Jim Vandehei

All of us — and the media, in particular — need some clear-eyed, humble self-reflection as the dust settles on the 2020 election results. The media remains fairly clueless about the America that exists outside of the big cities, where most political writers and editors live. The media (and many Democrats) are 

President Trump's campaign and key allies plan to make allegations of bias by social media platforms a core part of their 2020 strategy. Look for ads, speeches and sustained attacks on Facebook and Twitter in particular, the sources say. The irony: The social platforms are created and staffed largely by liberals — but often used most effectively in politics by conservatives. The charges of overt bias by social media platforms are way overblown, several studies have found. But, if the exaggerated claims stick, it could increase the chances of regulatory action by Republicans

It’s no longer debatable: The system makes the big, bigger and the rich, richer. The rest of America stagnates or suffers. Since 1980, the incomes of the top 1%tripled, the top 10% doubled, and the bottom 60% of prime-age workers were flat. This may manifest on the campaign trail as a referendum not only on reversing the tax cuts and implementing a Green New Deal, but then moving in the exact opposite direction — President Donald Trump as the last gasp of trickle-down economics. It's hard to imagine a more worthy debate at a more important time for America.

Tech giants are facing a barrage of tough, negative coverage, with some of the same dynamics that drive saturation coverage of President Donald Trump. Many major news organizations — including The Washington Post, The Atlantic and CNN — are staffing up for greatly expanded tech coverage because: 1) Tech is the new politics. 2) This is partly in reaction to the techlash and partly in preparation for a post-Trump world, when websites can't count on politics to drive massive year-round traffic.

The big and powerful are getting bigger and more powerful — and the clear and dominant winners are big cities. With wealth, jobs, and power increasingly concentrated in a few large cities, we are witnessing a growing economic and political divide between urban and rural America. As we've previously written, it's part of a larger dynamic favoring "superstar" countries and companies, too — behemoths that appear positioned to dominate the future global economy. This fuels us-versus-them. New cool technologies hit cities first, be it 5G, autonomous transportation or drone delivery.

House Democrats plan to investigate whether President Donald Trump abused White House power by targeting — and trying to punish with "instruments of state power" — the Washington Post and CNN, said incoming-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA). Rep Schiff said President Trump "was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat the postmaster [general] into raising postal rates on Amazon." "This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post," Rep Schiff said.

President Donald Trump says railing against his enemies in the media helped him win — and that his supporters like him more when he cranks up the "enemy of the people" rhetoric. President Trump said, "I think I'm doing a service [by attacking the press] when people write stories about me that are so wrong." He said, "I know what I do good and what I do bad. I really get it, OK?

In our lifetime, no president has matched Donald Trump’s ability to summon the power of the pulpit, friendly media, and the tweet-by-tweet power of repetition and persuasion to move minds en masse. You see this in the silence of Republican critics; the instant shifts in GOP views of the FBI, Putin and deficits; and the quick, widespread adoption of his branding efforts around “deep state,” “Spygate” and “no collusion.” We hear so much, so often that we become numb to what Trump is doing.