<u+201c>i<u+2019>ve got republican friends who don<u+2019>t think or act the way donald trump does,<u+201d> president obama said wednesday at a raleigh rally for hillary clinton. that<u+2019>s totally believable except the part about his having republican friends. the president continued: <u+201c>this<u+201d><u+2014>meaning trump, not mrs. clinton<u+2014><u+201c>is somebody who is uniquely unqualified. i ran against john mccain. i ran against mitt romney. i thought i<u+2019>d be a better president, but i never thought that the republic was at risk if they were elected.<u+201d> national review<u+2019>s charles cooke finds obama<u+2019>s remarks vexatious. <u+201c>democrats really have limited their ability to credibly warn against the dangers posed by trump,<u+201d> he argues, noting that obama and his supporters treated romney quite viciously in 2012: if we understand cooke correctly, he is frustrated with liberals because he largely agrees with them about trump<u+2014>note he accepts the premise about the <u+201c>dangers posed<u+201d> by the gop nominee<u+2014>and finds the case more difficult to make persuasively because their lack of credibility tends to discredit his argument. to put it in fabulous terms, liberals cried wolf, and now that there really is a wolf, nobody is listening to cooke<u+2019>s cries. follow james on twitter to judge by the twitter exchanges we read yesterday, cooke did not find a receptive audience on the left. some detractors argued that romney was a dangerous radical, which illustrates cooke<u+2019>s point without conceding it. others claimed that the anti-romney rhetoric then was not actually as harsh as the anti-trump rhetoric now. although this column has also criticized the left (in february and september ) for crying wolf, it seems to us the latter group has a bit of a point. our (admittedly subjective) sense is that the left has been denouncing trump more harshly than it denounced romney. the most recent examples to cross our desk are the new york times<u+2019>s charles blow , who calls trump <u+201c>an existential threat,<u+201d> and the new yorker<u+2019>s adam gopnik , who describes the nominee as <u+201c>an open and committed enemy of liberal democracy and constitutional republicanism.<u+201d> to our mind, there is at least a difference in degree between the 2012 attacks and the 2016 ones. whereas the volume of the romney attacks was at 8 or 9, now they<u+2019>ve cranked it up to 11. you can see why conservatives and liberals might experience that differently: whereas the left needed expensive new equipment to get the volume boost, to the right it<u+2019>s an intolerable racket either way. another difference between 2012 and 2016 is the role of the so-called mainstream media. there, the volume boost has gone to 11 from something more like 5 or 6. we<u+2019>ve written often about that in the past but were surprised to find this in vanity fair of all places, from ken stern : we<u+2019>re not sure why stern limits his hypothetical to a <u+201c>non-traditional candidate.<u+201d> we can easily imagine, say, the new york times taking an openly adversarial approach to, say, john kasich or marco rubio running in 2020 to succeed president kaine. the move away from objectivity and toward partisanship didn<u+2019>t start after trump became a candidate. press theorists have been bemoaning <u+201c>false balance<u+201d> (i.e., balance) for years, and the <u+201c>fact check<u+201d> genre<u+2014>opinion journalism, often of low quality, with a pretense of authoritativeness<u+2014>was invented more than a decade ago. stern<u+2019>s analysis presupposes that mrs. clinton will win. that assumption also helps explain why liberals do not care to take cooke<u+2019>s argument seriously: if trump loses, it makes no difference, at least in the short term, whether the left<u+2019>s criticisms of him have been credible; and if their overwrought attacks on romney and other past republicans indirectly led to trump<u+2019>s nomination, that<u+2019>s a win-win from the democratic standpoint. but wait. as this column revealed tuesday , trump could win. that<u+2019>s not even a contrarian view anymore: fivethirtyeight<u+2019>s nate silver , no conservative, had a post last night titled <u+201c>election update: why clinton<u+2019>s position is worse than obama<u+2019>s,<u+201d> meaning obama<u+2019>s the week before the election in 2012: cnn notes there<u+2019>s also a new colorado poll showing the two nominees tied at 39%. as of early friday afternoon, silver gives trump close to a 1 in 3 chance of winning. mrs. clinton is the favorite, but not a prohibitive one. what if trump wins? it<u+2019>s a safe bet the media would remain adversarial, which is largely to the good; it would be refreshing to see journalists challenge those in power for a change. but here<u+2019>s the more interesting question: what if he wins and he turns out not to be as bad as the liberals and nevertrump conservatives fear? we don<u+2019>t mean to suggest a trump presidency would be trouble-free, but his detractors have set an awfully high bar for awfulness. it is possible he would meet it<u+2014>but if the world and the republic survive the administration of president trump, it<u+2019>ll be really hard to get anyone alarmed when the next wolf comes along. fox butterfield, is that you? <u+201c>federal efforts to preserve a level playing field are laudable but face new challenges as at&t, comcast and verizon all become vertically integrated providers of digital access, media and advertising. all three have experimented with ways to manipulate data pricing to benefit their content, despite the federal communications commission<u+2019>s net-neutrality rules designed to provide fair and equal network access.<u+201d><u+2014>editorial, seattle times, nov.<u+00a0>3 we blame george w. bush <u+201c>don<u+2019>t like donald trump<u+2019>s piggish prejudice? blame golf.<u+201d><u+2014>headline,. chicago tribune, nov.<u+00a0>3 the soft bigotry of low expectations <u+201c>economist magazine endorses clinton, says she is <u+2018>a better candidate than she seems<u+2019><u+00a0><u+201d><u+2014>headline, foxnews.com, nov.<u+00a0>3 anthony weiner, is that you? <u+201c>topless photo of <u+2018>rhoc<u+2019> [<u+2018>real housewives of orange county<u+2019>] star leads to fbi complaint<u+201d><u+2014>headline, new york post, nov.<u+00a0>3 hypothesis and proof problem and solution to serve man <u+201c>the <u+2018>leftover people<u+2019> may deliver a win for trump<u+201d><u+2014>headline, boston globe, nov.<u+00a0>2 make that 8 question and answer<u+2014>i question and answer<u+2014>ii question and answer<u+2014>iii too much information <u+201c>john kerry<u+2019>s rich fantasy life<u+201d><u+2014>headline, washington times, nov.<u+00a0>3 someone set up us the bomb <u+201c>a virginia school principal dressed as trump, secretary was prison hillary, and of course it<u+2019>s robert e. lee high<u+201d><u+2014>headline, salon, nov.<u+00a0>3 news you can use <u+201c>on election day, voters should flush the toilet<u+201d><u+2014>headline, jewishworldreview.com, nov.<u+00a0>4 bottom stories of the day i<u+2019>m offended that you<u+2019>re offended <u+201c>washington [state] prison inmates will no longer be called <u+2018>offenders,<u+2019><u+00a0><u+201d> reports the nw news network, a consortium of public radio stations: so what do you call somebody who offends an offender by calling him an offender? follow @jamestaranto on twitter. join fans of best of the web today on facebook. subscribe to the best of the web email with one click. (carol muller helps compile best of the web. thanks to tony lima, mara gold, irene deblasio, bruce goldman, miguel rakiewicz, michele schiesser, mark zoeller, randy riness, wes van fleet, debbie wells, myles pollin, mike lavender, michael smith and mordecai bobrowsky. if you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com , and please include the url.)
11-alarm fire - wsj
james taranto