The media are still getting their election coverage weirdly wrong.  The election is still over a year away; almost everything is still fluid.  We just had a new candidate register.  The existing candidates are only firming the positions they’ve barely articulated.  It may become a horserace down the line, but right now, we’re still in the marketplace, picking and choosing from everyone.

And this is great!  During the last presidential election, I was moaning that we were in a desert of ideas.  Four years later, and we see a frantic intellectual fermentation.  Everyone is proposing ideas every week, and they’re detailed proposals with rational underpinnings.  That’s a joy to watch.

But the media are covering all these fascinating possibilities as if the contest was at the last stages.  They’re focusing on the polls and personalities over the policies.  This won’t be a cult of personality (Democrats aren’t Republicans, after all), especially now.  It’s not a horserace, the polls won’t matter for quite a while, and the unspent money in a candidate’s imaginary campaign coffer isn’t vital.  Yes, to my dismay, funding will become decisive during the full campaign, but not yet.  We’re only in the early, formative stages.

“Who will break away from the pack?”  “Will Biden and Sanders Face Off?”  “Who interrupted who?” That’s all beside the point. I don’t want my kid’s report card to start with recess activities.

We’re more than a year away from the elections.  Our marketplace of ideas is barely open, and many proposals aren’t even on the table.  I’m watching the first debate.  Ten impressive candidates are trying to make their case for each position.  They’re beginning to explain the ‘why’ part.  For almost everyone, this will be the first time they’ve heard any of this.  And it’s only their first draft, intellectually.  Everyone’s positions will change before we get close to the primaries, probably several times.

I’ve called it the marketplace of ideas. Think of a bazaar, messy and raucous. Everyone wants your attention, talking at the same time as they lay out their ideas. Everyone is pitching what they want to do, why it matters, and how it’ll work. And most of them got game. I agree here, disagree there, and love that I get to choose.

So, I see this as a marvelous time.  I wasn’t sure at first, but to my surprise, I see Democratic groups focusing on realistic analysis that drives detailed proposals.  I’m delighted to hear all the innovative ideas.  Sure, we’re still in the early stages, and the contest could crash into nonsense, but this election cycle has the making of a great moment.

I’m just a little bugged that our major media outlets don’t seem to understand what’s in front of them.   They don’t recognize the differences.  It’s not damning, and not uniform, but the coverage has been weirdly off-tune from the beginning.  Didn’t they learn from the past election cycles?