How about a “Fox News for the Left?”

Anyone following US politics during the past fifteen years has probably encountered this phrase, or something resembling it, on more than one occasion. Often appearing in the wake of Democratic electoral defeat, the apparently straightforward notion of a “Fox News for the Left” actually contains within it a whole suite of narratives and assumptions about American politics that have long informed the conservative movement’s opponents in the liberal mainstream.

Chief among these, and most obvious, is the idea that what liberals need more than anything is an institutional answer to the Fox media network itself: a secret weapon frequently deployed against Democrats to devastating effect. That argument naturally extends to the wider infrastructure of American conservatism, from its various partisan outlets and rage generators to the endless cavalcade of celebrity demagogues it has successfully turned into national figures.