>, calling them \u201cself-interest with a deadline.\u201d He remarked, \u201cFear and doubt tend to fade away when they face a forcing factor,\u201d and celebrated that one-third of US service members took the shots after the military threatened to fire them if they refused.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite his track record, the media portrayed him as a return to normalcy candidate, \u201ca <em>West Wing <\/em>throwback,\u201d<em> <\/em>championing him &#8211; the son of a centi-millionaire &#8211; as a representative of the people during his campaign from his <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2024\/08\/13\/us-news\/ex-cnn-anchor-dem-candidate-john-avlon-evaded-taxes-scored-abatement-on-nyc-condo-despite-claiming-sag-harbor-residency\/\">summer home<\/a> in Sag Harbor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Long Island, like the rest of the country, rejected the establishment\u2019s narrative and elected Republican Nick LaLota by a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/11\/05\/us\/elections\/results-new-york-us-house-1.html\">margin<\/a> of 11.5%, the largest GOP victory since 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the <em>New York Times<\/em>, columnist Damon Linker diagnosed the issue underpinning the establishment\u2019s failures in this election cycle: \u201cthere simply aren\u2019t enough voters in the mood to celebrate that establishment and its works.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/11\/07\/opinion\/kamala-harris-election.html\">explains:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe reasons for this lost trust are almost too numerous to mention. Aside from the aforementioned Iraq War and financial crisis, there was a pandemic response by public health officials that many thought was far too draconian, with lockdowns causing widespread suffering and psychological and educational damage to children; a humiliating and demoralizing withdrawal of military forces from Afghanistan; the sharply rising prices of 2022 and spike in interest rates that followed, making many working people feel significantly poorer; skyrocketing public debt; surging rates of homelessness and the spread of tent encampments in American cities; a tense, frustrating and seemingly endless stalemate in Ukraine\u2019s war with Russia; and a flood of undocumented migrants streaming over the southern border, which continued largely unabated for years until the Biden administration was forced by political reality last summer to firmly address the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Avlon was the perfect mannequin for the lies responsible for the voters\u2019 deserved distrust of their compromised institutions. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/videos\/politics\/2021\/08\/31\/avlon-reality-check-afghanistan-disinformation-newday-vpx.cnn\">blamed<\/a> criticism of the Afghanistan withdrawal on \u201cforeign disinformation.\u201d On CNN, he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/cnn-host-hails-inflation-reduction-act-criticism-misses-point-short-term-problems\">dismissed<\/a> critics of Biden\u2019s \u201cInflation Reduction Act\u201d as \u201cmissing the point\u201d and insisted that they should stop \u201cobsessing over short-term problems.\u201d He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/style\/power\/2024\/06\/23\/battle-new-york\/\">touted<\/a> a proposed immigration bill that would have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2024\/08\/29\/fact-check-kamala-harris-falsely-claims-senate-border-bill-had-broad-bipartisan-support\/\">codified<\/a> the entry of two million migrants across the border per year. And according to Avlon, the pandemic response was insufficiently draconian, the spending in Ukraine was insufficiently generous, and the border crossings were insufficiently welcomed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This was the pattern across the country; elites blamed their critics for noticing their shortcomings, and they offered blithe platitudes in lieu of solutions. Their campaign was singularly focused on the demonization of their political opponent and lacked any semblance of self-awareness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The celebrity endorsements, the name calling, the mandates, the dilapidated cities, the destruction of our border, the depletion of our petroleum reserve, the mania of the trans movement, the profiteering of race-baiting, the lawfare aimed at their political opponents, the hyper-sanitized campaigns; they were all meant to demoralize you, the citizens witnessing the decline of our country.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Avlon and his fellow \u201cessential workers\u201d decided that <em>you <\/em>should be ashamed, that <em>you <\/em>owed penance. But, as we learned Tuesday, elections are referenda, not secular confessionals, and Americans had the self-respect to tell their elites <em>no<\/em>. They would not stand for the lies, they would not indulge the emotional manipulation, and they would not reward their leaders\u2019 dereliction of duty.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/articles\/long-island-rejects-the-cnn-candidate\/\">Long Island Rejects The CNN Candidate<\/a><br \/>\nby <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/author\/brownstone\/\">Brownstone Institute<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\">Brownstone Institute &#8211; Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"attribution\">The post <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/articles\/long-island-rejects-the-cnn-candidate\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Long Island Rejects The CNN Candidate<\/a> was first published by <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Brownstone Institute<\/a>, and is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/donate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Please support their efforts.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long Island Rejects The CNN Candidate<br \/>\nby Brownstone Institute at Brownstone Institute<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":2334192,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2334190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334193,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334190\/revisions\/2334193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2334192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}