How are the Repubs and MSM going to chip away at the emerging Democratic majority?

As James Carville might have said, if he weren't busy throwing Howard Dean under the bus: it's the equivalation, stupid.

Since the advent of "Nightline," cable news, and Ronnie love — and the end of the fairness doctrine and something we used to call "shame" — the news game has been a game.

And the name of the game is making everything into either a horserace (tilting the field in favor of the undeserving) or a star-spangled army-recruitment poster.

And, oh yes, MSM includes NPR:

Today, superstar insider beltway pundit Cokie Roberts was brought on to dispense her weekly observations about the body politic.... When asked for her thoughts on the election, she tells us that the biggest lesson we've learned is that the American public is tired of bickering between the parties and within the parties. (via)

This canard has been a standby for journalists of both types — lazy and rightwing-biased — for some time.

Again, I quote from Paul Glastris's superb 2004 analysis of faux polarization:

It is a cliché to observe that the parties have drawn further apart, the center no longer holds, and partisans on both sides have withdrawn further into mutual loathing and ever more-homogenous and antagonistic groupings. Where the analysis goes wrong is in its assumption, either explicit or implicit, that both parties bear equal responsibility for this state of affairs. While partisanship may now be deeply entrenched among their voters and their elites, the truth is that the growing polarization of American politics results primarily from the growing radicalism of the Republican Party.