Rather remarkably, there was virtually no mention of Clinton or any other candidate running for president on this particular day. And so I repeated this little thought experiment again last week and the results were largely the same. The Post should not be blamed for criticizing a candidate who has demonstrated xenophobic, racist, and sexually predatory behavior. But even at the end of perhaps the worst stretch of weeks for a candidate in modern American electoral history, perhaps 45 percent of the electorate, some 55 million voters or so, still will vote for Trump. And some of them may wonder if the Post put their fat thumbs on the electoral scales.

We are all, by now, familiar with the belief among the Republican right that the so-called mainstream media is in fact the liberal media. This is an article of faith that has become a driving force for growth at Fox News and Breitbart, among other news organizations. There is, to be totally fair, some basis for this critique, but it has long ago been hyped and distorted beyond all factual recognition. And there has always been, at the very least, a concerted effort at places like The New York Times and The Washington Post to offer a balanced view, even if that effort is occasionally undermined by inevitable group think and lack of connection with parts of the country.

This effort, whether or not it satisfies a Breitbart or Fox audience, has always set them apart from partisan media like the Washington Times. But this election is different: for the first time in my memory, some of the major media organizations in this country have now abandoned all semblance of objectivity in furtherance of electing Hillary Clinton, or perhaps more accurately, in furtherance of the defeat of Donald Trump.

I recognize that this is Trump we’re talking about here, and that many voters might view his nomination as a one-time mental breakdown of the Republican Party. But let’s not be so sure. Attitude changes like these have a way of normalizing very quickly. I can easily imagine, for instance, a similar response from the mainstream media if Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz, or some other similarly non-traditional candidate were to secure the nomination of the Republican Party for President in 2020. Having helped successfully scuttle the nomination of one candidate, it may be terribly tempting for our leading organizations and media outlets to seek an encore performance.

There is additional complexity here. We have typically understood the media debate in this country as being waged between right vs. left. But that vertical division within our politics has been replaced by a more dystopian horizontal battle line. Many media consumers now perceive our political struggle as being disputed between establishment members and outsiders, somewhat divorced from political perspective. Many Trumpists will interpret press coverage of the campaign as the establishment rising up to defend their interests from the outsiders, the working class, and the dispossessed. They may argue and believe that Bernie Sanders, were he elected as the Democratic nominee, would also have suffered a media rough ride. We can be doubtful about the truthfulness of that claim, though it is unknowable one way or the other. But our doubt will not diminish the passionate belief of many that this has all been about the revenge of the Party of Davos.

Don’t mistake me for some traditionalist harrumphing that the media is not the way it used to be in the good old days. We had partisan media long before we had objective media. And Trump is an affront to American democracy and common decency, and if this is the price to pay for keeping him out of the White House, so be it. But there is most certainly a price to pay. The next time Fox News or Breitbart caterwaul about media bias, the claim will have substantially more bite to it.