Ah, the lazy, crazy days of August during a presidential election year are upon us. That's traditionally when the political press decides that the Democratic candidate has not been accessible enough to them, so they spend weeks badgering them for interviews and demanding press conferences while insinuating that the candidate must be hiding something.

Recall the 2016 cycle when, during the month of August, the press had a collective tantrum because HIllary Clinton's staffers roped her off as she walked in a parade in order to keep reporters and photographers from turning the event into a paparazzi-style scrum. I wrote at the time:

Aaron Blake recounted the event in all its chilling detail and then rather sheepishly admitted that nobody in America really gives a damn about how Hillary Clinton treats the press. (A point I made a month ago.) After all, the press is held in only slightly higher esteem by the public than loan sharks and puppy mill operators. The thinly veiled threat underneath all this outrage is that the media will react to being treated badly by giving the candidate bad press, but it's pretty clear that train left the station a long time ago when it comes to Clinton, so the cost-benefit analysis probably doesn't argue in favor of the campaign giving a damn either.

You could not blame her. That election year was the worst. It was the "but her emails" campaign and we all know how the political media dropped the ball on that. They hysterically chased rumors that Clinton had brain damage and was hiding serious health issues, demanding that she open her medical records to the public and share the details of every doctor visit. (They were all too happy, however, to rely on Dr. Feelgood for a laughable rundown of Donald Trump's health.)

As far as we can tell, the mainstream media never accepted their culpability in that shocking........

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