Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson went to a debate Thursday night and a Mandela Barnes rally broke out. The crowd for Today’s TMJ 4’s farce wildly applauded Barnes, repeatedly booed and heckled Johnson, and whipped itself into such a partisan frenzy that it accidentally gave away the media bias game by loudly cheering at some of the questions that moderator Shannon Sims was asking Johnson.
“Audience, please,” moderator Charles Benson chided, perhaps recognizing how obvious it looked that both Sims and the crowd were doing their best to make Barnes look as good as possible (admittedly not an easy task).
As fair-minded and professional as Benson was, though, he was an overmatched ringmaster for this circus. And ironically, it seemed to throw Barnes off his game, as the constant applause that interrupted his answers caused him to fumble many of his best lines.
This serves as an apt metaphor for Barnes’ campaign: Both the media and his fellow Democrats so protected him during the primary that once he faced actual questions about his record during the general election, he found himself unable to come up with satisfactory answers.