If You Squint Your Ears Not Very Hard At All...

...and listen to two of the recently-former Republican Never Trumpers who have almost completely colonized MSNBC in which they bitch about -- 

• The madness of the Republican party.
• The calculated, reptilian depravity of Mitch McConnell.
• The reckless, ratings-driven irresponsibility of the mainstream media.

-- you could be forgiven for mistaking their interlocution for literally any breakout session at any of the Yearly Kos/Netroots Nation gatherings of the Liberal tribes going back almost 20 years now.

Or, say, any of the panel discussions and after-hours bull sessions from any of the Eschaton conferences (EschaCons) that are now almost lost to history.

Here is where I shamelessly borrow pictures of the panels and topics from Darrel Plant's account of EschaCon 2008 to make a point:

Having an Impact

Digby, Jane Hamsher, NTodd, Atrios

Comedy and Political Critique

watertiger, Trex, The Rude Pundit, Ted Rall, Thers

Creating Constitutional Accountability

Scott Horton, Kagro X, Eric Johnson (Chief of Staff, Rep. Robert Wexler), Bob Fertik

Media Bias

Will Bunch, Eric Boehlert, Susie Madrak, Athenae, Spocko, Douglas K. Smith

DFH Economics

Paul Krugman, Atrios, Echide of the Snakes

Do you really think that (almost) any or all of these smart and mic-savvy Liberals, or any of your favorite Liberal podcasters, couldn't do what Charlie Sykes does?  Or Tom Nichols?  Or Tim Miller? Steve Schmidt?  Matt Dowd?  Nicole Wallace?  Jennifer Rubin?  Sarah Longwell? Joe Scarborough? Mika Brzezinski? Mike Fucking Barnicle?  And on and on and on?

Imagine for just a moment what the "Liberal" media could have looked like if NBC/MSNBC had put a fraction of the money and talent they put into hyping their crash-and-burn experiments with Greta Van Susteren or Megyn Kelly or Hugh Fucking Hewitt...into promoting (almost) any or all of these smart and mic-savvy Liberals.

Remember Maddow looking directly into the camera and enthusiastically declaring that "Greta is Great!"?  The same Greta who now works alongside Mark Halperin and other fallen-from-grace media dregs who have washed up on the shores of NewsMax?

Imagine for just a moment what the "Liberal" media could have looked like if NBC/MSNBC had put a just fraction of the tens of millions of dollars in free publicity they shower on Never Trump media companies like The Bulwark and The Lincoln Project every year ... into promoting the podcasts and projects of talented Liberals who do great work and live out of tip jars and GoFundMes.

So why in the world have the networks chosen to hand all the chairs and all the mics and all the promotional apparatus over to a gang of recently-former Republican Never Trumpers -- who were all disastrously wrong about their own party until five minutes ago, and all contributed mightily to the catastrophe that now faces us -- instead of smart and mic-savvy Liberals, who were right about the Right all along and who can explain, clearly and coherently, the long, appalling history of the Republican party and the Conservative media and the complicit mainstream media that led us to this place?

Oh my sweet summer child.  It is precisely because they can lay out in damning detail the long, poisonous, racist road down which the Republican party and the Conservative media and the complicit mainstream media have been racing for decades that these smart and mic-savvy Liberals cannot be allowed within shouting distance of network microphones and cameras.  

Burn The Lifeboats