How The Big Times Media Covers The Local Congressional Races-- L.A. Times/CA-31

No one's even asking Jean Merl to explain this drunken, coked up mess

Jean Merl is the big kahuna among L.A. political journalists. She works at the L.A. Times and her articles are widely considered the most-read political stories in southern California, even though they generally lack context, insight and substance and are suspiciously similar to campaign talking points. If a reader expects to learn something more than superficial truisms, they'd better be prepared to do some investigation.

In today's Times for example, she has a short story about the Inland Empire (CA-31) race, Pete Aguilar's campaign surpasses $1 million in House race. A more useful article might explain who Aguilar's donors are and how his haul compares to that of his opponents. Jean might even mention that Aguilar is a lobbyist and has gotten huge amounts of money from banksters he's done work for as well as a massive $197,189 Independent Expenditure from the Big Money crooks who run the Credit Union National Association. (The only other I.E. they ran this cycle so far was for Mitch McConnell. Not noteworthy?)

Jean ended her story with the half-truth the DCCC and Aguilar has been pushing on credulous media, namely that the Democrats lost CA-31 last cycle because so many Democrats split the vote so many ways that both Republicans managed to slip in. "Two years ago," she wrote, parroting the DCCC line, "Aguilar narrowly missed getting on the fall ballot when he and three other Democrats splintered the vote, allowing two Republicans to advance." This chart shows what actually happened:

The two Republicans who made it through the primary in the D+5 Democratic district has a total of 51.8% of the vote. Even if Aguilar got every single vote that Justin Kim, Renea Wickman and Rita Ramirez-Dean "took away from him," he still wouldn't have made it into the general election. What the DCCC doesn't want the media looking at is what a weak and unacceptable candidate Aguilar was in 2012 and what a weak and unacceptable candidate he is in 2014. Maybe Jean could mention that the conservative New Dems endorsed Aguilar this week and that the Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed Reyes. It wouldn't even require a lengthy explanation to get the point across-- though it isn't one that's being pushed by the press department at the DCCC.

There are a lot of interesting stories that the L.A. Times could run about this race and about who Pete Aguilar is… but they don't get wrapped neatly in a package with a big red bow and handed to Jean Merl. And, apparently, investigative journalism is not her thing. Pointless Gossip 101 is.